Both links talk about NA. I was writing about my experience, historically there was no such thing as birdwatching here, there was no such hobby, you are either orithologist or maybe you love pigeons, and if you could get a camera you probably could photograph birds, but likely you also fit #1 category or write a book about it.
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I hope everyone realizes that I don’t believe a word of this ‘finding’. I wouldn’t be here if I did. I do find it interesting how people can have such stereotypes, though!
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It doesn’t help that the general public has absolutely no idea what being a scientist of any kind actually entails
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That seems like a very weird article (I was paywalled past the second paragraph). It starts by listing the most boring “hobbies” then contrasts them to the most interesting “professions”. Two very different things in my mind. As others pointed out the contrast of wildlife observation and science journalism also seems weird. Observe magnificent creatures = boring, write about it = amazing. What?
Isn’t the beauty of it actually observing something firsthand? Isn’t this why people love nature documentaries like Life, Planet Earth, etc (sorry those are so old and I’m not up on the new ones I just go outside now). Do people not realize that on some level amazing things are going on around them every single day? Anyway, I suspect I’m preaching to the choir here.
I’ll draw an anecdote. Today I had a photo share with my bird club and a presenter shared her amazing photos of macro shots of insects. Tons of minute details that were absolutely fascinating and had everyone thinking “wow, I never realized that before”. The kicker: all of the photos were taken within her tiny, suburban yard.
This is an aside but I think relevant, I am biased because I am from the US and as such it is where I’ve observed it. Our culture is that celebrities and athletes are absolutely idolized while scientists that have or are making amazing amazing discoveries are widely unrecognized and some even struggle for funding to do their work. With the former people spend hours reading what these people are saying, finding out who they’re dating, what clothes they’re wearing, etc. Now that, to me, sounds like the most boring hobby their could be 
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I also find it odd comparing hobbies to professions. And I would also wonder how this was done, for one thing, who thinks TV watching or church is a hobby?
For a personal anecdote, a year or so back, a local TV station contacted the conservation district to do a quick spot about the bird migration, I’m the only birder so I got that short straw, and had to take the reporter out to a site. My coworkers said they’d get me a pizza if I could get a fake bird mentioned on air (we’re not the most mature group). I was then trying to come up with as many fake names as I could to try to sneak one in (Neylon’s Gallinule, Mourning Woodpecker, Necropean Flycatcher, Tit-Babbling Sapsucker). Well when I met the guy who had never birded before, and we were heading down the trail, he was having so much fun that I couldn’t do it, all the stuff I pointed out was real. So I have a hard time believing that someone was hanging out with a birder and was bored, I mean, I assume they were outside?
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Birdwatching is probably the most layperson-interesting of my weird hobbies. If I point into a tree and say to a random person “look, there’s a hawk”, they look up at the hawk! If I’m at the park and point bluebirds out to people, they look at the bluebirds. My neighborhood’s full of bird feeders, and I gotta figure all those people want to look at birds on those feeders.
I mean, yeah, long birding trips aren’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and the average person probably doesn’t care what the difference is between an Old World and a New World sparrow. But some birds are pretty, others are neat-looking, and people generally like to see pretty or neat-looking animals.
Maybe they got all their opinions from people who’d met birders of the type who just talk forever despite the people around them not being interested at all. Some people can make anything boring to hear about.
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They conducted five experiments involving more than 500 people. The more you dig into their findings, the more you realise how intensely annoying we humans all find each other.
Not content with dissing the entire insurance and data industries, the respondents had it in for smokers, “people who live in medium-sized towns” and “people who talk a lot and complain often”. They dreamed of being compensated financially for socialising with “boring” people (“£35 a day” is the imaginary going rate). And there also seems to be a thread of self-loathing running through the conclusions. “Watching TV”? Really? If that is boring then millions upon millions of us with a Netflix password are cursed with the blight of tedium.
Unpicking these Sartrean responses – “L’enfer, c’est les autres” [Hell is other people] – there is not only a widespread lack of self-awareness but also a heap of contradictions. Take journalists and actors. No one talks as much or complains more. And arguably these two professions also harbour a great many of the few smokers left in society. So how can they be both boring and “the least boring” at the same time? Is it that the activities themselves – perfecting a spreadsheet, creating a Facebook folder for your safari wildlife photography, listening to a sermon – are supposed to be boring? Or that the people who do them are dull? To be fair, I would rather be spared all amateur wildlife photography, especially if we are talking about the close-up of a fox in our garden which someone in my home was so excited about that he had it framed. (It’s really just a lot of blurry orange fuzz.)
Surely the key to all this is the second part of the study’s title, “Boring people: stereotype characteristics, interpersonal attributions and social reactions”. This is about our stereotypes of who and what is boring. These preconceptions bear as much relation to reality as the idea that you would ever get paid to put up with someone who makes you yawn. (Actually, this is very possibly the substance of many professional lives and/or marriages. But that’s a whole other study.)
I know a number of people, for example, who find spreadsheets deeply exciting and engrossing. They are well-suited to accountancy and they are welcome to it. As long as they don’t try to co-opt me into their information bacchanal, all is well with the world. Because it is not an activity or a profession in and of itself that is boring or that makes you boring. It is your insistence on forcing its significance on others who do not share your passion.
When we label others as boring, it’s either because we lack the imagination to understand what they get out of tracking the silvery-cheeked hornbill, or it’s because they chewed our ear off about something we’re just not interested in. This whole exercise is reminiscent of the old joke: “How can you tell if someone is a vegan? Don’t worry, they’ll let you know.” We are not necessarily intolerant of the habits and life choices of others, but they don’t half drive us out of our minds when they bang on about them. My big surprise is that wild swimmers did not crop up in this study. Surely they are the most mind-numbingly boring of all. And I speak as one of their number – although I promise to speak as little as possible.
I associate the word “boring” with my 1980s childhood thanks to the TV show Why Don’t You…?, whose full title was: “Why don’t you just switch off your TV set and go and do something less boring instead?” (Again with the TV-bashing and this from an actual TV programme.) As a small child I was repeatedly told: “There is no such thing as bored, only boring people.” The inference is clear: if you are bored, you have only yourself to blame.
As I’ve got older I’ve learned to embrace the opposite idea: that being bored and being boring are positive things. I am not interested in being fascinating to all people. If some people think I am boring, then hurrah. It will protect me from their attentions. And if I am bored, then that’s also good. It will give me a moment to sit with my thoughts and perhaps experience some kind of peace. The Covid time has been one long embrace of boredom for many, deprived of our usual distractions, relationships and comforts. Boredom can be a luxury and a blessing. It’s often better than the alternative: the vicissitudes of life.
How can any of us be certain of being less boring? The key is to avoid people who are so boring themselves that they can’t take the time to see beyond stereotypes. Instead, why not think of being boring as a badge of honour? There’s something deeply satisfying in being so unbearable to others that they would want to be paid £35 to put up with you. Boredom is in the eye – or indeed the binoculars – of the beholder.
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It does not surprise me. I have been interested in animals since childhood and it has always been seen as something weird and boring.
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The only ones who find anything boring is people who are so mentally jaded that nothing excites them. Their brain may not be dead but their soul surely must be.
I totally agree to the above
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I am an accountant by “training” and part time profession. So I understand what you are saying about not understanding something or not liking -but which I think is different from being bored by something.
Ask an accountant dealing numbers messing with their balance sheet and they will surely lead you on an adventure of how it was demystified ;-) “as exciting as finally identifying the far away song of a less heard bird” full with arm pumps and top of the voice yelling (if the accountants are inclined to show that behaviour)
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And I think that was the main point - the perception is that it is boring, but we are all fascinated by different things. You find it interesting, where I don’t. I hope I’m wise enough to not judge people by what they do or don’t do, and not leap to the conclusion that a person who does x is therefore boring. My dad wasn’t boring - he was odd in many ways (in this case, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree), but that was a separate issue from what he liked doing! He loved playing music as well, where I can’t play anything.
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I have two left feet and also got thrown out of a chorus ;-) so i really love those who have this innate sense of music and rhythm ,
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Was this a “scientific” study?
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don’t trust the guardian… it is a fake news site…
The Guardian in generally considered to be one of the most reliable news sites there is…
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Oh yeaah, man, birdwatching is sooooooooo boring right?
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Definitely better than drinking at the bar…
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Seems strange to have data analysts as the most boring, and scientists as the least boring. A large portion of a scientists job is to analyze data!
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I put a link to the original research higher up. (Comment 4)
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