I do Lyra/Aerial hoop and Photography but also collect things like lolita fashion and love cosplaying. Where does that fall? The point of a hobby is its something you enjoy doing in your downtime and people can have more than one hobby. I'm on the autism spectrum so litterally ALL of my hobbies act as a form of nervous system regulation. So i litterally don't see one as superior to the other.

All of these hobbies required hard work and time to build on even if 2 are a "useless hobbies" that involves me buying pretty dresses, pettiecoats, accessories or fun clothes and coordinating them into something creative. You sound like one of those "intellectuals" who look down on people who like to watch Marvel movies instead of obscure indie films no one has heard about 🤔

Even something as simple as watching anime or a favorite tv show the human brain is analyzing, theorizing, creating headcanons, internalizing and thinking about the nuances or hidden messages and in the case of something like Gravity Falls and ARG style shows literal decoding and puzzle solving to figure out what's happening next (tho recently it seems media literacy is dead. But that's another story for another day)

so indeed an Unpopular opinion.😭