The 'Pro' Paradox and the Allure of Style over Substance

Also this, its captialism, consumerism, and people chasing the dream of being an "influencer". All rubbish.

I "stopped" taking pictures after I went down the extreme build your own cameras art tract and found it all devoid of meaning. This was 2005...

I actually didnt stop... I still shoot film because we live in a dark age of cloud storage and I believe there will be little recorded daily history still left in the near future, or overran by AI/Deepfake content...

The joke about audiophiles applies to many activities:

"Audiophiles don't use their equipment to listen to your music.

Audiophiles use your music to listen to their equipment.” - Alan Parsons

Reddit may have continued or even increased an existing practice, but this phenomenon predates reddit (founded 2005) by quite a bit.

It's not just Reddit. It's all of social media.

I think the fundamental problem is that if you're sitting somewhere bored, maybe at work, maybe elsewhere, you can consume some media about a hobby, and you can make an online purchase of some gear for the hobby, but you often can't actually do the hobby.

It's dumb, but I will catch myself watching a ten minute video on synthsizers while I'm at work, but I would never whip out a synth and spend ten minutes playing it at work. But it's the playing it that actually satisfies the desire. Consuming media just increases it.

It's a dumb loop but it's really hard to get out of because:

1. The activation energy of doing a hobby is always higher than the energy required to just consume media about it, or even buy gear online for it.

2. We're often in environments where it's impossible or inappropriate to do the hobby (work, in line at the DMV, etc.) but where we are able to consume media or make purchases.

> Reddit has really turned...

Next time you have a free weekend, pop into some estate sales and flip through people's old magazine collections and piles of hobby crap. You'll find a few people with well worn items and a sensible collection (people who had enough time to really practice the hobby) and many wealthier people that spent money aspiring to commit time they never made while collecting the most featured and esteemed baubles.

There's nothing new to this.

> has really turned "picking up a hobby" into "selecting and purchasing the correct gear, talking about the gear, and deciding which gear to purchase next".

Thank you for saying it so clearly.

I used to love reading a few subreddits where I would get tips and advice on doing things that I love doing, like /r/snowboarding /r/photography /r/overlanding /r/vandwellers /r/cycling

and all of them have devolved into exactly what you describe. Endless discussion about purchasing new & expensive equipment to do said thing. Extremely minimal discussion about actually doing said thing.

Is there a name for that? "wishful purchasing" maybe?

I always wonder if they would have sold more minis if they made them more expensive than the standard model, rather than the discount option.

Hi! Author here: I use a Balmuda Phone now, an exotic Android 12 Japanese discontinued phone that still receives security updates and weighs 138g with a 4.9" display. The iPhone Mini is my previous phone. It sold millions and millions of units, close to the entire number of yearly shipments of Google's Pixel line, but that was not enough for Apple. I like phones that are less than 140mm in height, less than 5" screen, but run modern software. Apple made enough that it would have been considered a huge success for any other company in the world. But alas :)

> just didn’t sell enough to justify the model itself

Bla bla they sold more of the minis than any model of Android phone. They're just asses.

Meh. You can always ignore them. I bought like 3 "classic" razors until I got one I really liked. Didn't even look online, grabbed whatever (few) options that i found in physical stores.

It's good enough, end of story.

Even Leica glass is somewhat overrated, at the very least incredibly overpriced. Same goes for Zeiss, even if Zeiss glass is really good.

Hi! The only reason why I keep a Panasonic GM1 body around is to use two Panasonic Leica DG lenses whenever I miss them :) I see your point.

As a published street photog, we not talking about voyerism, were talking about not attracting bozos with "oh what lens is that"...

Also as a film photog, Leica lost their use 40 years ago... A couple old heads still use them in the field, but as the article says the cost does not justify the product anymore (except the glass...) but! Hell if they make a profit! That company is a loss leader and propped up by all of Leicas other offerings...

But its almost the only way to get a picture of a woman without duckface.

The article is talking about photographing candid scenes in a public place while blending in, not covert spying.