What's the most useless skill you've mastered, and how did you end up getting so good at it?

I used to make miniature food models for fun.

Not really good at it but it's useless and fun.

Im a top 1% player in Rocket League after playing for 4500 hours. The skill gap between me and the best players in the game is the same gap as between me and a brand new player.

But i will still beat 99% of the game's population.

I turn yaml into aws bills

I can read UPC,, UPC-8, ISBN, and EAN bar codes. Tear the numbers off the bottom of the bar code, hand me the lines, and I will tell you the numbers you tore off.

I used to work the midnight shift at a call center back in the late 90s. It was incredibly boring because we weren't allowed to browse the internet when no calls were coming in (which was most of the time, got maybe five calls total per night). So I picked up a copy of Yahoo! Internet Life, a now-defunct technology-centered magazine. This issue had a how-to section for wacky shit like that, so I committed it to memory because wtf else was there to do?

i can roll quarters down my fingers continuously because I saw Val kilmer do it in Real Genius and I wanted to be cool like him.

I can fluidly open a trash bag, pull it into a straight line, and toss it like a dart, landing it in an open trash can from up to 30ft.

This only works with those cheap bags that businesses use and this was honed over years of changing trash at various businesses. Not useful, very majestic though.

I can independently write different text with both hands at the same time just as easily as writing with only one hand. I consider this a useless skill because I rarely ever write with an actual pen or pencil, so being able to write with both hands simultaneously doesn’t add anything.

Lots of time being bored in school and an obsession with broadening the mind.

I can hold a marker with my toes and write with it.

I can make double fart sounds by laying on my back and cupping my knee-armpits with both hands.

Not entirely useless though; I showed this to my SO 7 years ago when we started dating and she was clearly impressed as she's still hanging around.

I can clap with one hand

Alternating between American and British spellings like it's nothing. I just use whatever spelling I vibe with at the time. I'll do the same with units of measurement as well.

I can speedwalk very fast and with good stability. It comes in handy when I need to move fast with a glass of liquid, which doesn't come up a lot.

I could never spin a pen around my thumb so instead I learned how to "flick" it, have it do a flip and land back in my hand.

I can also rapidly place two strips of tape on one another with no bubbles and parallel enough you'd think it's one piece. However I can only do this vertically

I'm really good at putting sharp objects up my nose (from sideshow)

I won't say "mastered" as I have lost the ability now, but back in college Pokemon endgame content gave me the ability to read braille by looking at it.

That's about as useless as possible.

I can spew random trivia about every latin american country.

I learned to ride a unicycle.

I can make baby elephant noises because I played trombone and fucked up my first attempt at lip buzzing

Hand farts, via practice.

Hand sanitizer really opens up avenues for expression.

I can't imagine spending the time to master anything and then thinking the skill is useless.

I am better at helping others flesh out ideas and expanding on them than I am making up my own ideas. I'm good at troubleshooting problems better than most I've ever met. I owe both to PC troubleshooting over the last few decades (from Apple 2e and Pentium II to present). I find that people these days have tunnel vision and focus on short-term gains over long-term payoffs, often to the detriment of future productivity.

I can jump up a small flight of stairs (3-4 stairs) in a way that makes it look like I just floated up the stairs.

I got good at it because in high school I thought it would be funny to be able to do this so I started practicing.

I have an uncanny ability to do things that are unpopular, that later become popular, but I can never imagine them becoming popular when I do them.

Saw Nirvana in a crowd of 30 people before they got famous, certainly never thought they would, it was so different from what was on the radio then. Bought a shirt from them, out of their little van parked in the alley behind the bar!

Used to wear vintage dresses from the thrift store in the 1980s, nobody around me was dressed anything like that, but later all of them got bought up by flippers.

Had tattoos when it was remarkably unusual for a woman, like if another woman with tattoos saw me they would stop and talk to me, I never ever ever would have thought they'd be mainstream.

Lots of stuff like that, like I'm out of synch with time but I can never capitalize on it because I don't have the vision to understand that it will catch on!

I can aolve a rubiks cube with my left hand only.

Procrastinating, i don't know how i became so good at it.

I wouldn't say I've mastered it but with my current set up I am as good as I can get with macrophotography.

I can pick up different objects with chopsticks in both hands at the same time. Can also eat this way.

I didn't put any time into mastering this, though. I just gave it a try one day and found it to be easy.

Whistling. Took decades and I can do it two different ways (lips and teeth). I now do it subconsciously when listening to music where I’ll typically add other melodies or harmonies. I can bird call pretty much flawlessly. Loudest I get is over 100dB. Average is low 90s. Not much use but it’s fun.

I can solve a 3x3 rubix cube in under 60 seconds.

Just practice and memorization, it’s not that hard.

Whistle like a pidgeon and mourning doves

I can palm a tennis ball, roll it down my arm, bump launch it with my bicep, and catch it. Freaks people out who are standing close as the ball launches right at them, but I've always caught it. Discovered later I could do it with anything that rolls like a microphone.

I learned to open bottles using a lighter, and then taught my friends. After a while, we just started referring to lighters as “bottle openers”.

I know I have plenty but can't for the life of me think of one.

I used to be deadly accurate throwing a paper book of matches. A useless skill even when they were readily available.

I remember reading about a Pa Kua Chang master who could walk through a crowd with a full teacup and not spill any. For whatever reason I started to practice walking with a full to the brim teacup (with or without a handle) and now I can go up and down stairs with one or two and not spill anything. Usually

I can stand on one foot and tie my shoe in the air

I taught myself to balance on one foot by brushing by teeth on one foot for a few months lol