Tech “Hobbies” Are Just Consumerism
No one needs more than one pair of nice-sounding headphones. Yet that didn’t stop me from buying and selling dozens of them over the last six years and justifying it by flexing my writing skills reviewing them online. Nor does it prevent thousands of audiophiles from discussing their ins and outs every day across Reddit and several popular message boards under the pretext of “advancing the hobby.”
Most of them probably spend more time justifying their purchases online than actually, you know, listening to music.
Technology isn’t supposed to be a “hobby.” It’s a means to an end. It’s a beautiful thing that lets you experience or create other beautiful things. But thanks to the magic of intense marketing campaigns and the omnipresent societal desire for more, buying piles of new tech is now a substitute for things like, I don’t know, hiking. You buy it, you show it off, other people want it, the marketing fires up, and the cycle continues.
It’s one thing to be an engineering hobbyist building cool stuff in your garage. That’s how big companies like Apple got started — in the days when they didn’t admit to using child labor. It’s another thing to just evangelize your favorite brand blindly and think that’s somehow making you a…
