What do you think the worst year was for your hobby?

The burning of the Library of Alexander was the worst for avid readers. Only 270s AD kids know what I'm talking about.

Jenga in 2001

The cost of PC gaming keeps getting worse every year and the near future doesn't look very promising. With fewer gamers being able to afford upgrades, I except that will have a chilling effect on game studios and independent developers as well.

I wonder how things are going to go with the tariff penalty stacking with rear earth metal ban.
On one hand yes, on the other, you don't really need the newest games, as you definitely have a backlog full of games to play. I am very slowly looking for maybe an upgrade to my 6yo PC, but maybe a sidegrade is all I need. Maybe a switch 2? There's a lot less pressure on constant upgrades if you don't chase the big trends and upgrade every cycle
- I hear you, and I agree. I did just upgrade my ok PC because I had saved up the money and wanted to get the most for them before the tariffs take effect. Before that I was gaming in a decently capable laptop about 4 years old, and before that I used hand-me-downs and upgraded maybe every 5-10 years. With the exception of this last upgrade, I've stayed about mid-tier for GPU and other components.
  
  While consoles may be less expensive up front, I don't care about exclusives and I grew up as a PC gamer who still can't use a controller right. I'm also a developer so I can justify the upgrades when I have the money for it.
  
  When asked, I typically tell people to pick a budget and get the most computer you can get within that. If you're always wanting "the best" your can always spend more money for some increase in performance. Don't spend money you don't have.

No good Xbox games came out in 1896

Yeah 1896 was pretty bad for computer games in general. And computers.

Every year they try to make it harder to smoke tobacco.

Might as well start smoking weed instead.

If ur gonna smoke, might as well get a good buzz out of it
- That's not the goal. But if taxes and regulations make me so, I'll assume they know what's best for me
Don't people mix weed with tobacco to help it burn?

2021 got expensive for me PC-parts wise, and it's not looking like it'll get any better.
2022-onwards, harder to get some stuff I like to cook with where I'm at right now. Prices are getting worse so, I'm assuming shops aren't carrying more specialty items anymore.
I'm not using DnD anymore, but if musk buys hasbro, the entire roleplaying hobby will probably be filled with chuds.

I don’t keep hobbies long enough to be honest. I’ll have recurring ones, but my hobby is hobbies itself.

ADHD means I’ll think nothing of spending money on something novel and then dropping it as fast as I picked it up.

Coding, Minecraft, Rubik’s cube have been long standing and indoor bouldering is the latest one but the benefits are so amazing it’ll stand the test of time. Mental benefits of rock climbing are off the charts, I’ve never found anything that allows me to truly live in the moment and forget everything for a couple of hours.

2019 was the worst year for my doorknob licking hobby

I didn’t return to mine until just this November.

I'm a D&D player and DM. If Elon's threats are to be believed, 2025 is likely to be the worst year for D&D.

Catch me up? What threats?
- Looks like he's threatening to buy D&D, but from an outsider to that scene, it seems like you could just use old books, go to a different system or homebrew.
There's always Pathfinder.

The 1994 World Series was a particularly bad series for baseball fans.

The year it went mainstream and got bought by a publicly traded company.

I think of 2023 as the worst year for anime. Not a single good show out of what I watched and the ones that I heard were good I'm just not interested in (Jujutsu Kaisen, Zom 100, Bleach, etc).
Compare 2023 to any single season from 2006-2011. So many classics compared to... Frieren? and that's about it.

Not that I'm upset about it, there's enough gems anywhere from late 70s though ~2017 to keep me occupied indefinitely

There were plenty of good shows in 2023 though? Even excluding Frieren and shonens (since I'm assuming based on what you said, you aren't interested in them) there was also Apothecary Diaries which aired during the same season. Oshi No Ko was pretty good also (the first episode is by far the best, imo the rest of the show is still pretty good tho). Those definitely stood out the most to me but I did enjoy a lot of the 2023 shows I watched.
- Yeah I don't expect so many people to have the same opinion but for me I didn't really like anything in 2023. My personal "golden age" is 2006-2011 and I can pull up any year at random (say, 2010) and find a bunch of personal favorites (second season of K-On!, best season of Hidamari Sketch, The Tatami Galaxy, my beloved B-Gata H-Kei) and other stuff I think I might enjoy (Katanagatari, PSG, Kuragehime, etc.)
  Whereas the only things I liked in 2023 were the Hibike! Euphonium movie and (to a much milder degree) Frieren.
  
  Probably not a widespread belief, but yeah 2023 is the worst year for anime imo

I would say this year, from experience with getting my art stolen and reading about others' experiences. I love drawing digitally, but these are precarious times for artists to be posting their art online. While I do link to progress pictures, timelapses, sketches and files in my descriptions, I have a clean, airbrushy style that AI tends to mimic most often, so as of late I have been experimenting with mixing my cartoonier style with my current one.

A little WIP of the style experiment:

What happened there? I followed the link but it looks mods removed whatever the offending poster had done.
- Someone took my art without my permission and posted a version of it that was AI generated, telling me they used the art I'd posted for the AI's output. The silhouette looked more or less the same but everything else looked like an uncanny amalgamation of textures taken from other people's art and the AI also gave it weird snaggle teeth (turbinid dragons don't have teeth, so it looked really off).

Whichever year i got broadband

This year. I even had to switch hobbies in a way.

This year wasn't great for MTG. Modern Horizons 3 warped multiple formats and most of standard was just magic characters in silly hats. The thing that pushed it over the edge for me was the commander fiasco. Everything about that situation from the rules committee making unhealthy decisions, Hasbro taking control and the fan base sending death threats crushed my will to keep going after playing for the last 15 years. Haven't bought a card since.

Bloomburrow was pretty cool though. Wish we had blocks again so we could have spent more time there. Foundations seems interesting but I can't bring myself to give Hasbro any more of my money.

Not exactly a hobby and not exactly a year,
but 1998-2009 for movies & television that was not anime.

As bad as all the nostalgia-bait is today,
it's no Idiocracy which was not a prediction of the future,
but a reflection of what the media-landscape was turning into,
during that era.

I took a crack at dropshipping this year. It was a struggle, but there was potential for it to become a side hustle. If the 40% tariffs go through in 2025, that whole business model is more doomed than it already was.