Can we stop the jousting match here? If this were a website for teenage hobbyhorse enthusiasts I'm sure it would be old news. But it's interesting to people who haven't heard of it before. It's OK for others to like things that you don't. There will always be some of that on Hacker News and the most polite thing we can do is leave others to their enjoyment.
The new submission guidelines define on- and off-topic as follows:
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic., https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The first highlight is the good, general rule, the second highlight the one that applies to the submission in question, in my opinion.
“If someone says we are playing, it strips away everything we made, it strips away the reality,” said Ms. Aarniomaki.
it looks like playing to me as well, and not sure why the community would see that as a problem. even professional sports players know they are playing a game. an interesting and unusual perspective for sure.
I wonder if something was lost in translation, if that read " it strips away the illusion" then the component of pretending in this type of play makes sense.
I guess much in the same sense that people would probably not be amused if you ran around a Comic Con telling everyone this is just make believe.
> I guess much in the same sense that people would probably not be amused if you ran around a Comic Con telling everyone this is just make believe.
And yet, this is what an outsider would think (as someone who does not go but has friends who do). Some people would call tinkering with computers "playing", though my spending years on it resulted in a career path. I don't see the issue with "playing". At some point, if you're not doing it for a pay off, that's what it is, and that's fine.
It doesn't even need a potential career path. Especially now that many people can be unemployed for life and still survive, being able to enjoy an unproductive hobby is itself a useful goal.
> many people can be unemployed for life and still survive
Unless you mean housewiving, no one can be unemployed for life (save perhaps welfare queens). I still consider housewiving to be a job; it is quite a bit of work. To what are you referring?
In my country, you can. I expect most developed western countries are the same. They won't let people starve to death. There's always a safety net of free food and housing no matter how destitute you are. I guess that's what a welfare queen is. But you could also call it enjoying the utopia of a world where productivity is much greater than what's needed to sustain our lives. Whether you're forced into that by being unemployable or by choice, a hobby could be much more satisfying than watching TV all day.
> I wonder if something was lost in translation, if that read " it strips away the illusion" then the component of pretending in this type of play makes sense.
Yes something was lost. In Finnish there are different words for children's make-believe plays ("leikkiä") and sports/adult games ("pelata"). Your example of comic-con is spot on, I think.
Given your comment about the two words in Finnish, I think the comment about comic cons has it backwards:
> “If someone says we are playing, it strips away everything we made, it strips away the reality,” said Ms. Aarniomaki.
She’s objecting to being compared to comics instead of soccer, hence “the reality” being stripped — you’re accusing what they view as akin to gymnastics as being mere fantasy.
I'm not sure if I got you right -- a comic convention wouldn't be called with the make-believe word. That would be intentionally belittling if adults (or teenagers, for that matter) are attending. It's used only for small children's plays.
not sure why the community would see that as a problem
If someone is learning martial arts, you might see that as a demanding sport, for tough serious athletes, demanding discipline, hard work and self-control.
Or you might see it as playing at being Bruce Lee. Hiiii-Ya!
Needless to say, the former perspective implies more respect for the people doing it!
But there's not a bright line between 'serious' activities and non-serious ones - and hence, not much a sport can do to choose where on the spectrum they lie.
It depends on the level of skill required to master the sport and the level at which you're performing. Some sports take a lot more skill than others and mastering those demands more respect. And it can be that you're just playing Bruce Lee by throwing your arms and legs all over the place.
I'd say there's a bit of a difference between martial arts and a toy pony. I know martial artists who can break a dozen cinder bricks with an elbow; that's a serious pursuit. I'd say there is a serious difference between that and riding a toy stick.
This extends to many other sports and activities: you can practice at a serious level or an amateur one. The difference here is that I see no serious level for this. Same thing with comics, which I saw some one else mention earlier.
I guess if the kids are having fun, fine. This does seem incredibly weird, but I guess it's between them and their parents. However, I don't understand this demand to be taken seriously. It's a hobby; they do it for fun, and that's fine.
> I know martial artists who can break a dozen cinder bricks with an elbow; that's a serious pursuit. I'd say there is a serious difference between that and riding a toy stick.
What difference would that be? Real-world application? No-one hires martial artists for demolition work.
They're both recreational activities. Doing them well is difficult enough that your ability can be (and is) assessed competitively. Seems much the same to me (at least, if the competition results are consistent between judges).
Self-defense. Know two other guys who have possibly had their lives (or at any rate, probably hospital visits) saved in street fights and muggings. There are also countless juniors who have been able to fend off bullies. It's also exercise, which has extensive and proven benefits. It also has huge benefits in terms of bone strength and density. So yes, I would say real-world application.
Is it recreational in some way? Sure. But again, it has real benefits, while I don't see any in riding a toy stick (aside from enjoyment gained).
> Self-defense. Know two other guys who have possibly had their lives (or at any rate, probably hospital visits) saved in street fights and muggings. There are also countless juniors who have been able to fend off bullies.
Some martial arts have some application to self-defense, but I don't think that's the real distinction - people don't seem to treat e.g. Naginata as a less serious martial art even though you'd never use it in practice. And many non-martial-art sports (I mentioned cycling in a parallel thread) are treated with the same seriousness.
> It's also exercise, which has extensive and proven benefits. It also has huge benefits in terms of bone strength and density.
Aren't those equally true of this hobbyhorse-dressage?
> Some martial arts have some application to self-defense, but I don't think that's the real distinction
Many of the martial artists whom I know began training for purposes of self-defense. Some began as adults, and some were placed in training by their parents after being bullied.
> cycling
That's totally out of the scope of this conversation; I made no claims as to the seriousness with which cycling ought to be treated. I think most sports are given too much credence.
>> It's also exercise
> Aren't those equally true of this hobbyhorse-dressage?
No, not from the gif of a "competition" at the top of the article. It does not appear to contain any serious exertion.
Most sports involve pushing yourself physically. This does not involve such exertion and improvement. If kids want to do it, that's fine (all though still weird as all getout). But I don't think them saying to not "say they are playing" because it "strips away what we've made" is really reasonable. Kids are playing dress-up; it's fine to remind them it's just dress-up. And it's ridiculous to compare it to real sports.
> Many of the martial artists whom I know began training for purposes of self-defense. Some began as adults, and some were placed in training by their parents after being bullied.
There's a difference between saying that something helps with with being bullied (many disciplines achieve that by offering a structured environment, a framework to develop experience, consciousness over one's body, controlled confrontation, and a controlled experience of pain; I personally found taking up fencing helped me a lot) and saying it's a practical self-defense technique.
> That's totally out of the scope of this conversation; I made no claims as to the seriousness with which cycling ought to be treated. I think most sports are given too much credence.
Very few people regard martial arts as "more serious" than other sports. You dodged my example of naginata; do you consider martial arts that can't be used for practical self defense to be "less serious"?
> Most sports involve pushing yourself physically. This does not involve such exertion and improvement.
I wouldn't be so sure - maintaining precise control over one's body can involve a lot of physical effort. Often making something look effortless is part of a sport's aesthetic, but actually involves a lot of hidden effort to achieve. Consider figure skating or gymnastics, or indeed "real" dressage.
Self-defense and breaking those bricks are completely unrelated.
Also, where the hell you live that there are so many muggins, street and bully fights? All the while countless bullies are easy to fend off by junior trainees while the trainees themselves don't become bullies or something?
Cause as someone who done martial arts, it takes more of pure aggression to win against bully (or successfully bully someone) or in street fight rather then technique on junior level. And also that people training martial arts are no less likely to bully others then general population.
Moreover, majority of what is done and taught in martial arts lessons is not for self defense. A lot of it would land you in jail (cause it is about literally killing people), a lot of it is pure sport with little street fight application and a lot of if king of like gymnastics with no fight application at all.
There are not "so many" muggings/fights/etc., but I do know several people who have encountered them. That's not so many; don't you? With respect to bullies, there is tons of bullying in every school. Any one who tells you otherwise is lying to himself.
As someone who has dabbled in martial arts, breaking blocks is not done by anyone serious. Thoae are all barely above stage clowing to anyone into the art. No offense to your friends, feeling powerful is valid too.
I'm not sure in which martial arts you dabbled or on which circuits; could you clarify there? Different martial arts are very different in on what they focus. Some don't really spar, some do. That doesn't make them better or worse, that means they are different styles with different foci.
"The matches have predetermined outcomes[11] to heighten entertainment value[12] and all combative maneuvers are executed with the full cooperation of those involved...These facts were once kept highly secret but are now a widely accepted open secret. To promote and sustain the willing suspension of disbelief by maintaining an aura of verisimilitude, the performing company avoids discussing the true nature of the performance in official media"
And these are adults.
These girls may continue their hobbies in adulthood too (like most people keep playing the games they like at older age...)
Indeed, hobby horsing seems to have judges and scoring so in that sense it definitely feels much more serious a sport than show wrestling is. Gymnastics vs. a theater play might be a close analogy.
My go-to comparison for pro wrestling is stunt performers, since most of stage wrestling is stunt performing wrapped in the aesthetic of a fight. It may not be a "real" competition, but it's certainly a skilled and physically strenuous performance.
I find it frustrating that BDSM folk seem to have settled on "play" as the standard terminology. These activities are purely recreational, sure, but when something is a big part of your life, when you spend a lot of time and effort honing your craft and performing to the best of your ability, it feels dismissive to call it "play".
I also do long-distance cycling, which is just as much of a purely recreational activity (even when competing for points). But no-one calls that "play".
It would be weird (and dismissive) to describe their activities as just "playing" though; "playing football" or "playing tennis" yes, but we think of those quite differently from "playing". At least I do.
I think this is inconsistently used across different activities and geographical regions. I'm thinking of instances where things like "lets go play in the dirt" for doing off road motorsports were common. Also very common usage for sports, people "play" some sports, "compete" in others.
Yep. I see this shared on FB every few months with the usual take of "LOL, WhAt aRE tHesE KiDS dOiNG?" Well, they're being active in a social environment, and having fun. And I can't find anything wrong with that.
I think what most people find weird about the horse thing is they are kinda jumping around prancing about. If VR really took off and people were doing the movements they do in some video games I wonder if people would have the same reaction. I mean there are video games for kids with horses and other things kids like that arent AAA mainstream games.
I guess that's how people our age felt about rock'n'roll in 1959... (Approaching forty here.)
Too often my knee-jerk reaction to unexpected things is "There's no possible cultural value in this." But it usually pays off to put in a bit of effort to try to understand what the practitioners are getting out of it.
I guess I wasn’t communicating all that clearly. What I meant was that middle-aged people tend to misunderstand/underestimate even the huge rising trends like rock’n’roll — so they’re even more likely to make a wrong summary judgment on fringe activities like this.
Sometimes it starts getting more formalized and attracts slightly older kids. People usually think it's weird, then they get used to it. ...like dungeons and dragons.
Skeptical articles lean into the knee-jerk reaction that "something must be broken with society."
Ultimately, lots of stuff is wierd if you approach it from a judgemental outsider's perspective. Wtf is golf all about, for example?
Square dancing, freestyle canoe [2], cosplay, cross-stitch etc. These are all activities that people do for the sake of the activity itself without any extra motivation except maybe to be able to hang around with others.
Our world is getting bigger which means we are exposed to more and more cultures each day. Used to be (states) we had National Geographic magazine for other cultures and that moved onto TV shows.
Then the internet came. Now we can find it real time. Imagine it and it may exist, find things you never imagined and they do exist.
All comes down to all us being better for it all. Think of how much exposure that all the conflicts bring about as we learn about people we would have only had a by line about. Now we get video of who they are, how they live, what they like to do.
Many talk about the good old days, heck we are living them
One merely has to look at the Society for Creative Anachronisms (SCA, 1966) to realize that adults playing dress up and having competitions has been a part of our collective culture for decades (if not longer).
At first, I even had trouble with the act alone, but I do remember doing silly things as a kid because they were fun, so that's understandable, even if they look silly doing it. I certainly looked silly a lot as a kid.
Then, my issue was that there are apparently whole competitions as if this were a real sport. But then I realized that there's no reason it can't be. We have all kinds of sports that require things that ultimately look like dancing... And that's basically what this is, in the end. Dancing with certain other rules.
I also stopped and considered it compared to LARPing. I mean, they're play-acting a scenario and using actual physical skills and routines. It's actually probably a lot more educational than a lot of things they could be playing instead.
But in the end, I'm getting old and new things are making me feel uneasy increasingly more often.
My kids have these stick horses, a relative got them for a Christmas gift some years ago. They never play with them. The stick is long and counter balances the head so you have to sort of squeeze your legs together to actually ride the thing. Looks like these horses have shorter sticks, and are balanced so they're rideable in a much more natural way.
It certainly never occurred to me this simple refinement could make an annoying experience into something a kid could actually enjoy.
It makes me sad that this is a "celebration of girlhood" but boys are not even mentioned in this article. Why can't boys also practice hobbyhorse training?
It seems boys can, they simply don't. It seems for some reason it became girly thing in Finland (like fake eye lashes, maybe) and boys avoid it.
Citation from another article:
"""
There doesn’t seem to be that many boys riding hobbyhorses?
Alisa: I think it’s quite sad, actually. It feels like boys aren’t allowed to do this thing that is considered to be a girly thing. At the same time, I think it also means we have a strong sense of feminism in this community. It’s a place for girls to do what they want. But the boys we do have are very much welcomed and included.
"""
Society and entourage treats a boy doing this far worse than it would a girl doing it. I can only imagine the kind of bullying I would have opened myself up to by doing this in my childhood (say at 10+ years old). I remember some of my friends being laughed at by their own parents for playing "girlish" games. Bullies were far less forgiving.
It's a good case study to understand why many women avoid certain fields not because they're not up to it but because society "guides" them another way.
I have a hard time imagine a area where boys would be allowed to have a similar community with that skewed gender ratios. The common assumption is that any gender segregation is caused by the minority being discriminated against.
If competitive hobbyhorse riding officially became a sport here in Sweden it would have to follow some recent laws dictating affirmative action within the sport organization. A minimum of 40% men and women. No exceptions.
That is right, but the political discussion around it involved more than just the board. The idea is that the organizations need to become more welcoming and as a start the government want that the boards get a minimum of 40% men and women.
Recent survey show that two national organizations that manage a major sport has failed to comply. Ice hockey and horse riding. 80% men in one, 80% women in the other.
>boys are not even mentioned in this article. Why can't boys also practice hobbyhorse training?
They could, but my guess is that they get more into cars. Some of the best motorsports athletes of all time (Raikonnen in F1, Makinen in rally) have come from Finland.
So as an occasional (male) rider of real horses, there's something I've always wondered about: how did the recreation become so gendered?
Up until about the middle of the 20th century there was still utilitarian and military horse riding. Men would learn to ride. Now it seems to be culturally associated almost entirely with young upper-middle-class girls or middle-aged women. Is this the result of toy marketing (My Little Pony from the 80s onwards), or high society, or something else?
What interests me about this Finnish subculture is that it's perfectly cloned the "horse culture", just without any actual horses. It's very close to a cargo cult. Possibly Finland is too cold to have a regular horse culture?
(totally unrelated, but made me remember it). When I went to college for a BS in Computer Science, my CS adviser (a woman) pitched some of the equine courses to her male students as a way to meet women on the campus. She actively pushed to get you to sign up to the class as an elective. :)
(I probably would have done it, but I'm horribly allergic to horses.)
Not saying your main point is wrong, but Black Beauty wasn't written to appeal to young girls. It is an urgent call to treat horses better, and has been called "the most influential anticruelty novel of all time."
> What interests me about this Finnish subculture is that it's perfectly cloned the "horse culture", just without any actual horses. It's very close to a cargo cult. Possibly Finland is too cold to have a regular horse culture?
There is a horse culture in Finland, and as you said, it's heavily associated with teenage girls. Horses are of course quite an expensive anf time-consuming hobby by definition, so I'm sure the affordability plays some role here too.
There is boy/men oriented horse culture too but is focused on racing (ravit). Also mainly popular in the rural region as breeding/training the horses is as big part of the culture as the actual racing.
I live in Finland and I have friends who have horses. Happens to be the friends are female, originally from the countryside, and have a car to transit from campus area back to the stables. To my knowledge maintaining horses is more expensive the closer to a big city you live in. Thus, in Helsinki stables must cost an enormous amount of money, especially considering you need the actual horse, the lessons, time, and a vehicle to transit with. I don't think most people have the money to have one.
Further anecdote: in elementary school, we had trips to farms. I would think that it's not out of the ordinary for other schools to have this as well, which could be one factor how kids get interested in horses or farm life early on. Feeding a horse or a sheep, which tended to be the only animals interested in humans, can feel like having an exotic pet. Though horses are probably cooler because you can ride one.
I would say Finland has a moderately strong horse culture. Harness racing [1] events remain popular, and using horses in low-impact landscaping and forestry has seen some resurgence [2]. Finland also has its own breed of horses, the Finnhorse [3].
In the northwest US, there's a good split between men and women riding horses, the primary difference seems to be the competitions.
Men seem to focus on events where the goal is on the rider's other abilities, such as roping, while women seem to focus on events that focus on riding skills, such as barrel racing and jumping. There's also very few younger men who do dressage style events.
Of course, we still have an active "cowboy" job, where riding on a (horse/ATV) is still a requirement on ranches.
Aren't the events themselves divided by gender? (i.e. what your are describing is a result of the way competitions are structured, not a symptom of preference) I don't live in a horse area but have family that ride high school rodeo out west, and I thought rodeo events were divided by gender so that women do barrel racing, and men do roping (for example).
The categories feel less explicitly gendered than "historically" gendered. I've seen many female ropers over the years, though they are definitely outnumbered by men. Of course, most of those competitions were at the extra-cirricular level.
This discussion reminded me of a video I saw a while back. It's a song that gives a moving glimpse into the male dominated urban horse culture in Dublin, Ireland. It's amazing to see shots of teenage boys racing their horses through city streets.
This reminds of the feeling when I discovered some urban areas have subcultures of mostly black people riding dirt bikes and four-wheelers around cities:
Atlanta's got a strong bike (and ATV) culture. It's not uncommon to see a group of 10-20 blow through downtown on the weekends when the weather's nice.
I think it's awesome! Find your passion and do it.
They're boisterous and the bikes are loud, but the larger clubs generally self-police reasonably well. They're usually not doing anything more dangerous than a wheelie and are obviously having a great time.
The Atlantic had a photo essay about a riding club in North Philadelphia a couple years back. I don't know if they race, but it's still pretty crazy to see people riding horses in Philadelphia:
Imho different gender preferences might play a big role. A horse combines utilitarian with something emotional: You get means of transportation but you also gotta empathize and take care of said transportation because it's a breathing and feeling being.
While most males probably prefer the "no hassle" approach of motor vehicles, where you don't have to empathize to figure out what's wrong but only need to check for "mechanical failures".
The fact that you disagree with "traditional" gender stereotypes does not mean they have not held true for large parts of history. The reasons for this are debatable, as are its merits, but it is still a part of history.
But if you actually read history, sometimes the stereotypes were the opposite of what they are today. Traditional thinking as we know it now was often invented quite recently.
From what I've read, riding fast horses was much more popular with men before cars.
> sometimes the stereotypes were the opposite of what they are today.
Correct, and this is the reason for which I qualified my statement. They do, however, apply to the section where western "horse culture" as is being debated arose.
>The fact that you disagree with "traditional" gender stereotypes does not mean they have not held true for large parts of history
I didn't take any position.... I simply said that for that argument to hold true you need to believe traditional gender stereotypes. Of course, as with every topic on this site recently, someone downvoted after being confronted with an opinion that made them uncomfortable or didn't exactly align with their own despite it being relevant
Didn't downvote. You were positioning it as if it were a rebuttal to the above statement. You also didn't express a full opinion on whether such stereotypes are good or bad, you simply stated that they were a precondition to the statement to which you were replying. I don't want to debate this too much, as I have been admonished to "please not start generic flamewars", but would appreciate the opportunity to debate. Keybase in profile; feel free to reach out.
It's my understanding that these "gendered differences" have been shown to be more than mere "stereotypes" in a number of different studies across different fields.
That's not to say there's "male brain" and a "female brain", but it very strongly hints at gender influencing preferences which are not entirely based on socialization but also involves its fair share of biological factors.
If this wouldn't be the case, how are trans-people be able to feel like "being stuck in the wrong body" if all brains and consciousness are alike? If there are zero biological factors at play, then that feeling of trans-people would be entirely imagined on their end, wouldn't it?
I live near a riding school. I asked my son whether he wanted to learn how to ride a horse. He said yes, enthusiastically, and spent days reading and watching movies about cowboys. Then we went to visit the school on the weekend. He only saw girls wearing pink giggling and riding the horses. Before we even entered the gate he said he was no longer interested.
No more than a girl having the same reaction from entering a computer gaming club and only seeing boys. I would expect to see this kind of behavior universally in all cultures and across gender, and being most profound around the ages 10-18.
I was fortunate to go to Cal Poly (Pomona, not SLO) for college. You were allowed to take Equitation classes to satisfy your General Ed requirement. It's definitely a culture.
Really not an issue once you learn how to ride and develop the right muscles. It's all in how you sit and learn to move with the horse rather than just reacting.
I admittedly did use a jock strap when I was first getting started, but within a few months I found that I was better off without it. Even riding bareback (Without a saddle) is completely doable once you have the right muscle stamina.
I'll but add my own anecdata: Here in the mountain west, the gymkhanas at the county fairs are almost exclusively female riders. In the last decade or so of various county fairs, I've only seen three males total to the hundreds of female riders.
The Official Preppy Handbook repeatedly treats a phase of interest in horses and horseback riding as nigh-inevitable for girls (of the set of people it's describing, so, the wealthy professional class up through the idle rich, though especially the lower half of that range) and no consideration at all for boys. It was published in 1980, so before My Little Pony, and much of what it describes, though tongue in cheek, represents trends and habits that pre-date it by years to decades, at least.
National Velvet was a movie released in 1944 starring a young Elizabeth Taylor and Mickey Rooney. It's about steeplechase, but it won two Oscars and is probably one of the biggest horse girl movies out there. Maybe it helped create the desire some.
Many activities popular among men involve danger or risk. I would postulate that after the death of utilitarian and military horse-riding, the connotations of it changed. It became more of a leisure activity, and was largely supplanted by the faster, more utilitarian, more military car/truck/bike culture (at least in America). To your point about mid-20th century, I would suspect WWII had something to do with it.
Another poster also mentioned that it is less than comfortable for men. This is true. I would imagine it to be a serious motivation to switch to cars.
> Possibly Finland is too cold to have a regular horse culture?
Finland's level of cold doesn't preclude horse culture.
Finland only gets down to -50°C in its coldest regions. There are horse breeds that laugh at calling that cold. For example the Siberian Yakutian [1], which are kept unstabled year-round in places that regularly go down to -70°C. (+38°C in summer, so these things deal with a 108°C range!)
> What interests me about this Finnish subculture is that it's perfectly cloned the "horse culture", just without any actual horses. It's very close to a cargo cult. Possibly Finland is too cold to have a regular horse culture?
I assumed this was why the hobbyhorse culture was female -- whatever the reasons are for horses to be a female interest, hobbyhorses are an imitation and necessarily target the same demographic.
Horses are expensive; it seems natural to me that enthusiasts who don't have real horses might be drawn to an imitation.
May have to do with animals in general and horses in particular being basically exclusively girl toys any time after very small age. Animals themed things are significantly less likely to be gifted to little boys. It is not as gendered as cars and boy liking animals is not "shameful", but still treated in pretty gendered way anyway.
The result of mostly girls hobby riding might just naturally follow from that.
A little over a year ago I (female who had never ridden a horse) did a ten day ride across Spain and into Portugal. All of the Americans in the group were women but all of the Spanish and Portuguese riders were men. I definitely got the impression they viewed horse riding much the same way Americans would view motorcycle riding.
> Up until about the middle of the 20th century there was still utilitarian and military horse riding.
Interestingly, the earliest fighting of the first US war of the 21st Century featured soldiers on horses. Horseback riding is apparently now part of Special Forces training. [0]
There is also a virtual equivalent to hobby horsing called "virtual stables".
A virtual horse is just a webpage for a fictional horse. There are usually pictures of the horse that hobbyists find on the internet/buy on forums/illustrate themselves [1].
The horse obviously also has a name and usually a description of its personality. Horses sometimes age "in real time" but most stables seemed to have a somewhat arbitrary aging rate (e.g. the horse would turn 4 within a few weeks of its "creation", but after that age normally). Horses can also be registered in a database called "Virtual horseback-riders society" [2]. You can use the "Virtual horseback-riders society" to advertise your competitions. A horse/horseback-rider can usually participate in any competition by just signing up (by sending an email to the organizer) and the winner is randomly picked. Another way to interact with other stables is by "taking care" of somebody else's horse - meaning you write a story in a guestbook about what you "did" with the horse, e.g. "I took Cupcake for a walk in the forest. Cupcake was in a bad mood and really reluctant to leave the stable, but cheered up when it saw a patch of grass". You can always create a new horse (obviously, you just create a new webpage), but to be in with the cool kids, you "buy" horses from other hobbyists. The "best" horses are ones that have a long family tree that has been documented in the Virtual horseback-riders society database. There is no currency, there are "selling topics" in the forums, where you try to provide compelling arguments as to why you should get the horse.
The forums were pretty active 10-15 years ago and most hobbyists were girls in their early teens. The community is much less active and older now. However, the community is more tech-savvy than back in the day - people have their own domains and use a database to track their horses (back in the day, most pages were static sites hosted on Freewebs). Some stables have been running for 15 years, the most iconic one being Ionic [3], a stable with around 800 horses.
There is probably something to be said about virtual stables dying out as the Internet has become more centralized. Virtual stables also introduced a lot of young girls to coding and for example, the owner of Ionic works in IT now.
No, the hobby originated in the US but it seems to be more popular in Europe. I'm only familiar with the Finnish community, but I was able to find a German horse registry: http://www.moorwiesen.de/register/?&lang=en
Given basic anatomy and mechanics - could there be a hidden incentive of the coming of age kind? Puberty is confusing and a lot about discovering new aspects of life ...
I didn't know stickhorses were a thing here in Finland until I went to a harness race event with some relatives who are enthusiasts. I was flabbergasted that the first event of the race evening was a stickhorse start, with dozens of young kids (mostly girls) lining up on the trot course. (This was about 10 years ago).
We went to the mall this weekend and literally saw adults carrying large hammers from the movie "Thor". Presumably Marvel's Thor features in the new movie too?
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 196 ms ] thread- Per the guide-lines : "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports"
- Per usage
"For years, a subculture of teenage hobbyhorse enthusiasts flourished under the radar."
-- Bill Walsh
That seems to apply here.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic., https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The first highlight is the good, general rule, the second highlight the one that applies to the submission in question, in my opinion.
it looks like playing to me as well, and not sure why the community would see that as a problem. even professional sports players know they are playing a game. an interesting and unusual perspective for sure.
I guess much in the same sense that people would probably not be amused if you ran around a Comic Con telling everyone this is just make believe.
And yet, this is what an outsider would think (as someone who does not go but has friends who do). Some people would call tinkering with computers "playing", though my spending years on it resulted in a career path. I don't see the issue with "playing". At some point, if you're not doing it for a pay off, that's what it is, and that's fine.
Unless you mean housewiving, no one can be unemployed for life (save perhaps welfare queens). I still consider housewiving to be a job; it is quite a bit of work. To what are you referring?
Yes something was lost. In Finnish there are different words for children's make-believe plays ("leikkiä") and sports/adult games ("pelata"). Your example of comic-con is spot on, I think.
> “If someone says we are playing, it strips away everything we made, it strips away the reality,” said Ms. Aarniomaki.
She’s objecting to being compared to comics instead of soccer, hence “the reality” being stripped — you’re accusing what they view as akin to gymnastics as being mere fantasy.
Or you might see it as playing at being Bruce Lee. Hiiii-Ya!
Needless to say, the former perspective implies more respect for the people doing it!
But there's not a bright line between 'serious' activities and non-serious ones - and hence, not much a sport can do to choose where on the spectrum they lie.
This extends to many other sports and activities: you can practice at a serious level or an amateur one. The difference here is that I see no serious level for this. Same thing with comics, which I saw some one else mention earlier.
I guess if the kids are having fun, fine. This does seem incredibly weird, but I guess it's between them and their parents. However, I don't understand this demand to be taken seriously. It's a hobby; they do it for fun, and that's fine.
What difference would that be? Real-world application? No-one hires martial artists for demolition work.
They're both recreational activities. Doing them well is difficult enough that your ability can be (and is) assessed competitively. Seems much the same to me (at least, if the competition results are consistent between judges).
Is it recreational in some way? Sure. But again, it has real benefits, while I don't see any in riding a toy stick (aside from enjoyment gained).
Some martial arts have some application to self-defense, but I don't think that's the real distinction - people don't seem to treat e.g. Naginata as a less serious martial art even though you'd never use it in practice. And many non-martial-art sports (I mentioned cycling in a parallel thread) are treated with the same seriousness.
> It's also exercise, which has extensive and proven benefits. It also has huge benefits in terms of bone strength and density.
Aren't those equally true of this hobbyhorse-dressage?
Many of the martial artists whom I know began training for purposes of self-defense. Some began as adults, and some were placed in training by their parents after being bullied.
> cycling
That's totally out of the scope of this conversation; I made no claims as to the seriousness with which cycling ought to be treated. I think most sports are given too much credence.
>> It's also exercise
> Aren't those equally true of this hobbyhorse-dressage?
No, not from the gif of a "competition" at the top of the article. It does not appear to contain any serious exertion.
Most sports involve pushing yourself physically. This does not involve such exertion and improvement. If kids want to do it, that's fine (all though still weird as all getout). But I don't think them saying to not "say they are playing" because it "strips away what we've made" is really reasonable. Kids are playing dress-up; it's fine to remind them it's just dress-up. And it's ridiculous to compare it to real sports.
There's a difference between saying that something helps with with being bullied (many disciplines achieve that by offering a structured environment, a framework to develop experience, consciousness over one's body, controlled confrontation, and a controlled experience of pain; I personally found taking up fencing helped me a lot) and saying it's a practical self-defense technique.
> That's totally out of the scope of this conversation; I made no claims as to the seriousness with which cycling ought to be treated. I think most sports are given too much credence.
Very few people regard martial arts as "more serious" than other sports. You dodged my example of naginata; do you consider martial arts that can't be used for practical self defense to be "less serious"?
> Most sports involve pushing yourself physically. This does not involve such exertion and improvement.
I wouldn't be so sure - maintaining precise control over one's body can involve a lot of physical effort. Often making something look effortless is part of a sport's aesthetic, but actually involves a lot of hidden effort to achieve. Consider figure skating or gymnastics, or indeed "real" dressage.
Also, where the hell you live that there are so many muggins, street and bully fights? All the while countless bullies are easy to fend off by junior trainees while the trainees themselves don't become bullies or something?
Cause as someone who done martial arts, it takes more of pure aggression to win against bully (or successfully bully someone) or in street fight rather then technique on junior level. And also that people training martial arts are no less likely to bully others then general population.
Moreover, majority of what is done and taught in martial arts lessons is not for self defense. A lot of it would land you in jail (cause it is about literally killing people), a lot of it is pure sport with little street fight application and a lot of if king of like gymnastics with no fight application at all.
There are not "so many" muggings/fights/etc., but I do know several people who have encountered them. That's not so many; don't you? With respect to bullies, there is tons of bullying in every school. Any one who tells you otherwise is lying to himself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_wrestling
"The matches have predetermined outcomes[11] to heighten entertainment value[12] and all combative maneuvers are executed with the full cooperation of those involved...These facts were once kept highly secret but are now a widely accepted open secret. To promote and sustain the willing suspension of disbelief by maintaining an aura of verisimilitude, the performing company avoids discussing the true nature of the performance in official media"
And these are adults.
These girls may continue their hobbies in adulthood too (like most people keep playing the games they like at older age...)
I also do long-distance cycling, which is just as much of a purely recreational activity (even when competing for points). But no-one calls that "play".
It seems analogous to that rhythmic gymnastics discipline where they do routines with a long ribbon attached to a stick.
I'm glad for surprises like this even though I don't quite (or at all) understand them!
Too often my knee-jerk reaction to unexpected things is "There's no possible cultural value in this." But it usually pays off to put in a bit of effort to try to understand what the practitioners are getting out of it.
For the record, I'm all for fun physical activities like this, just don't try to compare it to rock'n'roll.
Sometimes it starts getting more formalized and attracts slightly older kids. People usually think it's weird, then they get used to it. ...like dungeons and dragons.
Skeptical articles lean into the knee-jerk reaction that "something must be broken with society."
Ultimately, lots of stuff is wierd if you approach it from a judgemental outsider's perspective. Wtf is golf all about, for example?
Just don't be a dick about it.
Square dancing, freestyle canoe [2], cosplay, cross-stitch etc. These are all activities that people do for the sake of the activity itself without any extra motivation except maybe to be able to hang around with others.
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ofq_nl366VM
Also I think most that of those mocking Morris dancing probably do it from a safe distance!
so it's like bitcoin 'investing' before computers.
Then the internet came. Now we can find it real time. Imagine it and it may exist, find things you never imagined and they do exist.
All comes down to all us being better for it all. Think of how much exposure that all the conflicts bring about as we learn about people we would have only had a by line about. Now we get video of who they are, how they live, what they like to do.
Many talk about the good old days, heck we are living them
At first, I even had trouble with the act alone, but I do remember doing silly things as a kid because they were fun, so that's understandable, even if they look silly doing it. I certainly looked silly a lot as a kid.
Then, my issue was that there are apparently whole competitions as if this were a real sport. But then I realized that there's no reason it can't be. We have all kinds of sports that require things that ultimately look like dancing... And that's basically what this is, in the end. Dancing with certain other rules.
I also stopped and considered it compared to LARPing. I mean, they're play-acting a scenario and using actual physical skills and routines. It's actually probably a lot more educational than a lot of things they could be playing instead.
But in the end, I'm getting old and new things are making me feel uneasy increasingly more often.
It certainly never occurred to me this simple refinement could make an annoying experience into something a kid could actually enjoy.
They are:
> she is at home in the world of hobbyhorses, where boys and grown-ups have no place.
Citation from another article:
""" There doesn’t seem to be that many boys riding hobbyhorses?
Alisa: I think it’s quite sad, actually. It feels like boys aren’t allowed to do this thing that is considered to be a girly thing. At the same time, I think it also means we have a strong sense of feminism in this community. It’s a place for girls to do what they want. But the boys we do have are very much welcomed and included. """
http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/36050/1/h...
Society and entourage treats a boy doing this far worse than it would a girl doing it. I can only imagine the kind of bullying I would have opened myself up to by doing this in my childhood (say at 10+ years old). I remember some of my friends being laughed at by their own parents for playing "girlish" games. Bullies were far less forgiving.
It's a good case study to understand why many women avoid certain fields not because they're not up to it but because society "guides" them another way.
If competitive hobbyhorse riding officially became a sport here in Sweden it would have to follow some recent laws dictating affirmative action within the sport organization. A minimum of 40% men and women. No exceptions.
Recent survey show that two national organizations that manage a major sport has failed to comply. Ice hockey and horse riding. 80% men in one, 80% women in the other.
They could, but my guess is that they get more into cars. Some of the best motorsports athletes of all time (Raikonnen in F1, Makinen in rally) have come from Finland.
Up until about the middle of the 20th century there was still utilitarian and military horse riding. Men would learn to ride. Now it seems to be culturally associated almost entirely with young upper-middle-class girls or middle-aged women. Is this the result of toy marketing (My Little Pony from the 80s onwards), or high society, or something else?
What interests me about this Finnish subculture is that it's perfectly cloned the "horse culture", just without any actual horses. It's very close to a cargo cult. Possibly Finland is too cold to have a regular horse culture?
(I probably would have done it, but I'm horribly allergic to horses.)
It's not exactly recent. Black Beauty well predates MLP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Beauty
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-it-seem-like-more-women-than-...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-22871776
There is a horse culture in Finland, and as you said, it's heavily associated with teenage girls. Horses are of course quite an expensive anf time-consuming hobby by definition, so I'm sure the affordability plays some role here too.
Further anecdote: in elementary school, we had trips to farms. I would think that it's not out of the ordinary for other schools to have this as well, which could be one factor how kids get interested in horses or farm life early on. Feeding a horse or a sheep, which tended to be the only animals interested in humans, can feel like having an exotic pet. Though horses are probably cooler because you can ride one.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harness_racing 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hylOZ8M68iY 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnhorse
Men seem to focus on events where the goal is on the rider's other abilities, such as roping, while women seem to focus on events that focus on riding skills, such as barrel racing and jumping. There's also very few younger men who do dressage style events.
Of course, we still have an active "cowboy" job, where riding on a (horse/ATV) is still a requirement on ranches.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19A53SyAUak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D34OOYXF10
Such a remarkable juxtaposition of people, vehicles, and setting, like watching a schooner drift through a grocery store.
for posterity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThlhSnRk21E
I think it's awesome! Find your passion and do it.
They're boisterous and the bikes are loud, but the larger clubs generally self-police reasonably well. They're usually not doing anything more dangerous than a wheelie and are obviously having a great time.
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/02/fletcher-street-ri...
Here's the club's site:
http://www.fletcherstreeturbanridingclub.com/main.html
While most males probably prefer the "no hassle" approach of motor vehicles, where you don't have to empathize to figure out what's wrong but only need to check for "mechanical failures".
From what I've read, riding fast horses was much more popular with men before cars.
Correct, and this is the reason for which I qualified my statement. They do, however, apply to the section where western "horse culture" as is being debated arose.
I commented on some of this already, and don't want to pollute the comments too much. Link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19780759
I didn't take any position.... I simply said that for that argument to hold true you need to believe traditional gender stereotypes. Of course, as with every topic on this site recently, someone downvoted after being confronted with an opinion that made them uncomfortable or didn't exactly align with their own despite it being relevant
It's my understanding that these "gendered differences" have been shown to be more than mere "stereotypes" in a number of different studies across different fields.
That's not to say there's "male brain" and a "female brain", but it very strongly hints at gender influencing preferences which are not entirely based on socialization but also involves its fair share of biological factors.
If this wouldn't be the case, how are trans-people be able to feel like "being stuck in the wrong body" if all brains and consciousness are alike? If there are zero biological factors at play, then that feeling of trans-people would be entirely imagined on their end, wouldn't it?
I admittedly did use a jock strap when I was first getting started, but within a few months I found that I was better off without it. Even riding bareback (Without a saddle) is completely doable once you have the right muscle stamina.
That said, the girls are very good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymkhana_(equestrian)
Don't know why, though.
Another poster also mentioned that it is less than comfortable for men. This is true. I would imagine it to be a serious motivation to switch to cars.
Finland's level of cold doesn't preclude horse culture.
Finland only gets down to -50°C in its coldest regions. There are horse breeds that laugh at calling that cold. For example the Siberian Yakutian [1], which are kept unstabled year-round in places that regularly go down to -70°C. (+38°C in summer, so these things deal with a 108°C range!)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakutian_horse
I assumed this was why the hobbyhorse culture was female -- whatever the reasons are for horses to be a female interest, hobbyhorses are an imitation and necessarily target the same demographic.
Horses are expensive; it seems natural to me that enthusiasts who don't have real horses might be drawn to an imitation.
The result of mostly girls hobby riding might just naturally follow from that.
Large hairy beast who does what you ask and wants to make you happy. Horses resemble your taste in men.
I wouldn't want to guess for how many that is a factor. But the number is not zero.
Something whose sound makes your spine shiver, is fast enough to feel on the edge of control, and looks a million times better than you?
"The number is not zero."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0
Interestingly, the earliest fighting of the first US war of the 21st Century featured soldiers on horses. Horseback riding is apparently now part of Special Forces training. [0]
[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/22/horses...
A virtual horse is just a webpage for a fictional horse. There are usually pictures of the horse that hobbyists find on the internet/buy on forums/illustrate themselves [1]. The horse obviously also has a name and usually a description of its personality. Horses sometimes age "in real time" but most stables seemed to have a somewhat arbitrary aging rate (e.g. the horse would turn 4 within a few weeks of its "creation", but after that age normally). Horses can also be registered in a database called "Virtual horseback-riders society" [2]. You can use the "Virtual horseback-riders society" to advertise your competitions. A horse/horseback-rider can usually participate in any competition by just signing up (by sending an email to the organizer) and the winner is randomly picked. Another way to interact with other stables is by "taking care" of somebody else's horse - meaning you write a story in a guestbook about what you "did" with the horse, e.g. "I took Cupcake for a walk in the forest. Cupcake was in a bad mood and really reluctant to leave the stable, but cheered up when it saw a patch of grass". You can always create a new horse (obviously, you just create a new webpage), but to be in with the cool kids, you "buy" horses from other hobbyists. The "best" horses are ones that have a long family tree that has been documented in the Virtual horseback-riders society database. There is no currency, there are "selling topics" in the forums, where you try to provide compelling arguments as to why you should get the horse.
The forums were pretty active 10-15 years ago and most hobbyists were girls in their early teens. The community is much less active and older now. However, the community is more tech-savvy than back in the day - people have their own domains and use a database to track their horses (back in the day, most pages were static sites hosted on Freewebs). Some stables have been running for 15 years, the most iconic one being Ionic [3], a stable with around 800 horses.
There is probably something to be said about virtual stables dying out as the Internet has become more centralized. Virtual stables also introduced a lot of young girls to coding and for example, the owner of Ionic works in IT now.
[1] http://www.seppele.piirroshevoset.com/hevonen.php?id=298
[2] http://www.virtuaalihevoset.net/
[3] http://www.hevosmaailma.net/Ionic/
At least it's better than parents turning their adolescent daughters into sexualized dolls on the children's beauty pageant circuit.