"Consumption" is the old-timey name for Tuberculosis, incidentally.
I hate "content".
I think I share a common sentiment with a lot of people who have started to pay more attention to how much energy and resources we waste, day to day. The way this is framed is also a bit funny, apparently over in the US this is considered an undeniably political issue. I remember watching a video recently on YouTube, where the host sets up an old office computer as a home server, and then compares it to a newer low-power mini computer.
Before discussing the differences in power consumption and the emissions that come with it, and discussing the fact that a newer device's manufacturing also introduces more emissions, he made a big point out of his comparison not being "him standing up on his soapbox", and that hey even if you don't care about the environment too much, there's a power bill difference here at play.
Funny. You can't even bring it up without having to caveat any point you make first to show you're "reasonable". As if burning fuel and tires and wrapping everything we eat in plastic is something that shouldn't be questioned.
I digress. Home servers, homelab stuff, that's just a hobby for me, and one that I really have not gotten deep into. I find it cool that there is a pushback against companies trying to take every basic premise for a digital "thing" that needs to be done and turn it into a vampiric monthly subscription. Nobody should pay for note-taking.
Like any hobby, it's a concept that I need to have been exposed to, and afterwards, something I participate in. As a normal human being, I have flirted with hobbies that I have dropped before they were taken seriously, I've postponed participating in others for so long it upsets me, and there are others I've just fallen into and integrated into my life. Nothing wrong with enjoying things, it's important to enjoy things.
One thing that bothers me as it sits in the background of this conversation is the topic of consumerism as it relates to hobby spaces. As the world of the internet has evolved and as our lives have evolved to grapple with it, more and more of this "participation" in our respective hobbies has included consumption of hobby media. This isn't new, it's certainly not just an internet thing - twentieth-century hobby magazines have an undeniable cool factor to me. But online video amplifies this problem to new highs, and it's always there.
Let's say I want to buy a new little handheld emulator to play retro games on. I can emulate them just fine on my computer or my phone, but the overall experience of holding a physical thing and having the bingbong noises come from a tinny speaker as I push the physical controls is something I'm willing to pay for. Fine. Which tiny machine do I buy?
Some people will whip Google open, others TikTok (yes), some will go straight to YouTube, others straight to Amazon (or Aliexpress in my part of the world). At least in my case, I will want to see a comparison between the most common handhelds. Inevitably, it will lead me to type something like "best emulator handheld 2024 site:reddit.com" into my search bar. As I try to understand what makes one feature better than the other, or as I try to see how a part of the device moves, or whatever, someone will comment a link to a comparison video, and I'll watch two or three.
The video will be of a (almost unfailingly) male host, discussing this latest machine, and comparing it to a half dozen others. I will watch the video, and most likely place an order for whichever one I deem second best, because I am a financially responsible person, I tell myself.
Those videos, those channels, so many of them. As a consequence of becoming someone who reviews these devices for (ostensibly) the public's benefit, these guys will have piles upon piles of little machines with lithium-ion batteries just sitting somewhere. Now tell me, what happens to these handhelds? Will they be used to bring someone the joy of pre-2001 dubiously collected video games? Or will the reviewer be too busy reviewing the next product?
I have a similar gripe with keyboards. I use a keyboard most hours of most days, as many people do. My job happens at a computer most hours of the week, and a lot of my own downtime does too, between gaming and writing and watching or listening to things. A nice keyboard built to my own tastes doesn't seem like a bad use of my money.
But the keyboard world has been on a wild trajectory ever since the pandemic locked a lot of people with disposable income inside. New switches releasing every other week, increasingly expensive new keycap sets releasing more and more frequently. I like choice, an abundance of choice isn't bad to have, but it's weird to see this hobby end up here. Historically, keyboard people have been older computer people and retro computing enthusiasts. A lot of keyboard discussions online centered around restoring old models that have been out of production for years, around being savvy with acquiring them, and about making them talk to new computers. It was a very DIY-centric community, of people with a weird knack for tech that the manufacturers didn't even care about. It was a little tragic, but also, culturally, not just a marketplace.
Like, there is a hobby element to me developing my tastes and researching what makes something nice or at least interesting, before I flesh out my ideas into a keyboard project. Behold my two radically different but still tactically satisfying projects. But I have grown to resent the keyboard world, because I feel like more than ever I am being pandered to, I am a sale that needs to happen. To be much more blunt, the following is the statement that has motivated this whole post:
To participate in this hobby is to buy.
Ew.
I am far and away not the first person to complain about consumerism-as-identity. But its ubiquity in a short-termist world where everyone has an external stimulus repeatedly begging them to monetize their hobbies, it disgusts me.
Another example: I have recently gotten back into looking at the wild world of multi-tools, such as the evergreen Swiss Army Knife. While I no longer camp, and while I am embarrassed not to remember when my last real hike was, I still really like these things. I've always liked them even as a kid, but I never had one and recently realized that I can just buy one as an adult. And what do I do when I want to buy something? Of course, I fall into a new research rabbit hole. I enjoy the research. It's not the problem.
The problem is finding the same issues again and again. Victorinox, the company that makes the most popular line of these tools, has not been content with having a stellar reputation as a company that makes quality products that can be used by just about anyone. You see, selling one knife that lasts a lifetime per person, that's bad for business. Victorinox has been going for the lifestyle market. They want to find the people that are willing to buy 40 knives, and cater to their tastes.
Those guys did not think highly of Victorinox's latest round of knives which have been given special designations and designs, come with special accessories, and have a special markup. The description also mentions them being multi-tools that bring out the user's "feminine side", which definitely went well with the knife folks. Cheap, cheesy marketing for what should be a decent tool that could fit into anyone's life. As if not being feminine enough was a real reason for their products not appealing enough to women.
But that is still not the main problem. These knives are made by knife people and marketed by marketers, there's nothing weird about the products lining up with knife enthusiasts' tastes and those demanded by marketers, and the dichotomy that creates, oh no. My main problem is with the community.
I learned that there is a community of people who like to tailor and tweak a set of handy day-to-day tools - they call it EDC (every day carry) and that's the initialism that the community assembles itself around. I found it interesting to see what some people have been finding uses for. A window into different lives. A window into a world where some people are very obsessive about flashlights, screwdrivers, and occasionally guns (let's not). Network engineers carry very different tools than people who run their own café. Occasionally I'll see something I'll remember needing and not having on me. It's interesting!
But maddeningly, a lot of these posts bothered me for the same problem I have seen with keyboards and guitars and emulation handhelds. A lot of these people were obsessing over some kind of perfection they were reaching for. The point of this community was some kind of readiness culture but here they were, buying different variations of similar tools and carefully arranging and rearranging and creating different setups for different scenarios - again, I like tools, but isn't there something funny about turning a hobby about practicality into obsessing over small details? About buying more things? And more things? And more things? What's practical about buying a specific pocket clip?
I specifically got pissed one day with an EDC video popping up in my recommended videos by YouTube. The channel name? I shit you not:
Disgusting.
This whole obsession with consumption-as-hobby has another dimension. Let's look at these handheld emulator channels again. The only way to make "content" about these things for any prolonged period of time is to have tens of them sitting around to compare things. But this has a knock-on effect: it normalizes the image of someone having several of these around. Again, these companies seem to be in the business of looking for a specific kind of consumer who is willing to buy 40 products and then post them, making it look like that's the way to do it. It's exhausting. Even the image I've linked above is from one person who now has two very similar devices.
I've felt that pressure myself: I have a device very similar to the ones in that image. But you see, those devices don't have joysticks and are not powerful enough to play Gamecube and PSP games, wouldn't it be nice if I had one for - NO. I can play these games on my computer or on my Deck. I don't need more gaming things. Like I even finish work early enough to play games most weekdays.
To keep making "content", these people have to keep getting more items to show and encouraging their viewers, implicitly if not explicitly, to buy more. They may even be sponsored by a vendor directly. They are epitomizing consumption-as-hobby, where your identity as a person with that interest is made up of what you like to buy, what you've bought, and where you buy from.
I just hate all of this. The "content economy" is rotting our perceptions of a healthy relationship with physical items more and more.
GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) has been a meme in the guitar community for what must be decades at this point. People joking about how they are more interested in buying guitars and guitar things, and how that's grown to the point that it's eclipsed them actually playing the damn thing. This problem is not new. But it has been doused with rocket fuel and set alight to take us all out with it.
What is my point here? Is it that my bias for a certain type of hobby has exacerbated my hatred for the consumption culture that I very much still am complicit in?
It's just that I hate how enjoying a thing or concept is seen as an avenue to make someone a consumption addict. That is all. It's all the buying, it's all the unneeded production that ends up in landfills. It's normalizing buying too much of something and calling that a hobby. It's the fact that a channel could be called that name.
PS: As I sit and write this, I remember this video by the venerable Lance Hedrick: MOST IMPORTANT VIDEO I'VE EVER MADE: Ultimate Coffee Grinder Discussion
It's a similar discussion, from the reviewer's side, from the coffee world.
Credit for the image of the handhelds goes to this post that I just found on Google Images.