Joining an Online Community of People Who Share Your Hobby
One of the underappreciated good things about the modern internet is that for almost any hobby — even the most niche — there exists an online community of people who share it. Watercolor painting. Bonsai. Restoring vintage radios. Crocheting amigurumi. Birds. Quilting. Old motorcycles. Bread baking. Walnut furniture. Whatever it is, there are several hundred to several million people somewhere online who are passionate about exactly that thing and would welcome a polite newcomer.
Finding the right community and joining it well takes a small amount of attention. Here's what I've learned from watching dozens of library patrons over the years.
Three places communities live
Facebook Groups. The most accessible for seniors, partly because most seniors already have Facebook accounts. To find a group: open Facebook, tap the search bar, type your hobby name. Filter results to "Groups." Browse for one that's active (look at the post dates) and has a manageable number of members (a group of 200,000 is usually too big to feel like a community; a group of 1,000 to 30,000 is often the sweet spot).
Reddit. A larger and more varied platform than Facebook. Almost every hobby has at least one "subreddit" — a community around a specific topic. The downside is that Reddit's interface is busier than Facebook's, and the community norms are less obvious to a newcomer. The upside is that the conversations are often more substantive than Facebook's.
Hobby-specific apps and forums. Many older hobbies have their own dedicated platforms that predate Facebook and Reddit. The bird-watching app eBird is also a community. AllRecipes is a community for cooks. There are specific forums for quilting (Quiltingboard.com), woodworking (the Wood Whisperer's forum, Wood Talk), antique radios (Antique Radio Forum), and many more. A web search for your hobby name plus "forum" or "community" will usually find them.
The etiquette of joining
Three rules that will make almost any community welcoming to you.
Lurk for a week before you post. Read what people are discussing. Notice the tone. Notice which kinds of questions are welcome and which kinds get groans. Every community has its own personality; learning it takes a few days of reading.
Read the rules before posting. Most groups have a pinned post or a "rules" tab listing what's allowed and what isn't. Reading the rules takes two minutes. Breaking them in your first post will get the post deleted and sometimes you removed from the group.
Introduce yourself once you've decided to stay. Most communities have a regular "introduce yourself" thread or welcome a new-member post. A short message — "Hi, I'm new here. I'm a retired schoolteacher in Pennsylvania who started watercolor painting last winter. Looking forward to learning from everyone" — is almost always well-received.
What not to share
Online communities are not the place for personal financial information, medical details beyond what's relevant to the hobby, addresses, phone numbers, or photographs that show identifying information about your home.
Most communities don't ask for any of these. If a community asks for them, that's a serious red flag and you should leave.
For the photographs you do share — your latest painting, your finished quilt, the bird you just identified — those are fine to share. The community wants to see them.
The kind of question to ask
The best questions for a new member to ask are specific and show you've tried something already.
Good: "I've been trying to mix a specific shade of green for the leaves in this landscape and I can't quite get there. I've been using sap green and adding burnt sienna. Photos attached. Any suggestions?"
Less good: "Anyone have tips for painting better?"
The first question gives experienced members something concrete to respond to. The second is so broad that most experienced members won't bother answering. Specific questions get specific answers, which is when communities are at their best.
The kind of question to avoid
"What's the best [piece of equipment] for a beginner?" This question has been asked thousands of times in every hobby community. There is usually a pinned post or a FAQ that answers it. Search the community for the question first; if there's already an answer, read it; if there isn't, then ask.
Asking the FAQ-level question without searching first marks you as a newcomer who didn't do the work, and the responses will be terse.
When the community turns out to be wrong for you
This happens. A community can have a tone that doesn't suit you, or be dominated by a few personalities you don't enjoy, or simply not be active enough to be useful.
Leave it. Find another. Almost every hobby has multiple communities of varying styles, and the right one for you might be the third or fourth one you try. The cost of leaving is zero; the benefit of finding the right one is meaningful.
The patron who found her quilting circle
One of the library patrons I worked with for years was a woman named Beatrice who quilted alone in her apartment for two decades after her quilting circle disbanded. The members had moved away or died. She missed them quietly for a long time.
In 2022 we found a Facebook group called "Quilting in Colorado" together at the library. About 4,000 members; mostly women over fifty; active daily. Beatrice posted a photo of a quilt she'd been working on for a year. Within an hour she had thirty comments, most of them praising the fabric choices, three of them suggesting binding techniques she hadn't tried.
Eighteen months later she was meeting two women from the group monthly for in-person coffee. The community in her phone had become a community in her real life. She had quilted alone for a long time; she doesn't anymore.
That's the version of online community that's worth seeking out. The version that's just scrolling and arguing isn't. The work, modest but real, is finding the one that suits you.
Written by Margaret Holloway. Last verified 19 June 2026.