Why is it so hard for young people to get into modelling?

[Reegs]

Get off my lawn.

[Ceaser_Salad]

8 minutes ago, Reegs said:

Get off my lawn.

How is that relevant...

[Painted Black]

Very interesting 

[peteski]

26 minutes ago, Ceaser_Salad said:

How is that relevant...

There is one (or few) of "them" in every online forum (or even in real life).

[Foghorn Leghorn]

1 hour ago, Reegs said:

Get off my lawn.

Look what you done, Jimbo. It went right over their heads, you rascal! 🤪

[Jordan White]

8 hours ago, Tom Geiger said:

And I don’t! 😛

I’ll be 63 next month. I have zero interest in super cars, probably because I have no experience or memories of them in my life. 

To be honest, I’m 33 and I don’t have much interest in super cars either nowadays. I oddly have a fascination with building models of more mundane vehicles. 😆

[misterNNL]

I am 78 and started building models in high school('50's) just about the time the AMT annual kits were becoming available. I only ever knew one other guy who built model cars. He was a classmate of mine. We both liked and built customs. We knew nothing about real cars so practicality was never a factor. Just lay it on the ground no matter what it took.

My real point here is that with that one exception no other of my contemporaries were interested in doing anything creative. All they cared about was drinking, smoking or getting laid. I was the oddball of the group. Now any of them that I do encounter (read that as still alive) pretty much say the same thing..either" I never had the patience for that",or " my hands shake too bad/ or my eyes are too bad".

I'm not too sure today's much different really. I would have loved to have had the access to the information and inspiration these forums and the internet can provide today's modelers. This can be a golden age of modeling if we can inspire just one young person to become a better builder then we have done a good thing for the common hobby we all share.

[Ceaser_Salad]

1 hour ago, misterNNL said:

I am 78 and started building models in high school('50's) just about the time the AMT annual kits were becoming available. I only ever knew one other guy who built model cars. He was a classmate of mine. We both liked and built customs. We knew nothing about real cars so practicality was never a factor. Just lay it on the ground no matter what it took.

My real point here is that with that one exception no other of my contemporaries were interested in doing anything creative. All they cared about was drinking, smoking or getting laid. I was the oddball of the group. Now any of them that I do encounter (read that as still alive) pretty much say the same thing..either" I never had the patience for that",or " my hands shake too bad/ or my eyes are too bad".

I'm not too sure today's much different really. I would have loved to have had the access to the information and inspiration these forums and the internet can provide today's modelers. This can be a golden age of modeling if we can inspire just one young person to become a better builder then we have done a good thing for the common hobby we all share.

I love that history in a way has repeated itself.  You could be right about today not being much different, and I think the space between your group growing up and mine is the real golden age of modelling.

The forum (to me at least) is such a bounty of information and I can see and understand your wishes to have had the access like we do today. I learn more from here than I did in English 12.

However, if encouraging one person to try to get better is what you would say is success, then you have succeeded because I do like to improve. 😄

 

[Ceaser_Salad]

2 hours ago, Jordan White said:

To be honest, I’m 33 and I don’t have much interest in super cars either nowadays. I oddly have a fascination with building models of more mundane vehicles. 😆

What kind of mundane cars?

[Foghorn Leghorn]

Whatever you do, DON'T accuse OP of perpetuating this thread by Trolling!

[bigryan18]

I've been saying this for a while now and wonder why they don't do it but the model companies need to run adds to try and spark some kind of interest.

[bluestringer]

I started when I was about 12 or 13. For some reason my parents got me a model kit for christmas, I think it was a 32 Ford. My Dad and I put it together at the kitchen table. I was hooked after that and starting buying and building for the next 4 or 5 years. Then along came girls, etc. and the kits stopped. But also along then came the muscle cars and racing. Our generation had the best cars ever. Then I got married, had kids and a job so I quit the hobby for a long while. Several years later I got into Nascar and starting seeing kits of the drivers cars and thought it would great to build one of those. Did that for several years, but stopped again. Now I'm retired, and just got back into the hobby a couple months ago, really enjoying it. I think you have to have a desire to work with your hands, and most young people don't have that. They just want to be on their phone or play video games, which I also like. My grandkids are like that. I also have other hobbies like reloading my own ammo and playing guitar. 

[Ceaser_Salad]

12 minutes ago, bluestringer said:

I started when I was about 12 or 13. For some reason my parents got me a model kit for christmas, I think it was a 32 Ford. My Dad and I put it together at the kitchen table. I was hooked after that and starting buying and building for the next 4 or 5 years. Then along came girls, etc. and the kits stopped. But also along then came the muscle cars and racing. Our generation had the best cars ever. Then I got married, had kids and a job so I quit the hobby for a long while. Several years later I got into Nascar and starting seeing kits of the drivers cars and thought it would great to build one of those. Did that for several years, but stopped again. Now I'm retired, and just got back into the hobby a couple months ago, really enjoying it. I think you have to have a desire to work with your hands, and most young people don't have that. They just want to be on their phone or play video games, which I also like. My grandkids are like that. I also have other hobbies like reloading my own ammo and playing guitar. 

Well welcome back.

Girls never stopped me from modelling... maybe that was the problem... hmm. Regardless, I agree, your generation has the best cars. There is nothing quite like the 60's to 70's muscle...

Video games are never an evil thing. I think people should keep enjoying their games, but branching out into different hobbies is always a good idea. Like loading ammo and playing the guitar. The less creative people we have these days, the more I feel like Equilibrium (movie) is going to become our future.

[Ceaser_Salad]

12 hours ago, Foghorn Leghorn said:

Whatever you do, DON'T accuse OP of perpetuating this thread by Trolling!

Are you accusing me of trolling.... 😆

[Reegs]

21 hours ago, Foghorn Leghorn said:

Look what you done, Jimbo. It went right over their heads, you rascal! 🤪

Thanks. Ron.

[Venom]

On 8/14/2021 at 8:46 AM, Reegs said:

Get off my lawn.

Gran Torino ... kids squabbling ... old man gets irritated?

Its a metaphor right?

[Jordan White]

17 hours ago, Ceaser_Salad said:

What kind of mundane cars?

Let’s just say a lot of factory stock vehicles from the 80s and 90s. Lots of pickups and suvs, plus a handful of cars. Some examples are a 1987 Nissan Pathfinder 3dr, a 1995 Ford F-350 4x4 crew cab, and a 1999 Dodge Ram 1500 4x4.

[Ceaser_Salad]

7 minutes ago, Jordan White said:

Let’s just say a lot of factory stock vehicles from the 80s and 90s. Lots of pickups and suvs, plus a handful of cars. Some examples are a 1987 Nissan Pathfinder 3dr, a 1995 Ford F-350 4x4 crew cab, and a 1999 Dodge Ram 1500 4x4.

Well whatever floats your boat!

[Reegs]

3 hours ago, Venom said:

Gran Torino ... kids squabbling ... old man gets irritated?

Its a metaphor right?

This forum sounds like a bunch of dyspeptic old farts sitting around a table at the Legion Hall and drinking dollar beers while bitchin' about what's wrong with the yoots of today.

I heard that crapolloa fifty years ago - which is pretty much when the decline in model car building started, come to think of it (cant speak to the other disciplines).

How can you say that they don't know what being creative means? Just because they aren't building model cars doesn't mean they're all commie preverts quietly but determinedly undermining truth, justice, and the "Murican way.

By the way, you don't see my stuff

A. because my hands shake too much

B. I don't really have a place to build

3. my hands shake too much

But it doesn't stop me from appreciating what you guys build.

Edited August 15, 2021 by Reegs

[Tom Geiger]

Man! That went down the slippery slope!

[Ceaser_Salad]

Well that was a little uncalled for, it is a discussion, I don't hear any bitching not to mention it isn't all old farts. This discussion came from one of the people in question (a "yoot"). And I cannot see how 50 years ago was the beginning of the downfall of modelling when it still exists. Maybe it was better back then, but your pessimistic tone towards current situations is a little more dramatic than most.

4 hours ago, Reegs said:

This forum sounds like a bunch of dyspeptic old farts sitting around a table at the Legion Hall and drinking dollar beers while bitchin' about what's wrong with the yoots of today.

I heard that crapolloa fifty years ago - which is pretty much when the decline in model car building started, come to think of it (cant speak to the other disciplines).

How can you say that they don't know what being creative means? Just because they aren't building model cars doesn't mean they're all commie preverts quietly but determinedly undermining truth, justice, and the "Murican way.

By the way, you don't see my stuff

A. because my hands shake too much

B. I don't really have a place to build

3. my hands shake too much

But it doesn't stop me from appreciating what you guys build.

 

[Tsukura]

I'm 51. Just getting back into the hobby since the mid-to-late 80's. We get my 12yo niece and 10yo nephew for a month or so every summer. I thought it would be fun to let them pick out a model and we could work on building it together. They had no interest. If it's not on their phone or their xbox then it's not worth it. So in a nutshell, the digital age has pretty much killed the desire to do anything offline.

[Ceaser_Salad]

1 minute ago, Tsukura said:

I'm 51. Just getting back into the hobby since the mid-to-late 80's. We get my 12yo niece and 10yo nephew for a month or so every summer. I thought it would be fun to let them pick out a model and we could work on building it together. They had no interest. If it's not on their phone or their xbox then it's not worth it. So in a nutshell, the digital age has pretty much killed the desire to do anything offline.

@Reegs

"How can you say that they don't know what being creative means? Just because they aren't building model cars doesn't mean they're all commie preverts quietly but determinedly undermining truth, justice, and the "Murican way."

Well... If it aint the xbox or their phones, what part of that is creative?

[Venom]

1 hour ago, Ceaser_Salad said:

Maybe it was better back then, but your pessimistic tone towards current situations is a little more dramatic than most.

And when Clint Eastwood said “get off my lawn” in the movie Gran Torino, it was quite dramatic as well... Lol

BTW, I’m 49... ain’t old fart level yet.

Edited August 16, 2021 by Venom

[Ceaser_Salad]

2 minutes ago, Venom said:

And when Clint Eastwood said “get off my lawn” in the movie Gran Torino, it was quite dramatic as well... Lol

BTW, I’m 49... ain’t old fart level yet.

Sorry, the old fart was just in response. No one here is an old fart unless they say so