Day 314: niches

while hanging out with kevin and lucas today, kevin showed us his sub-9 hour final fantasy 7 speedrun that he spent months practicing for. i love how passionate he is about his hobbies even though some of them, like this one, are straight up ridiculous. when i see him get into things that i hadn’t even known existed, i’m reminded about just how many niches there are.

if you’d have asked me how many people today would still be interested in a game from 1997, i’d say maybe a few hundred. number of people who are interested in speedrunning it or watching a speedrun of it? 50 max. but nope, videos of final fantasy 7 speedruns have over a million views.

from kevin, i also learned about matt stonie, a competitive eater who makes videos of himself inhaling obscene amounts of food. it blows my mind that there are tens of millions of people who are into this.

and of course, kevin’s obsessed with fishing. it’s impressive just how much time, money, and effort he spends on it. fishing doesn’t appeal to me at all because stabbing living creatures in the face for fun is awful, but according to the FAO (food and agriculture organization of the united nations), there are somewhere between 220 million to 700 million recreational fishers. that’s up to more than double the population of the united states. insane.

these are just the niches that one of my closest friends is into — there are so many more out there that i’ve never come across.

the conclusion i take away from seeing just how many communities and hobbies there are in the world is that there is no reason to not be spending time doing things you love. there are enough people out there that with enough time and effort, you can make a living doing almost anything. this is the reason why i have extremely high confidence that anyone can make a sustainable living from being an indie maker or pursuing their passions as long it produces something others value — it may take a few attempts, but it seems almost inevitable as long as you’re persistent.