4 ms·

They can be a source of good knowledge but they also kind of weird me out. Fetishizing the tools used to accomplish things, rather than doing the thing.. Anythi

by floren 4y ago

They can be a source of good knowledge but they also kind of weird me out. Fetishizing the tools used to accomplish things, rather than doing the thing.. Anything related to writing gets it especially: pens, typewriters, mechanical keyboards. Then there's the "manliness" thing: wet shaving, fedoras, suits, etc. Photography too, whole forums of people debating the technical aspects of a 50mm f1.5 prime lens instead of taking photos. Audiophiles. Gun people who spend a lot of money on accessories but can barely hit the paper. Guitar guys who spend $5000 on an amp but just crank out the same 3 Van Halen songs.

Rayhem 4y ago
The reckless consumption here is what gets me. I know people with seven+ mechanical keyboards. So they can have the mini one. The split one. The quiet one. The loud one. The travel one. The 'normie' one. The broken one. The office-vengeance-because-each-keypress-sounds-like-a-gunshot one. They're not collector's items and they're certainly not all used, nor are they on display anywhere (because literally everyone, even enthusiasts, rolls their eyes at that). They're just obtained purely for the sake of obtainment. Far be it from me to tell anyone not to have a mechanical keyboard or that their own hobbies are not worth indulgences when my own are (of course), but I think a little mindfulness about consumption is a more-than-reasonable request here.
- floren 4y ago
  I also think at some point we decided, culturally, that "buying things" can constitute a hobby.
  - TremendousJudge 4y ago
    I'd say "owning" rather than "buying", but collecting has existed as a hobby for a long, long while.
    - hammyhavoc 4y ago
      "Collecting". Hoarding.
- jurassic 4y ago
  Everyone is different, but I’ve ended up with a lot of keyboards along my journey to find the perfect keyboard for me. I don’t think of myself as a collector even though I’ve probably got $3-4k in keyboard stuff now. There are a lot of variables in play and it’s difficult to know what you will like until you have something under your fingers (layout, slope or tenting capabilities, switches, keycap profile, keycap material, general aesthetics, etc). People do take it to ridiculous extremes, but I don’t think it’s a bad impulse to want to optimize the visual/tactile/ergonomic/auditory experience of the peripherals I spend a majority of my waking life interacting with. The way a large part of the hobby operates on limited edition group buys also creates massive FOMO. I’ve definitely been moved to buy things now that I would otherwise not have because everything is now-or-never. That dynamic makes it different from other pure collecting hobbies with more of a secondary market for used or vintage items (pens, typewriters, coins, trading cards, etc).
  - Rayhem 4y ago
    > I don’t think it’s a bad impulse to want to optimize the visual/tactile/ergonomic/auditory experience of peripherals Are you optimizing? Do you have a measurable fitness function and know what will slide you up or down that surface? How do you know you're not just conjuring faults with old setups to juice novelty? > limited edition group buys also creates massive FOMO I've been here. I recently spent some time looking at new vehicles, trying to decide which one was "best", agonizing over minor ergonomic details, how clean each company's color would be in 10 years, etc. After a little too much of this I came to the conclusion that that was exactly what manufacturers wanted me to do so I would be susceptible to any and all advertising. Ultimately I looked at the two vehicles I spent the most time thinking about, said "Which of these is most comfortable immediately after getting in", and pulled the trigger. I'm infinitely happier for having finalized something and freeing up bandwidth for other things I truly enjoy than for having spent six more months agonizing over where a switch was located.
    - jurassic 4y ago
      A lot of my exploration has been centered on ergonomic concerns and exploring different positions and layout sizes. I do think my overall progress has been in the direction of “better for my body”. But I would struggle to quantify it in an non-subjective way. I started with a stock Filco 75% TKL layout with cherry mx browns (as vanilla as it gets in mechanical keyboards). Then a couple years later I bought a nicer TKL board and my first fancy keycaps just for aesthetic reasons, and while doing that I became exposed to the wide range of layouts that exist. I had some wrist pain so decided to try some exotic angled layouts (atreus62, alice, etc). Eventually decided I needed a fully split layout to get my shoulder position and overall posture where I wanted it, and there are a lot of these variants at various levels of compactness and functionality. And of course once you’re into nonstandard layouts it’s always a battle to find caps that will cover it, so often nice caps that I bought in the past can’t transfer over to a new layout because I don’t have the right mods and spacebars. I like the aesthetic element also. But it’s not been my primary driver. The keycaps I have are very nice and more than enough to satisfy me.
- midiguy 4y ago
  I think sometimes these 'hobbyists' border on patterns of addiction and escapism. I know that when I am anxious or depressed in my life I put my focus on one of these rabbitholes to escape - while I am researching the next thing to buy I can ignore everything else in my life. And it doesn't take any considerable effort or practice to buy stuff unlike learning new skills (therefore it's more depression-friendly). So I keep doing it. Pens, keyboards, knives, whatever. And then I move onto the next rabbithole. It's better than booze and drugs, but is an unproductive use of money that does not bring lasting happiness. Luckily now I am better at recognizing and stopping this pattern, asking myself what the hell I am buying this stuff to accomplish and focusing back on that - writing, programming, the actual act of photography, etc. And recognizing if there are unhealthy mental patterns underlying the behavior that need to be tackled head-on.
lake_vincent 4y ago
That's why I love them. I benefit from their obsession because they definitely know how to find the good shit. I'm not a mechanical keyboard fanatic, but I browsed their forums and found an excellent, affordable, keyboard I would have never found otherwise. I just use it and get on with my life, not going down that rabbit hole, but I'm grateful for the ones who did and found this beautiful board that I really do enjoy using. Same with wetshaving - they're a little obsessed, but I benefit from that because now I have an irritation-free shaving routine that I would have never found without them!
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  Name the board for those curious!
  - lake_vincent 4y ago
    Of course! It's the NumPhy Air75. It's considered an entry level board, so it's nothing fancy, but for me it's been great.
    - hammyhavoc 4y ago
      Looks like a great board for the price. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever.
vlunkr 4y ago
I followed r/MechanicalKeyboard for a while, but I get the same weird sense. There are cool posts of people building their own boards, caps, etc. But there are tons of posts from people who have probably spent 5 or 6 figures on their collections. It's a strange and very specific addiction.
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  What surprises me the most is how few of them must seriously use them given how many common important keys are missing for use of CAD, DAWs et al.
wrp 4y ago
> Fetishizing the tools used to accomplish things, rather than doing the thing... What you are describing is fascination with the engineering aspect of things. That's something I would expect the HN crowd to easily relate to.
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  Likewise, I see a lot of people more interested in the tools in any industry are not infrequently lacking in basic skills using it, but can tell you a bunch of useless facts. I see similar with university graduates who are all theory and no applicable skill.
hammyhavoc 4y ago
I read "Photography" as "Pornography" and was like "that's manly af".

by floren 4y ago

Rayhem 4y ago

The reckless consumption here is what gets me. I know people with seven+ mechanical keyboards. So they can have the mini one. The split one. The quiet one. The loud one. The travel one. The 'normie' one. The broken one. The office-vengeance-because-each-keypress-sounds-like-a-gunshot one. They're not collector's items and they're certainly not all used, nor are they on display anywhere (because literally everyone, even enthusiasts, rolls their eyes at that). They're just obtained purely for the sake of obtainment. Far be it from me to tell anyone not to have a mechanical keyboard or that their own hobbies are not worth indulgences when my own are (of course), but I think a little mindfulness about consumption is a more-than-reasonable request here.

floren 4y ago
I also think at some point we decided, culturally, that "buying things" can constitute a hobby.
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  I'd say "owning" rather than "buying", but collecting has existed as a hobby for a long, long while.
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    "Collecting". Hoarding.
jurassic 4y ago
Everyone is different, but I’ve ended up with a lot of keyboards along my journey to find the perfect keyboard for me. I don’t think of myself as a collector even though I’ve probably got $3-4k in keyboard stuff now. There are a lot of variables in play and it’s difficult to know what you will like until you have something under your fingers (layout, slope or tenting capabilities, switches, keycap profile, keycap material, general aesthetics, etc). People do take it to ridiculous extremes, but I don’t think it’s a bad impulse to want to optimize the visual/tactile/ergonomic/auditory experience of the peripherals I spend a majority of my waking life interacting with. The way a large part of the hobby operates on limited edition group buys also creates massive FOMO. I’ve definitely been moved to buy things now that I would otherwise not have because everything is now-or-never. That dynamic makes it different from other pure collecting hobbies with more of a secondary market for used or vintage items (pens, typewriters, coins, trading cards, etc).
- Rayhem 4y ago
  > I don’t think it’s a bad impulse to want to optimize the visual/tactile/ergonomic/auditory experience of peripherals Are you optimizing? Do you have a measurable fitness function and know what will slide you up or down that surface? How do you know you're not just conjuring faults with old setups to juice novelty? > limited edition group buys also creates massive FOMO I've been here. I recently spent some time looking at new vehicles, trying to decide which one was "best", agonizing over minor ergonomic details, how clean each company's color would be in 10 years, etc. After a little too much of this I came to the conclusion that that was exactly what manufacturers wanted me to do so I would be susceptible to any and all advertising. Ultimately I looked at the two vehicles I spent the most time thinking about, said "Which of these is most comfortable immediately after getting in", and pulled the trigger. I'm infinitely happier for having finalized something and freeing up bandwidth for other things I truly enjoy than for having spent six more months agonizing over where a switch was located.
  - jurassic 4y ago
    A lot of my exploration has been centered on ergonomic concerns and exploring different positions and layout sizes. I do think my overall progress has been in the direction of “better for my body”. But I would struggle to quantify it in an non-subjective way. I started with a stock Filco 75% TKL layout with cherry mx browns (as vanilla as it gets in mechanical keyboards). Then a couple years later I bought a nicer TKL board and my first fancy keycaps just for aesthetic reasons, and while doing that I became exposed to the wide range of layouts that exist. I had some wrist pain so decided to try some exotic angled layouts (atreus62, alice, etc). Eventually decided I needed a fully split layout to get my shoulder position and overall posture where I wanted it, and there are a lot of these variants at various levels of compactness and functionality. And of course once you’re into nonstandard layouts it’s always a battle to find caps that will cover it, so often nice caps that I bought in the past can’t transfer over to a new layout because I don’t have the right mods and spacebars. I like the aesthetic element also. But it’s not been my primary driver. The keycaps I have are very nice and more than enough to satisfy me.
midiguy 4y ago
I think sometimes these 'hobbyists' border on patterns of addiction and escapism. I know that when I am anxious or depressed in my life I put my focus on one of these rabbitholes to escape - while I am researching the next thing to buy I can ignore everything else in my life. And it doesn't take any considerable effort or practice to buy stuff unlike learning new skills (therefore it's more depression-friendly). So I keep doing it. Pens, keyboards, knives, whatever. And then I move onto the next rabbithole. It's better than booze and drugs, but is an unproductive use of money that does not bring lasting happiness. Luckily now I am better at recognizing and stopping this pattern, asking myself what the hell I am buying this stuff to accomplish and focusing back on that - writing, programming, the actual act of photography, etc. And recognizing if there are unhealthy mental patterns underlying the behavior that need to be tackled head-on.

lake_vincent 4y ago

That's why I love them. I benefit from their obsession because they definitely know how to find the good shit. I'm not a mechanical keyboard fanatic, but I browsed their forums and found an excellent, affordable, keyboard I would have never found otherwise. I just use it and get on with my life, not going down that rabbit hole, but I'm grateful for the ones who did and found this beautiful board that I really do enjoy using. Same with wetshaving - they're a little obsessed, but I benefit from that because now I have an irritation-free shaving routine that I would have never found without them!

hammyhavoc 4y ago
Name the board for those curious!
- lake_vincent 4y ago
  Of course! It's the NumPhy Air75. It's considered an entry level board, so it's nothing fancy, but for me it's been great.
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    Looks like a great board for the price. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever.

vlunkr 4y ago

I followed r/MechanicalKeyboard for a while, but I get the same weird sense. There are cool posts of people building their own boards, caps, etc. But there are tons of posts from people who have probably spent 5 or 6 figures on their collections. It's a strange and very specific addiction.

hammyhavoc 4y ago
What surprises me the most is how few of them must seriously use them given how many common important keys are missing for use of CAD, DAWs et al.

wrp 4y ago

> Fetishizing the tools used to accomplish things, rather than doing the thing... What you are describing is fascination with the engineering aspect of things. That's something I would expect the HN crowd to easily relate to.

hammyhavoc 4y ago
Likewise, I see a lot of people more interested in the tools in any industry are not infrequently lacking in basic skills using it, but can tell you a bunch of useless facts. I see similar with university graduates who are all theory and no applicable skill.

hammyhavoc 4y ago

I read "Photography" as "Pornography" and was like "that's manly af".