Seriously I don’t get it. They’re max consoomer drivel taking you away from productive hobbies like making music, carpentry, canning fruit & veg or painting. Humans are meant to create things instead of consume them on the daily. This imbalance is the main reason for societal decline, people would rather consume than create. I’ve never met a well-adjusted adult gamer. They’re all capeshit losers with equally loser children who scold other kids for not playing their lore game the right way. Fuck them all, video games are the biggest loser hobby.
You don’t call watching TV a hobby, which is just passive consumption. So it’s pretty dishonest to call gaming a hobby, the only difference being active consumption.
I don’t see reading that much different from watching tv. What is the difference between watching lost and an episode of 3brown1blue, a documentary or a course of algorithms? Reading a shitty book, textbook, a classic? Games were a gateway into CS far more useful then pickling shit or making chairs in workshops I don’t have. A skill that is by all practical use useless. Instead of that you should just be enrolling into an online degree or trade. Unless you want to rank hobbies and their outcomes.