I absolutely love niche communities like this. Fountain pens, mechanical keyboards, even wetshaving - it's fun getting glimpses into how deep these rabbit holes go.
The way a large part of the hobby operates on limited edition group buys also creates massive FOMO. I’ve definitely been moved to buy things now that I would otherwise not have because everything is now-or-never. That dynamic makes it different from other pure collecting hobbies with more of a secondary market for used or vintage items (pens, typewriters, coins, trading cards, etc).
Are you optimizing? Do you have a measurable fitness function and know what will slide you up or down that surface? How do you know you're not just conjuring faults with old setups to juice novelty?
> limited edition group buys also creates massive FOMO
I've been here. I recently spent some time looking at new vehicles, trying to decide which one was "best", agonizing over minor ergonomic details, how clean each company's color would be in 10 years, etc. After a little too much of this I came to the conclusion that that was exactly what manufacturers wanted me to do so I would be susceptible to any and all advertising. Ultimately I looked at the two vehicles I spent the most time thinking about, said "Which of these is most comfortable immediately after getting in", and pulled the trigger. I'm infinitely happier for having finalized something and freeing up bandwidth for other things I truly enjoy than for having spent six more months agonizing over where a switch was located.
I started with a stock Filco 75% TKL layout with cherry mx browns (as vanilla as it gets in mechanical keyboards). Then a couple years later I bought a nicer TKL board and my first fancy keycaps just for aesthetic reasons, and while doing that I became exposed to the wide range of layouts that exist. I had some wrist pain so decided to try some exotic angled layouts (atreus62, alice, etc). Eventually decided I needed a fully split layout to get my shoulder position and overall posture where I wanted it, and there are a lot of these variants at various levels of compactness and functionality. And of course once you’re into nonstandard layouts it’s always a battle to find caps that will cover it, so often nice caps that I bought in the past can’t transfer over to a new layout because I don’t have the right mods and spacebars.
I like the aesthetic element also. But it’s not been my primary driver. The keycaps I have are very nice and more than enough to satisfy me.
Luckily now I am better at recognizing and stopping this pattern, asking myself what the hell I am buying this stuff to accomplish and focusing back on that - writing, programming, the actual act of photography, etc. And recognizing if there are unhealthy mental patterns underlying the behavior that need to be tackled head-on.
I'm not a mechanical keyboard fanatic, but I browsed their forums and found an excellent, affordable, keyboard I would have never found otherwise. I just use it and get on with my life, not going down that rabbit hole, but I'm grateful for the ones who did and found this beautiful board that I really do enjoy using.
Same with wetshaving - they're a little obsessed, but I benefit from that because now I have an irritation-free shaving routine that I would have never found without them!
What you are describing is fascination with the engineering aspect of things. That's something I would expect the HN crowd to easily relate to.
My personal favourite are the Personal Knowledge Management rabbits.
For a long time I was also a member of the air-cooled sports-car world, and for most of my driving life I've been a member of the three-pedal club.
True life, writing with a fountain is WAY nicer than a crappy gel or ballpoint, and typing on a mechanical keyboard feels really lovely if you're used to the awful low-travel keyboards most companies issue, or that are built into most laptops.