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'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.