What I like about the internet is...

...the opportunity to be an amused spectator of the harmlessly Hobby-Horsed. Such as this guy, who has an entire blog devoted to collecting pictures of moustaches, but who blogs with a tongue-in-cheek persona that actually manages to make the whole thing entertaining. (One pities, by willing suspension of disbelief, the hapless manservant Joseph.) It's very much in the vein pioneered by The Manolo, which provides information of genuine value to the 1% of Americans who actually care about shoe fashion, but is read by a far wider audience just for the sake of the giggles.

As for the question of why a person would fritter away his time on such an obsession, I give you the musings of noted English gentleman Tristam Shandy:

Nay, if you come to that, Sir, have not the wisest of men in all ages, not excepting Solomon himself, -- have they not had their HOBBY-HORSES ; -- their running horses, -- their coins and their cockle-shells, their drums and their trumpets, their fiddles, their pallets, ---- their maggots and their butterflies ? -- and so long as a man rides his HOBBY-HORSE peaceably and quietly along the King's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him, ---- pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?

-- De gustibus non est disputandum; -- that is, there is no disputing against HOBBY-HORSES ; and, for my part, I seldom do; nor could I with any sort of grace, had I been an enemy to them at the bottom; for happening, at certain intervals and changes of the Moon, to be both fiddler and painter, according as the fly stings : -- Be it known to you, that I keep a couple of pads myself, upon which, in their turns, (nor do I care who knows it) I frequently ride out and take the air ; -- tho' sometimes, to my shame be it spoken, I take somewhat longer journies than what a wise man would think altogether right. ---- But the truth is, -- I am not a wise man ; ---- and besides am a mortal of so little consequence in the world, it is not much matter what I do ; so I seldom fret or fume at all about it : Nor does it much disturb my rest when I see such great Lords and tall Personages as hereafter follow ; -- such, for instance, as my Lord A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, and so on, all of a row, mounted upon their several horses ; -- some with large stirrups, getting on in a more grave and sober pace ; ---- others on the contrary, tuck'd up to their very chins, with whips across their mouths, scouring and scampering it away like so many little party-colour'd devils astride a mortgage, ---- and as if some of them were resolved to break their necks. -- So much the better -- say I to myself ; -- for in case the worst should happen, the world will make a shift to do excellently well without them ; -- and for the rest, ---- why, ---- God speed them, ---- e'en let them ride on without any opposition from me ; for were their lordships unhorsed this very night, ---- 'tis ten to one but that many of them would be worse mounted by one half before tomorrow morning.