People who code often come to their technical opinions via aesthetics rather than legit technical reasons. On 4chan/g/ there are people who only code in C, or only code in Lisp, or only code in Ocaml, and there's nothing you can tell them to convince them to use a new language because their hero is Terry Davis and they imagine themselves as living in Serial Experiments Lain. They code on projects with no real world applicability. I think the appeal behind Terry Davis is that these people are all building their temple to God, in a way.

Obsidian.md

All of them if you delve deep enough

Computer Keyboard Enthusiasts

Celsius energy drinks.

I had a coworker evangelize about them so I decided to try them out. Every time I got one and tried it some complete random would come up 'Hey! You like Celsius? Have you tried the [whatever] flavors? [Other flavor] is my favorite!'

I found them all gross.

I don't know whether anyone has mentioned this -- gacha games. Like cults, it forces you to pay a lot of money, but never enough to satisfy them. It always leaves you in a state of frustration. Video gaming is supposed to be a hobby, but the level of attention and resources demanded by these games are insane.

Oh, a warhammer topic!

Warhammer - people at a local club have told me it is "heresy" to even refer to one page rules - a newish and very innovative wargame. That's the lifestyle players of course not everyone, the people who paint 20h a week while listening to Warhammer audio books play 8hs a week and do fuck all besides that. I have met loads of cool people in the hobby too, but omg those guys

Y'all have some weird ideas about what a hobby is. Parenting as a hobby cracked me up, that's just having a family, you presumably grew up in one of those. Religion isn't a cult-like hobby, it's a hobby-ish cult.

On the parenting front though, I think those pageants are, those kids do it for a hobby and I would consider it abusive, and hard to exit once they are in.

vtubers

pokemon card, especially around collecting(specifically collection porn, they have no interest in the game itself but get the rush from opening and getting a rare card) and playing it(mostly around the mechanics and gameplay). and they aggressively defend any possibility the current nature of the game is very wrong. i wasnt happened upon a discussion board around this. something similar , but people think chronic lyme is actual disease, there is a whole industry and cult around this thing, its unreal. and the people most pedaling it are MDs giving unsanctioned advice and prescriptions. and people defend(the disease) this like they defend donald trump(anything that contradicts the validity of CL is met with extreme hostilities)

Nostr. I think the tech is cool, but the culture seems like some sort of cryptocurrency cult

Improv