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What constitutes a hobby? 

In my 20s, I was so busy grinding that I rarely had time to engage with the things I would list as my hobbies, if asked. I would tell you I love cosplay, but I haven't made or worn a costume since I was 18. I would tell you I love video games, and I have always counted at least 1 game console and a decent gaming computer as among the things that have to be in my home, like a sofa or a stove (yes, I realize with all of those items, my privilege and US culture is showing. I am grateful, and I know which order those things would get sacrificed in if things got worse) but I can count on one hand the number of games I've actually played all the way through in the last couple of decades. I would list hiking, but mostly as a ploy to trick you into thinking I go outside. 

Recently decided to treat myself to a nice keyboard for my computer. I've had the same cheap entry-level gaming keyboard since 2012, and for reasons I don't remember, I decided it was time. It might have been because I saw some keycaps I really liked, honestly. Either way, I did a little digging online. I had to learn what the deal was with switches, and why they came in colors, because every keyboard seemed to list them like this was important and meaningful information. Button-press feel even being a consideration was a whole new idea for me. I decided since I'm not a world-class typist and mis-key a lot, I didn't want the trigger-pull to be too light. I brush the wrong buttons even more often than I press them, and I wanted to reduce my mistakes to only when I am confidently wrong. I settled on "brown" switches. My old faithful had a 100% layout, so I wanted to maintain that. I use my number pad all the time and I wasn't willing to relinquish it. I had also gotten used to the little wheel in the corner that controls the volume. That's far harder to find than I feel like it should be. 

The first keyboard I bought was actually a bit of a mistake, as I was having trouble finding one with both the 100% layout and the knob and thought maybe dedicated up and down volume keys would be sufficient. I also live in Japan, and was shopping on Japanese Amazon. What I ended up with was a very respectable denim-blue and gray Japanese-layout keyboard that would be right at home in a slightly funky office (it wasn't fancy, but it did still include rainbow RGB). The JIS was a surprise brought on by un-cautious reading, but I thought maybe it would be good, since I live in Japan and am trying to learn Japanese. Perhaps soon I would find myself needing to type in it and this would be useful. I soon discovered that the Japanese keys meant nothing to my American PC, and even installing Japanese language packs and keyboard setups did not cause pushing the key marked あ  to produce an あ. Also, a couple keys that are unique to JIS (like the key that switches from Hiragana to Katakana) just didn't do anything, and there are a few characters that JIS puts in different spots than the common US layout, and my PC returned what it expected, not what the keyboard said was there. So I was always a bit turned around. Also the backspace was only 1U wide? This was when I learned that apparently, it's pretty normal for people typing in Japanese to basically be typing in Romanji? Instead of pushing a key labeled with the right character, typing あ actually just involves typing "a" and letting Windows make the conversion. Typing も is matter of pushing "m-o" and つ comes from typing "t-s-u." Haven't asked anyone Japanese, but what I read online made it sound like that's normal, partially because JIS is only used in Japan, and western gear is just more common, globally. Of course, English-speaking people do love to weigh in on How Japan Is more than anything. Anyway, it was nothing I couldn't get used to, and I did like the feel and sound of the keys. The lack of a knob made me sad but it was what it was until the keycaps that sparked this whole idea arrived. That's when I learned that another side effect of the rarity of the JIS layout outside of Japan means that keycap sets, which come with lots of extra keys to accommodate a few kinds of layouts, typically do not bother with JIS. There were enough silly icon keys to cover most things that didn't appear, and western replacements better labeled what my computer was understanding my keypresses as anyway, but it turns out that JIS's 4U spacebar is a completely unique feature. So, I had a cool, fancy keycap set with a plain, blue-gray spacebar and the whole thing just felt meh. 

With a little extra digging, I found what I was actually looking for. An Epomaker X Aula 100% gaming keyboard with a control wheel and a familiar loadout. My silly keycaps fit on it perfectly. It has customizable RGB patterns. I didn't know what a "Reaper" switch was and I still don't, but I figured if I didn't like it, I could borrow the brown ones off my first keyboard. That has thus far been unnecessary as they are clearly different, but not worse. Much like changing the case on my phone tends to feel refreshing, I like the idea that I can change the aesthetics of this little guy at will without having to re-start the feature-shopping process, since apparently the things I like most are such uncommon, picky features.

All this careful shopping means all my algorithms are currently tuned to feed me keyboard ads and keyboard content. I thought my sweet new board was pretty high-end, and felt like a major indulgence, as it was in fact not what my head considers the "correct" price of a keyboard ($20 or less). But it gets referred to in reviews as a good choice for people who are into "budget" mechanical keyboards, and a solid "entry-level" option. Alright, bud. I guess there is always something nicer out there, but mine certainly makes me happy. I also saw people talking about their "latest" build and their "collection" and referring to common thought patterns among people "in this hobby" and that lead to some questions. 

How are computer keyboards a hobby?

I understand shopping for just the right one (after all, I just came through that process). I understand deciding to build your own (very cool, if you have the time, resources and knowledge). I understand the availability of customization options. With the huge influx of people who work from home, and the overall prevalence of "computer" jobs in this modern age, your keyboard is more and more many people's instrument and weapon, the tool they spend more time in contact with than anything else. A mechanic has opinions about wrenches. A photographer has opinions about camera gear. Why wouldn't coders and email-answerers and report-writers and book-writers and forum-posters and gamers want the ability to fine-tune their experience. I am an artist. This hunk of plastic and wires is my brush. Why shouldn't it suit me?

But, once you've got a setup that feels right, other than learning about something new that suits you even better down the line and upgrading, what else is there to do? Why would you collect them?

How is Buying Stuff a hobby?

When I step back, though, the way Americans at least engage with almost every hobby is through buying stuff. To be a computer hobbyist is to buy parts and upgrades in perpetuity. Sports people buy sporting equipment. Crafters joke constantly about their arrays of craft supplies, and book people about their piles of treasured and to-be-read books. There's always a better tool, a new color, a sturdier strap, a worn piece that needs replacing. So much of it is just shopping and collecting, and seeing the internet full of people with more resources and time and energy than you doing more, doing it better, looking cooler doing it, performing at a higher level, and... We've let our culture treat that as normal, mostly because it serves the market to keep us shopping. I think plenty of people are not hypnotized by the constant push to buy and shop and consume and upgrade. Certainly plenty of hobbies require maybe one or two tools that can be acquired once, treasured and used until they wear out, or require no tools at all. I think some people are passionate about doing and will do with whatever they have, and some people dream of doing and buy so that they feel like they might, or totally will as soon as they get through these next few weeks. I also think some people just want to be in the club, and to be seen buying is to signal that they are. I think as difficult as the economy is for everyone, that latter one must be a dwindling population. And some people are just doing what they think they have to so they can keep up.

And yes, I know about collecting as a hobby. I've always kind of imagined that the joy there is the thrill of the hunt? I don't know. I collect, but with very specific energy. Like, I love commemorative doodads from places I've been and things I've done, because what I am actually collecting is the experience, and the object is a tangible representation of the memory, which others could hypothetically see and know where I've been. I also find I like weeby waifu prize figurines, but only because they feel like a weird trophy for winning at a game. Plus, Japan has such a culture of seasonal, brief appearances of things, that some objects are representations of having been a certain place at a certain time, and that's a memory too. Trading card games make the most sense, because you end up with a pile of the cards in service of hunting for more powerful components to literally play a game with. The point isn't "look at my 7,000 cards" it's "Look at the most powerful cards I have found." Those also do get bought and sold with fluctuating market value like art, so that's it's own whole thing. There is also, I suspect more for women than men, a push to define a set of collections and favorites so that when people who don't know you need to give you a gift out of social obligation, there is easily-remembered superficial information about you they can use to pick something without needing to spend a lot of time, effort, or money. Mrs. Jones likes frogs. All her desk decorations are frog-themed. If you're her Secret Santa at Christmas, get her a frog thing. My animal is hamster. My flower is plumeria. When I was a kid, I really liked stone eggs, and every time someone saw a stone egg, they would get it for me. Did I need a stone egg? No. They're traditionally for darning socks, a task I have never done in my life. But they're everywhere, for all kinds of reasons, inexpensive and an easy way to say "I was thinking about you while I was out and about." So, I had a collection of them. But I can't imagine hunting them down, or searching for deals online. 

Keyboards, however, do not have time and place to them. They're deeply personal, and not a good gift except from someone who knows you exceptionally well. They do come in a lot of lovely patterns and shapes these days but are still, generally, rectangles. So like, you can display them, and clearly people do, but the color isn't what makes any particular one good, and when it's hung on the wall there isn't much difference between a $100 keyboard and a $20 keyboard. The only meaning to a keyboard is it's ability to interface with a computer. I have a bunch of keyboards in my closet (maybe too many if you ask my husband) but they're all cheap ones I have gotten for free with PCs, or needed for different interface setups as my life has changed (wireless vs corded, a couple minor upgrades) that I just haven't thrown out because I am a packrat and can't shake the idea that if something happens to the keyboard I am using (more likely when you're rocking the free-with-tower special that is not built for quality in the first place) I might not have the time or money to replace it right away and might not be able to afford to have nothing in the mean time. Is all that a real worry? No, it's a mild anxiety response. But, I don't toss things that work, even if I don't need them anymore. That isn't a collection any more than I have a collection of socks. 

I had to know what constitutes a high-end keyboard. While I was at the electronics store the other night, I was entertained by the selection with metal bodies, as opposed to the plastic casing of my own, but surely off-the-rack Rainy75s from Yodobashi Camera are not the peak of luxury typing. I searched reddit, and saw one post claiming that anything under $1000 is "budget," which is an objectively insane thing to say. A bunch of others referenced a brand called "Keycult," for which there was some debate whether their popularity was based on quality or scarcity. Turns out to buy one of those, you have to enter a raffle and win the opportunity to buy one. As eye-roll-y as that sounds to me, I looked up their pricing and saw their wares were also like $500-$600, for an extremely standard-looking rectangle. Metal body, yes, but it's still all the same buttons in all the same places, in a 65 or 80% layout exclusively. But they're made in North Carolina! Oooh! That key press better send shivers down my spine with every letter at that price. The letters transmitted to your computer are always the same.

I do like the idea of reducing the amount of plastic I spend my time constantly in contact with. I replaced my mouse with a stationary trackball, and then replaced the literal ball part with a same-size lapis lazuli sphere, and that has felt good. Along that vein, I have been eyeing non-plastic keycaps, which are upsettingly expensive in general. I thought maybe metal, but I listened to someone type with those and I think the little chime of the keys running into each other would drive me insane. Considering ceramic too, but they're so gosh darn expensive I'm not shelling out for them unless they're perfect, and only like one company makes them. Also they probably chime too. I don't know. 

I also ordered a sample pack of various switches, for the purpose of testing them. Hot-swap switches are such an absurd thing. They all have names that refence food, or concepts, every single one of them calls their sound some manner of "creamy" and "thocky" and while they all are absolutely different, there is very little in the way they are described that can help you tell what you're looking at online because they are all, as a technical specification, either "linear," "tactile," or "clicky." I'm not smart enough for the numbers regarding required pounds for force for a button press to mean much to me. I know "silent" doesn't mean no sound, and "thocky" can mean anything from "rain on a tin roof" to "tapdancing on marble," neither of which I would consider a "thock," which sounds like it should be an onomatopoeia to me. "Thock" is a deep sound. "Thock" is the noise a dense wooden rod makes against a another dense wooden rod. "Thock" is an arrow hitting a target. Also, scratchy is bad and no one likes it, and that anything that isn't scratchy is creamy, so everything claims to be creamy. It's all an extremely acoustic conversation, though there are also differences in how the press feels. Maybe that's even harder to describe without writing a poem. So, the companies just sell little bundles of one each of all their best switches, and you just poke them each side by side until one feels and sounds "right" and then you buy a full set of those. Seems like a proper electronics store would solve this issue, but the electronics store sells keyboards, and while they have different sizes, and mechanicals vs gaskets, and different colors, all the options either have their own, proprietary switch that you have to buy the whole keyboard to get, or one of the big standards (red, blue, brown). There isn't a lot of real variety beyond brand recognition. But, if I'm gonna do it, I may as well do it.

Still, keyboards are not my hobby. Computer is the hobby. I game. I write. I post. Customizing my peripherals is an indulgent expression of the computer hobby.