These things have become so esoteric and expensive because the mechanical keyboard hobby is undergoing a more intense version of what happens to most hobbies/pastimes; the purpose of the hobby has transitioned from primarily "making/using the thing" to "obtaining and displaying ever more extreme versions of the thing to impress other people who know about the thing".
I feel like this is an outgrowth of the basic human desire to form groups and define an in-group and an out-group; people start a hobby because they are interested in whatever, but after a while there develops an (often arbitrary) right way and wrong way to pursue the hobby, cliques form, and after a while participating in the hobby becomes an exercise in demonstrating that you've bought/made/done the right things and are therefore worthy of being in the in-group instead of the out-group.
I think this is so strong in the mechanical keyboard community because there's not a lot of "there" there; mechanical keyboards are nice to type on, but there's no core competitive activity that they're used for - you're not spending $1600 on a keyboard to improve your typing speed and accuracy 1.2% so you can have a shot at winning the big annual World Typing Tournament in Las Vegas. The mechanical keyboard community feels to me more like the streetwear or sneakerhead community than, say, R/C planes or surfing or whatever.
Very much signalling, you want something that sets you apart from other users and if that means custom CNC'd cases, with harvested switches that have been lubed using the finest tears mounted on a custom plate. So you have something to ogle and show off to the others. And that's before we get into the scarcity territory that sees secondhand TGR Alices going for over 5K.
It's weird, a good chunk of people buy my Georgis [1] and _don't actually use them_. It's a strange feeling to have something bought only because it's different and to be collected. I think keyboards are to be used, not hoarded personally but in this community it's very common to own at least a dozen boards.
Funny you should ask that! It's mostly because I'm hanging out it a ton of keyboard related Discord servers and the topic comes up naturally (downside of designing the things, your life revolves around it). Usually I'll post a few new images or screengrabs from KiCad and get a few comments along the line of 'someday I'll learn how to use mine!'. I mean there's students and people using them daily, but those comments just get me thinking.
A big issue moving to a new layout is learning/adapting to it. Georgi uses a chording approach [1] and is a compactified version of Gergos layout [2]. That makes it harder to learn.
Thankfully Gergos layout is meant for programming/shelling around and is fairly traditional. All I know is that my RSI flares a ton less then it used to! In theory, this applies to Georgi as well.
It's funny how on hacker news apparently buying a fancy keyboard for your home where no one can see it is "signalling", but if you point out that wearing Apple watch, holding iPhone, and displaying those ear buds is also signalling/branding/status symboling, I am generally very aggressively downvoted.
I'd say buying a mechanical keyboard with RGB lights and nice switches is probably 100X less signalling (several orders of magnitude) than buying a $300 phone for $1100 and wearing gaudy white ear buds.
It's very rare personally that I see other people's setups. It's not like people lug around $300 keyboards with their laptops.
But walk down any popular street in any major city and I bet you can tell who is signalling that they're part of the apple brand.
You're making an emotional response to something that you think is about you. Buying a mechanical keyboard and using it without showing it to anyone isn't what anyone was talking about. There are people that buy rare and expensive mechanical keyboards just to take pictures of them and post them on the internet.
I'm not sure why you tried to turn a discussion about hobbies degrading into wealth signalling into your distaste for apple products.
I actually think the original parent post was a more emotionally reactionary than this response. Yeah, it could be the case that mechanical keyboard enthusiasts are all virtue-signaling snobs chasing clout on the internet... or it could be that some people just enjoy the things? And want to share their cool things?
It could be that the community hivemind has decided on an orthodoxy and aggressively judges anyone who doesn't conform.. or it could be that we all just have different preferences and enjoy customizing our desks in this way!
Idk maybe some people are buying expensive kits just because they're expensive but that never occurred to me.
I've put together a number of fairly expensive keyboards ($700+) and I'm embarrassed to tell anyone I know (who sees them on my desk at home) how much they cost. I didn't build them for anyone but myself.
My dad thought one of them was really neat looking and was curious how much it cost. I was very reluctant to tell him but he kept asking and obviously was completely shocked when I told him the final cost. He couldn't understand it.
But, he has some expensive hobbies and I likened it to one of those. He couldn't relate to the joy of mechanical keyboards but he could relate to the passion of spending an illogical amount of money on something unnecessary but enjoyable.
Nearly everyone who has disposable income spends more than the average person does on something that they enjoy. That often means that you get something that is very unique to you and your personality. It's an expression of you, and that's comforting, even if it's only for yourself. These things are often entirely emotional decisions with no basis in logic whatever, and I think that's ok (assuming you can afford it).
I don't think many are buying any keyboard or kits just because they're expensive, but the cost might be indirectly related to the appeal -- because they're expensive they're more rare and that may make the buyer feel like they have something that is special and somewhat unique to them (because few others have it). I believe that same thing happens with rare and/or high end watches, cars, etc.
For sure, and starting from the assumption that we'd only get these things because they improve our typing is kind of like assuming car collectors only do it to improve their driving. Amusing to watch hackernews reverse-engineer the concept of a hobby from first principles.
I understand it can feel embarrassing to acknowledge the price of your hobbies but ultimately this is your money and you should be spending it on something that makes you happy (after you meet your personal obligations to family, those less fortunate, charities depending on your convictions, etc).
Ya, money is not a concern, it's just embarrassing because it's an obscure hobby that is hard to understand so most people just think I'm a little crazy. But if I had $5,000 in a stamp collection, nobody would bat an eye and those would literally never get used for their actual purpose. So, it's just kind of a double standard that probably haunts everyone with unusual hobbies.
I would disagree strongly, and I would go so far as to claim that signalling isn't done for the in-group, it's done for the out group.
Apple users don't wear white ear buds to signal to one another, they do it exclusively to signal to people who don't have it that the apple user can afford product and symbol greatly in excess of the person.
Same with mechanical keyboards. The signal there is to people using shitty 20$ dell membrane boards, and who see those beautiful machined aluminum boards and custom caps and feel jealous. The signal is about demonstrating you have more than someone else.
When two people who have similar things are showing it off, that's not signalling, that's talking shop.
Apple users don't wear white ear buds to signal to one another, they do it exclusively to signal to people who don't have it that the apple user can afford product and symbol greatly in excess of the person.
Or, you know, they're not interested in "signaling" anything, they're wearing them because they're the free ear buds that came with their smartphone and they're listening to music or making a phone call.
Right, and a decade of advertisements featuring those status symbols were pointless because no one cares about them.
Alternatively: Or you know, mechanical keyboard users aren't interested in "signalling" anything, they're just using well manufactured accessories featuring high quality processes and materials.
> Right, and a decade of advertisements featuring those status symbols were pointless because no one cares about them.
Or... we just use them because they are there. I use Apple products, also bought a pair of AirPods just a few weeks ago, not cause I want to signal I got money, but because the things are pretty nice to use as headphones. I have 6 pairs of headphones, and while these aren't perfect they fit the overall pro/con situation well compared to even stuff like Shure headphones.
Sometimes a spade is just a spade. Sometimes people really do just buy something for its utility. Even when we may not see it personally. While I'm sure there are BMW drivers that buy them for prestige or signalling, I am also quite sure there are drivers that bought it because they like the overall BMW experience, garage visits included (I can't resist sniping on this for my one buddy).
Just accept that there are Apple users that not only prefer, but are willing to pay the "tax" of not using Android or other phones.
So people are supposed to buy different earbuds so they're not signaling? Can't we then accuse them of signaling that they're not signaling? Doesn't that make your "wearing Apple earbuds = signaling" assumption completely pointless?
I'm just saying people do really use ear buds for their actual function, which is something your use of the word "exclusive" seemed to dismiss out of hand. Does that mean that nobody's going "ooh, look at my white earbuds, everyone?" Of course not. But the fact that some people do want to show them off doesn't mean that other people -- I would argue a lot of other people -- are just using the thing that came with their phone.
I never argued that mechanical keyboard users were interested in signaling anything -- but I'm sure a similar dichotomy applies. Some are interested in signaling. Some are interested in them because they're good to type on. The analogy only goes so far, though, because mechanical keyboards are an extra-cost purchase, while iPhone earbuds are free pack-ins which most people don't consider to have particularly good fit and sound quality. If I'm interested in a well-manufactured accessory featuring high quality processes and materials, I may buy a mechanical keyboard, but I will probably not stick with the damn white earbuds. If I'm wearing an audiophile brand of in-ear monitors most people won't recognize out in public, am I still doing it to "signal"?
Some people care about them. Personally I resent all this signaling because I just want to use my nice phone but everyone else is always "oooo you're so rich, look at your nice phone"
Or, alternatively, since I'm currently on an iphone SE, "oooo, what is wrong with you, why don't you upgrade to a new phone?!"
Another comment mentions functional utility. Put me in the camp that resents the desire for functional utility being misconstrued as social signaling
Are you willfully blind to the fact that people have consumer preference for Apple products? I spent extra money for a case that covers up the Apple logo but would gladly pay 2x the cost of this phone to avoid going back to Android hell.
> Same with mechanical keyboards. The signal there is to people using shitty 20$ dell membrane boards, and who see those beautiful machined aluminum boards and custom caps and feel jealous. The signal is about demonstrating you have more than someone else.
I think the average $20 membrane keyboard user is looking at these things and thinking, hey, that looks funny, assuming they notice them at all. Most people don't know that it's possible to spend $100, let alone $400 on a set of keycaps.
Did it ever occur to you that people buy mechanical keyboards because it's just good/better?
(And P.S. subjective ideas of good/better are what they are, but no fair objective analysis of price and value would agree with you. A thousand dollar phone is a pure status symbol and owning it has nothing to do with a rational attempt to achieve value per dollar)
I buy mechanical keyboards because I prefer them for desktop use. I buy iPhones because I prefer iOS's app ecosystem. These are both subjective but rational choices.
I own a $1000 phone and avoid as much as possible other people in public seeing it, because I don't want it to get stolen and I think being recognized for owning a "status symbol" is awkward.
Is it really so hard to believe that some people buy the most expensive iPhone simply because it's the best phone available on the market?
"Is it really so hard to believe that some people buy the most expensive iPhone simply because it's the best phone available on the market?"
I can believe that you THINK it's the best, and worth the money -- that's literally what advertising is for and how status symbols work -- but of course I would reject any claim that any $1000 phone is worth it on the merits. (Example, this 'pro' branded flagship phone comes standard with a bottom-of-the-industry 32GB of space, a laughably inferior specification for 2019 flagships where 64gb is standard and 128gb base is available. That's objectively the worst, not the best).
The iPhone 11 and 11 Pro both have a base storage of 64gb. If you are going to claim that a phone is overpriced at least get the specs you're complaining about right.
$1100 Iphone - I'm with you on this one, I have a super expensive phone and I don't see the quality over the flagship phones of what seems like yesterday being $600. There's a lot of expensive, cutting edge stuff in my Note9 and my wife's giant iPhone that we probably wouldn't miss if it were cheaper.
That being said I don't think in a world where so many people have iphones we can consider an iphone as that much of a signal for anything.
iWatch - This is a niche genre of cools toys where there's 2 viable options. 1 clearly nicer than the other but it doesn't matter because your phone unfortunately dictates which one you get. Yea its a signal but some people like to be early adopters and play with new toys, I don't think those people are buying them for the wrong reasons.
Apple Ear Buds - Headphone jacks are gone on our expensive phones. For a while there were like 2-3 options, all like $200, and they all have like 2-3 out of 5 star reviews because the tech isn't ready for primetime but apple's a POS and lets their products suffer just to be trendy and Samsung's a POS by racing to copy them. So the end result is people that want ear buds need them or a dongle. I don't really consider this a signal, but maybe that's because all of the wireless earbuds are bad and stupid looking. I bought Jabra but I honestly like the Apple ones though because its one of the only times they ever (in a way) chose function over form. They look far more ridiculous than most wireless earbuds.
I wouldn't pay much more than I already have for a keyboard, but I can provide one example of where someone paid a lot of money for a keyboard where he would not have gotten the same thing or a similar thing if he had paid less.
This video is considered the holy grail in terms of what a mechanical keyboard can sound like. An Apex Legends pro (Dizzy) asked him to replicate that exact build and at that point the parts were harder to source. Was it worth it? Still subjective, but to many people mechanical keyboards feel good to use because they like the way they sound.
I would love to pay less than $1000 for the new iphone, but the alternative is a platform that will sell me out to Google's highest bidder (Android) and has so many security and privacy issues that it is just downright scary. What's a nerd to do then if he wants the latest tech?
Librem/PureOS is an option but it's a bit of a nonstarter socially as there are a lot of interactions that take place over proprietary apps where alternatives are either way worse usability-wise or simply nonexistent. I'd love to switch to this platform but... most of my chats are on FB messenger/WhatsApp, my friend and I play scrabble via the scrabble app, and so on. What's the Librem option for that? Leaving open browser tabs and enabling those sites to send notifications?
I think this is so strong in the mechanical keyboard community because there's not a lot of "there" there
I think cast iron frying pans are an even more emblematic example of what you're describing. It's a four thousand year old product with no moving parts that's long been mastered, but over the past 15 years they've transitioned into a hobby item with ever-more-expensive niche vendors (Finex, Butter Pat, etc.) selling increasingly souped up versions that fry an egg almost indistinguishably from a basic, well-seasoned model.
Meanwhile there's another subset of hobbyists chasing esoteric vintage cast iron frying pans, often claiming the modern ones can never be as good.
Funny... my wife avoids status-chasing like the plague, yet giggled like a 12YO when she found her grandmother's ancient iron frying pan. She swears it is the best tool for the job, despite the fact that we have 3 others. Well-seasoned, indeed.
Sounds about right to me. The book The Human Zoo by Desmond Morris discusses this phenomenon r.e. people need to feel the best at something so they pick ever smaller niches or hobbies where they can finally compete at a level where they have a chance to get to the top.
I would recommend the book as a whole, it has a lot of other interesting info in it too.
>I think this is so strong in the mechanical keyboard community because there's not a lot of "there" there.
I actually disagree with that, which is why I'm a bit annoyed at the state of keyboard enthusiast communities. I think that there's plenty of room for improving keyboards, not necessarily for better performance but mainly for more comfort.
Over the past decade or so I've been using more and more "esotheric" layouts and mappings. I'm typing this comment on an ergodox mapped with a pretty heavily customized dvorak layout. And you get get much deeper in this rabbit hole with custom 3D printed keyboards like the Dactyl for instance. I've been working on a custom model in OpenSCAD and I'm looking at buying a 3D printer to experiment, I'm looking forward to using a custom Frankenstein'd keyboard in the future.
So clearly, I don't think keyboards are a solved problem. There's plenty of room for experimentation. What about foot pedals? Palm keys? Integration of touch pads or trackballs in the keyboard? What about weird modifier keys, for instance using shift keys to input ( and ) when not used as a modifier (I've been using that for about a year and I love it). What about adding cameras and some processing so that you can use hand gestures on top of typing on the keys? A compromise between "minority report" style interfaces and a good old contacts, with the strengths of both?
But I agree with your overall point: it seems like the bigger hobbyist communities around keyboards these days are about collecting and making fashion statements, not hacking keyboards. Just look at https://www.reddit.com/r/mechanicalkeyboards , if you like pictures of keyboards and keycaps (and ridiculously overcomplicated cables) it's amazing but beyond that it's mostly boring old typewriter layouts and qwerty. That's a bit disappointing IMO, but I guess it's just not for me.
Hi. Yes also annoyed by the state of the keyboard enthusiast communities, or rather, I just don't care about having an artisanal key or a rare keyboard, but rather RSI, efficiency, and customizability.
It sounds like you've gone down the rabbit hole with this. Could you tell me a bit about where you've landed especially wrt layout and custom programming?
I agree, because for all the money and chatter about them most of the companies providing them are making carbon copies of each other with little real innovation -- they're always the same square shape and its always about fancy keyswitches, RGB, and little else.
Computer-building has turned into this, at least if r/pcmasterrace is any indication. It's positively infuriating -- 99% of people's posts are bragging/validation, there are cliques/cargo cults around 144hz, LinusTechTips, RGB, and watercooling, and I cannot remember the last time I saw an in-depth technical discussion about anything there.
I personally think humans' need to form cliques and ingroups is its worse trait; it has transformed a deeply technical hobby that I love into yet another bragging and dick-waving contest :(
> they're always the same square shape and its always about fancy keyswitches, RGB, and little else.
This is where I disagree. I had severe hand and arm tendon pain for years, and finally dove into ergonomic mechanical keyboard options. It solved my issues, and I no longer feel the pain after typing all day.
I easily spend $350+ for a keyboard, and it's a very practical, life-changing decision, which involves a non-rectangular, non-RGB keyboard.
Fair enough, but when I look at pictures of peoples' builds it is almost always a square keyboard with fancy backlighting.
I'm personally a fan of the MS ergos with the wrist wrests and have mixed feelings about how that design doesn't seem to be getting replicated anywhere
I would guess there's a patent involved preventing another company from using it. I would definitely have bought an MS 3000/Sculpt with mechanical switches before I built my own ergodox. My problem was that I wore out my sculpt in like 14 months. Half of the space bar stopped working. I'm actually a little surprised Microsoft hasn't released one with mechanical switches.
What's most absurd is the difference between $90 and $1000 is trivial. If that money went into engineering, every key would be using a hall effect sensor and pneumatic springs, machined to high precision, NOT just more of the same mechanical switches. They are spending money on status and sometimes fancy raw materials, but not any substantive engineering effort for a better keyboard.
I just don't see how someone can possibly charge that much for a keyboard that would be significantly cheaper to make yourself even as a one off. It isn't like there is anything particularly special about the keyboard in the link, there isn't any specially skilled craftsmanship, it is just a couple anodized CNC machined pieces, a PCBA, and purchased switches and keycaps.
"you're not spending $1600 on a keyboard to improve your"
Well, it is $1600 for a keyboard that you are using 8h a day for the next five years vs a $5 Latte that you are enjoying the next 4 minutes. You do the math.
The difference being made that people are willing to spend big on short term things but are stingy on things that they use a lot. Be it a keyboard, shoes, bed sheets or whatever.
I just ordered a "new" keyboard. IBM Model M, space saving version. With below USD 200 a steal!
"More"? I understood CommieBobDole to be saying it was entirely about status signaling:
> the purpose of the hobby has transitioned from primarily "making/using the thing" to "obtaining and displaying ever more extreme versions of the thing to impress other people who know about the thing"
What do you think the difference is between "status signaling" and "impressing other people"?
Erm. Not having used (nor heard) the term "status signaling" before, I'd suggest that "status signaling" is a status signal that you (and now me) is trying to impress someone. ;-)
Status signaling is a specific way of impressing other people: it's impressing them with your status, sometimes called more precisely prestige (as opposed to, for example, your money, your strength, your talent, or your character), in a way that's difficult to fake because it's costly. So, for example, Donald Trump bragging on a talk show about sexually assaulting strange women counts as "status signaling", because it cost him some prestige, and if he hadn't had a lot of prestige to begin with, he would have ended up in jail. (Hopefully he will anyway, but so far he's not.)
Buying more extreme custom keyboards, by contrast, demonstrates knowledge and wealth, and it's a difficult-to-fake and costly signal of wealth — though much less so than, say, a Honda Accord or a Learjet. But wealth isn't the same thing as status, and attempting to signal wealth with something that costs US$500 or US$1000 is pretty much going to backfire unless you're in like Nigeria or something. It's like a hacker equivalent of putting spinners and tinted windows on your car — these are not features that distinguish Bugattis and Lamborghinis from quotidian BMWs.
Anyway, so I think that if it's impressing anybody, they're either poor or they're keyboard aficionados who are impressed with the refined taste that demonstrates your profound knowledge, not your elevated social standing or your wealth.
As for the guy who misread "signaling" as "virtue signalling", honey, bless your heart.
- Status signaling is the only way of impressing other people.
- Signaling is sending any message by any means. Signals that are difficult to fake are more effective than signals that aren't. But easy-to-fake signals are obviously still signals.
- Status is anything that impresses other people. Money, strength, talent, and character are all forms of status that are valued differently by different groups. If you're very strong, then you have high status among groups that respect strength -- as long as they know you're strong. Which is why you have to signal it.
You appear to have confused the concepts of "status signaling" and "conspicuous consumption".
> In biology, signals are traits, including structures and behaviours, that have evolved specifically because they change the behaviour of receivers in ways that benefit the signaller.
In other words, they are communication.
> When an alert bird deliberately gives a warning call to a stalking predator and the predator gives up the hunt, the sound is a signal.
Because warning calls are costly and difficult to fake? No, warning calls are faked all the time, to frighten other animals.
> Social status defines being liked. Some writers have also referred to a socially valued role or category a person occupies as a "status" (e.g., gender, race, having a criminal conviction, etc.). Status is based in beliefs about who members of a society believe holds comparatively more or less social value.
> In a society, the relative honor and prestige accorded to individuals depends on how well an individual is perceived to match a society's goals and ideals (e.g., being pious in a religious society).
> a teacher may have a positive societal image (respect, prestige) which increases their status but may earn little money, which simultaneously decreases their status.
This all amounts to... strong support for exactly what I already said. Did you read these articles before citing them?
I feel like this is an outgrowth of the basic human desire to form groups and define an in-group and an out-group; people start a hobby because they are interested in whatever, but after a while there develops an (often arbitrary) right way and wrong way to pursue the hobby, cliques form, and after a while participating in the hobby becomes an exercise in demonstrating that you've bought/made/done the right things and are therefore worthy of being in the in-group instead of the out-group.
I think this is so strong in the mechanical keyboard community because there's not a lot of "there" there; mechanical keyboards are nice to type on, but there's no core competitive activity that they're used for - you're not spending $1600 on a keyboard to improve your typing speed and accuracy 1.2% so you can have a shot at winning the big annual World Typing Tournament in Las Vegas. The mechanical keyboard community feels to me more like the streetwear or sneakerhead community than, say, R/C planes or surfing or whatever.