Snobby Hobbies

Ev'ry duke and earl and peer is here
Ev'ryone who should be here is here.
What a smashing, positively dashing
Spectacle: the Ascot op'ning day.

— My Fair Lady, "Ascot Gavotte"

So, you're filthy rich. You've got nothing to do. But you don't want to go anywhere near those... common people. So what's a gentleman, or a lady, to do? Why, take up a Snobby Hobby of course!

Snobby Hobbies are certain pastimes that are often associated with the wealthy in fiction. These tend to be (or are at least portrayed as) very expensive to participate in, insular and exclusionary through the use of impenetrable jargon and private clubs or events, and a means to hobnob with fellow members of the upper-crust. They're commonly used as an easy way to indicate that "this character is rich".

The archetypical example, meeting all three of these characteristics, is high-end collecting, typically of art, cars, antiques^note which may or may not have been recovered from 'uncultured savages', rare books^note for Gentleman and a Scholar types, exotic plants and animals, jewellery and watches, or something much more odd^note Often the purview of the Eccentric Millionaire. Other activities often portrayed as Snobby Hobbies include:

• Playing or watching Snooty Sports, especially golf, racquet sports, horse racing, shooting, polo, croquet, fencing, and cricket.
• Appreciating Classical Music, Opera, Ballet and/or Shakespeare^note enjoying the theatre in general is possible, but it's almost always Shakespeare.
• Skiing.
• Horse riding.
• Hunting, especially big-game hunting. Bonus points for having an massive old-fashioned mansion filled with creepy trophies.
• Owning a yacht or other large boat.
• Flying a personal aircraft or helicopter.
• Being a connoisseur of fine wines, other Luxurious Liquor, or Cuban cigars.
• High-roller gambling, in the form of blackjack, poker, bridge, roulette, etc.
• Hosting swanky dinner parties and/or eating Snooty Haute Cuisine.
• Ballroom dancing.
• Being obsessed with fashion and clothes.^note Usually for women, with exceptions.
• Giving very generously to charitable causes.^note Which can be genuinely well intentioned or ego-driven.

Tech Bros and other younger types might also enjoy extreme adventure activities such as scuba-diving and climbing Mount Everest, or engaging with bizarre wellness trends and spiritual movements.

A Millionaire Playboy, Socialite, or Wicked Cultured villain will be well-versed in at least a couple of these. A Wicked Pretentious or Nouveau Riche character will pretend to have the same knowledge, but will most likely end up getting outed as clueless and humiliating themselves. The Decadent Court will enjoy period-appropriate Snobby Hobbies as well. Any rich-meets-poor romance or Rags to Riches story has a good chance of including a scene where the poorer protagonist struggles to join in with a Snobby Hobby (and possibly vice versa). It can be seen as a form of Villains Out Shopping if the rich character in question is evil.

A Snobs Versus Slobs contrast may also transpire, with the lower class’s interests used as a Foil. Commonplace hobbyists may be portrayed as more down-to-earth than the rarefied pursuits of the wealthy (Rock music is genuine and opera is pretentious, football is for real men and polo is effete, and so on) — or the exact reverse, where all the crudeness of low-brow activities is pointed out.

When a retailer targets this demographic specifically, they're engaging in Up Marketing.

Some of these hobbies are a form of Conspicuous Consumption. Compare Always Camp, where certain jobs and hobbies are associated with the LGBT Community. Compare and contrast Crack is Cheaper, where nerdy hobbies (which do not overlap) are portrayed as ridiculously expensive. See also At the Opera Tonight, when participating in highbrow artsy activities is less a hobby and more an excuse for being seen at a high society event.

Please note: What is considered a Snobby Hobby will vary widely across different countries and cultures.^note For example, in the UK, hunting is usually portrayed as a pursuit of the aristocracy and wealthy landowners; while in the US, it's associated with rural working-class outdoorsman types. Nor is a Snobby Hobby always exclusively for the wealthy — what's important is that the work portrays it as "something rich people do".

A Super-Trope to Snooty Sports, The Grand Hunt, Upper-Class Equestrian and Wealthy Yacht Owner.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Great Pretender: The Arc Villain James Coleman is a rich art appraiser who is famous for his appraisal skills and his rediscovery of several lost paintings, and who likes collecting art in his spare time. He's immediately established as an unlikeable snob because whenever he buys paintings, he hides them away in a secret room in his house so no one else can see them.
• Voltes V: Prince Heinel enjoys sipping wine and dressing in fancy furs. He's also shown to engage in animal slaughter for his own purposes, and in a dark variant of this trope, views executions as entertainment...executions he himself ordered.

Comic Books

• Archie Comics: Veronica Lodge is a rich heiress, and she flaunts her wealth by frequently taking Archie (or whoever her love interest is) to watch operas.
• Doctor Aphra: Ronan Tagge is a loathsome brat flush with cash from his shares in the family MegaCorp, and amuses himself by purchasing priceless historic artifacts, then disintegrating them so he can be known as the last person ever to touch them. He clearly exists to lampoon the sort of shallow so-called "collectors" who are interested only in bragging rights.
• Eight Billion Genies: While the rest of the world struggles to survive in a Genie-induced apocalyptic hellscape, the lawyers of Exactitude are first seen playing Tennis and Golf in their wish-proofed exclusive sanctuary, without a care in the world.

Films — Live-Action

• Batman Begins: Deliberately invoked by Alfred when he advises Bruce Wayne to cultivate such hobbies so that nobody asks questions about what he does with his time and money. Alfred suggests polo. Bruce refuses; but develops a reputation for wild partying, driving expensive cars, and apparently burning down his own house while drunk. This is continued in The Dark Knight, where Bruce uses his being a Wealthy Yacht Owner as a cover for going to Hong Kong.
• Dirty Rotten Scoundrels: Lawrence drags his unwanted protégé Freddy to an art show and a garden both to demonstrate how proper gentlemen are supposed to spend their wealth and to try and disgust the boorish Freddy in the hopes that he'll quit his apprenticeship and return to America.
• Flashdance: Nick Hurley started out as a street punk, much like Johnny C. However, he managed to charm an heiress and married into higher society. Though the couple divorced later, both remain on the Pittsburgh Arts Council. From there, Nick is able to leverage an audition for Alex at the Pittsburgh Repertoire Company. It's also why Nick was seen with his ex-wife at the opera house: they weren't getting cozy, instead they were playing nice-nice as part of noblesse oblige.
• Intouchables: Philippe is a connoisseur of modern art and even drags Driss along to show him some. As a paraplegic, he can't engage much in sports he used to enjoy, but even so, their relationship lets him get back in the figurative saddle. Driss is all fine with luxury cars, but paragliding's not his thing.
• James Bond: The films provide quite a few examples — after all, Mr. Bond, with his globe-trotting adventures and very particular tastes, especially in drinks, exotic cars and luxury watches, created an entire trope about debonaire gentleman spies with a taste for the finer things in life. Many of his enemies have similar tastes, too:
  • A View to a Kill: Zorin is into horse racing. He sizes up potential business partners and enemies based on their ability to keep up with this hobby.
  • GoldenEye: At the first part of the movie, James Bond goes to the luxurious Monte Carlo casino and plays baccarat with Xenia Onatopp, former Soviet pilot and — at the time — escort to a Canadian admiral. In the previous scene, Bond is driving a DB5 with a female driving instructor in tow and races against Xenia's red Ferrari. When they meet again in the casino scene, they comment on their mutual interests (or passions?):
    Bond: It appears we share the same passions. Well, three anyway...
    Xenia: I count two. Motoring and... uh... baccarat.
  • The World Is Not Enough: Oil heiress Elektra King goes to Valentin Zhukovsky's casino, a former KGB agent turned rich "entrepreneur", and bets with him 1 million in a high card draw game, as if it were the most trivial thing in the world.
• John Wick: Chapter 4: Whenever The Marquis isn't seen making the motions to systematically destroy John or cruelly abusing his own underlings, he's shown indulging in a manner of hobbies that casually display his exorbitant wealth, from horseback riding, fencing, possessing a private art gallery, and attending a ballet performance (judging by how he appears to be the only audience member, it's suggested that he bought the entire theatre for himself).
• The Man In The Iron Mask 1977 has King Louis XIV playing a croquet match with one of his ministers. While the King chats up the ladies, the minister lines up his shot. An aide inquires, "You can make this [wicket], surely?" The minister quietly replies, "And risk another royal tantrum? I shall miss by a league." Although croquet equipment isn't elaborate or expensive, it does require a large, level, and manicured lawn, which only the French nobility possessed at the time.
• My Fair Lady: Exemplified by the "Ascot Gavotte" scene. The plot of the movie is that a phonetics professor from the upper class is convinced he can make a lady out of a lower-class flower seller, and she is put to the test during the horse-race watching, where the créme de la créme of Edwardian English society is in attendance: the ladies in fine dresses, extravagant hats and parasols, and the gentlemen in gray tuxedos and top hats, everyone with binoculars at hand to watch the horse racing.
• Plunkett & Macleane: Macleane loves playing cards, exquisite clothes, playing cards, fine dining and wine, dancing, romancing and playing some more cards — and he is a terrible player. He is introduced to the audience while doing time in debtors' prison. Plunkett only ever gets involved with him, because Captain James Macleane can pass himself off as a gentleman, which is handy for their highwaymen gig and opens even more doors. Once the money starts rolling, Macleane turns into a full-blown Upper-Class Twit whenever not on the job and what's not wasted on gambling, he spends on newest fashion.
• Pretty Woman: Wealthy corporate raider Edward Lewis is shown playing polo and takes Vivian to the opera, deliberately contrasting with Vivian's choices for leisure activities.
• Rat Race: The whole premise is that a bunch of bored, gambling-obsessed millionaires entertain themselves by getting a bunch of random shmucks to chase after a bag filled with money and placing bets on which of them will win. (They also engage in a lot of crazy side bets along the way.)
• The Thomas Crown Affair (1999): The titular playboy is so rich he doesn't have a job, enjoys boating but purposefully wrecks his $100,000 vessel for no reason other than being bored, and is very knowledgeable about classical artwork due to frequenting museums.

Literature

• Alex Rider: In Ark Angel, Paul Drevin, the son of multibillionaire oligarch Nikolei Drevin, enjoys an incredibly extravagant lifestyle, with pastimes including go-karting (on a private track, of course), playing table tennis (on a Boeing 747), windsurfing and scuba diving... None of this stops him being absolutely bored out of his mind as security concerns all but prevent him from having any friends.
• Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest: From 2022, one of the Dishonorable Mentions of the Odious Outliers category, talks about classy (AKA rich) people activities:
  Jimothy walked into the joint like he owned the place, which he did, but not like a typical owner of a place like this; more like a classy, silver spoon owner, except not classy like wearing tuxedos to horse dancing and equine NASCAR event classy, but an eating a gas station hotdog with a knife and fork, napkin on his lap kind of classy.

  — Elliott Cox, Clover, SC
• The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy: Soames Forsyte eventually becomes a serious collector of art by the time the story has entered the 1920s.
• Lord Peter Wimsey: The wealthy aristocrat Lord Peter has two main hobbies. The first, collecting rare books, establishes him as a wealthy intellectual. The second, solving mysteries, is what drives the plot. He is also a connoisseur of fine wines, to the point where one short story centers around a man trying to figure out which of three people claiming to be Lord Peter is really him by challenging them all to a wine tasting competition.
• The Wheel of Time: The Idle Rich of Tear gamble on card games, whereas the working class prefer dice. The former Farm Boy Mat also generally prefers dice, since his uncanny luck works better on them, but cleans the local lordlings out of their gold all the same.

Live-Action TV

• Cluedo: In the first series, one of the murder victims is a bridge hustler, who is introduced to the house by Professor Plum, and tries to cheat Mrs. Peacock and Miss Scarlett out of a lot of money.
• Columbo:
  • "Any Old Port in a Storm" has the detective investigate the death of the partner of a wine connoisseur. The victim owed a large sum to bookies, and he was poised to sell his stake in the winery to cover his debts. The wine connoisseur slew his partner to preclude the sale. During the investigation, Columbo discovers the suspect owns many bottles of rare, vintage wines worth thousands per bottle.
  • "Ransom for a Dead Man": The murderer flies a private plane as a hobby. Columbo convinces her to let him ride along on a flight to interview her and she takes great delight in making him airsick.
• CSI: Miami: In one episode, a group of women who'd belonged to a prestigious sorority in college are still friends, all belong to the same country club, and go horseback riding together.
• CSI: NY: The perp in the B-case of "A Man a Mile" turns out to be a prep-school student who had befriended the victim, a poorer classmate. She kills her out of jealousy because her father had not only invited the girl to join them on a fox hunt trip to Europe but had also afforded her the privilege of being "blooded" ^note having fox blood smeared on one's face at one's first hunt instead of his own daughter.
• Frasier: Frasier and Niles Crane engage in a staggering number of these, from antiquing, to the opera, to wine club, and often try to one-up each other as they do. Martin will often mock them for their pretentiousness.
• The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: Used to differentiate Carlton and Hillary from Will. At the same time, it is often subverted. Even in the pilot episode, Will is shown to be able to play a Beethoven sonata flawlessly.
• The Good Place: Tahani is a British socialite from the highest of upper classes. She got into the Good Place by hosting several posh fundraising events, which raised a lot of charity money. She also mentions an interest in art, playing croquet, and watching dressage growing up. This is in contrast to her supposed "best friend" Eleanor and "soulmate" Jason, who are Lower Class Louts with trashy hobbies and who initially find it difficult to relate to her.
• Harry Enfield and Chums: In a parody of the Terminator franchise, a cyborg killing machine is sent back to The Edwardian Era, to kill the distant ancestor of the human resistance leader. The first people he encounters are Eton-educated fellows playing croquet. He also joins another group of upper-crust men in some pheasant-shooting (downing the poor birds by the hundreds).
• The Incredible Hulk (1977): In "The Snare," David meets millionaire Michael Sutton who invites him to his private island for a game of chess. Upon arriving at Sutton's mansion, which he inhabits by himself, David notices lots of mounted heads of taxidermied wild animals. Sutton serves David a meal of freshly caught rattlesnake, drugs David's wine during their chess game, then forces him to become his prey as he hunts him down with a rifle. After he'd caught one of every large animal he wanted, he got bored with hunting more of the same and decided he needed a human trophy to add to his collection. Seeing David transform into the Hulk only increases his enthusiasm.
  Sutton: Please let me kill it, David!
• You'll have a tough time finding a more rich-people-only hobby than that of John Beresford Tipton, The Millionaire. Tipton gives away one million dollars (in 1950s money — that's the equivalent of over 10 million dollars today) to a different individual each week....oh, and all taxes are already paid on it. Tipton only insists each recipient can never reveal where the money came from, otherwise they'll forefit it. Why does Tipton do this? It's explicitly identified in the series as Tipton's hobby, a sort of a sociological experiment he performs just to see what happens. Over the course of the series, Tipton gives away over a quarter of a billion dollars.
• The Nanny:
  • The Sheffields, being a blue-blood family, are often seen attending Broadway plays (it helps that Maxwell has made his money by being a Broadway producer), throwing lavish parties, and attending exclusive clubs. Many episodes early in the show have Fran teaching the kids (and Maxwell, to a lesser extent) how to have fun on a budget; the family inevitably enjoys her way of doing things more.
  • The episode "Once A Secretary, Always A Secretary" focuses on this trope when Fran, struggling to deal with her Relationship Upgrade as Maxwell's wife, joins a country club and tries her hand at things like golf and horse grooming (she proceeds to give her stallion braids). Needless to say, she doesn't enjoy any of it.
    Fran: What do people do around here?
    (Answer Cut to a group of preppy people all drinking cocktails)
• The Suite Life On Deck: In "Rollin' With the Holmies", the S.S. Tipton stops off in England, and the gang encounter a group of arrogant young aristocrats who heavily favor croquet. When Marcus finds himself in a match against one of them to win London's heart, he and Zack receive assistance from Mr. Moseby, who is also an avid croquet player.
  Mr. Moseby: I'm a huge mallet head!
  Zack: Your words, not mine.
• The Office (US): Emphasized a little more in the season with Robert California as boss. California plays golf and takes a liking to the garden party that Rain Wilson is hosting.
• The West Wing: Befitting his upper-class background as a direct descendant of one of the Founding Fathers, President Josiah Bartlet is an avid collector of rare books, and is well-versed in philosophy, theology, and the arts to boot.
• The Wire: When Avon and Stringer reminisce about their youth, Avon mentions a time Stringer tried to shoplift a badminton set from a downtown mall, and they both laugh about what he would have even done with one without a yard.
• Worzel Gummidge: One episode has a wealthy guy named Colonel Bloodstock, who hunts and owns several animal skins.
• You (2018): In season 4, Joe is living in England and manages to fall into a much richer, more eccentric, and snobbier crowd than he's used to. He's invited to several of their events, which include Kate and Simon's art exhibit, a game of croquet (which involves, at one point, a servant being humiliated and used as a hoop), and their tech-free getaway at a massive old mansion. He's also invited on a "hunt" (which turns out to be a murder attempt) with Roald, who had originally wanted to play tennis with Kate.

Video Games

• Final Fantasy XIV:
  • Lolorito Nanarito is the richest man in Thanalan, if not the world, and spends his free time as an amateur food critic known in culinary circles as "Chefsbane". Due to his vast economic power and reputation, he gets a laugh from watching esteemed restaurants go under after scathing reviews from him. Even the Bismarck, the most esteemed eatery in Eorzea, trembles when he books a table. So when the Warrior cooks him a meal he can't criticize, he attempts to humiliate them by having them cater a diplomatic dinner with the sultana while making it as difficult as possible to satisfy her royal tastes. He also once put out bounties on rare fish for him to eat, but soon got sick of those same fish and retracted his reward.
  • Collecting orchestrion rolls is a hobby of the rich, with rarer compositions being exorbitantly expensive (perhaps as a nod to the prices charged on the player market). Artoirel de Fortemps, the heir apparent of one of the four High Houses of Ishgard, is one of the foremost collectors in the Holy See and dabbles in composition in his free time.
• Persona 3: Mitsuru Kirijo is the heiress to the Kirijo Group and is in Gekkoukan's fencing club, and rides a sports motorcycle that helps her get around during the Dark Hour.

Western Animation

• Kamp Koral: In "Helter Shelter", SpongeBob gets moved into the snooty Yacht cabin, whose residents mostly enjoy drinking tea and playing polo on seahorseback.
• Life with Louie: When Earl Grunewald, Mike's father, gets promoted to middle management, his family suddenly starts having a lot of extra income — and the attitude that goes with it. The episode centres on the Grunewalds taking all their friends to a ski resort, explicitly to show off their newfound wealth. Each of the Andersons attempts to deal with the fact that they stand out like sore thumbs in the crowd of rich folks.
• Looney Tunes: The 1955 Merrie Melodies cartoon "Hare Brush" (dir. Friz Freleng) establishes that Elmer Fudd is a millionaire who owns a mansion and a yacht. He also enjoys hunting, as he's commonly seen trying to shoot Bugs Bunny and/or Daffy Duck.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: The Equestrian upper class, a loose collection of Old Money, nouveau riche, celebrities, and assorted hangers-on, prefers to spend its time on activities such as croquet, garden parties, perusals of art galleries, fancy dinners, the opera, and the like.
• The Simpsons: In "Scenes From the Class Struggle in Springfield", Marge meets with an old high school classmate, who invites her and the Simpson family to the country club she's part of, and the Simpson family attempts to acclimate themselves. Even Lisa, who typically has distaste for high society, finds herself intrigued because of its ponies.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "SpongeBob LongPants", SpongeBob finds himself with an overly fancy crowd of False Friends who eat expensive exotic dinners, and have "parties" consisting of drinking coffee, watching the news, and having sophisticated conversations. When SpongeBob suggests they see a movie, they pick an incredibly boring art film.

Real Life

• A notorious subversion happens in many of the post-communist countries in Europe, particularly those that ultimately joined the EU. The old regime provided numerous sports facilities and equipment for activities usually associated with wealthy people (sailing and horseback riding clubs, tennis courts, etc.) that were deliberately made accessible to the working class. Most of it survived the regime change, and while they are not as affordable as they used to be, they rarely carry the aura of high-class refinement or any sort of snobbism.

---