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Gear Acquisition Syndrome

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Re: Gear Acquisition Syndrome

#91

Post by blackkat »

n3storm wrote: post #28

Same happens to me on so differentes areas like: arts, drawing, painting and sculpting. And reptile and insect raising: ants and geckos. I have more stuff and tools for future projects that will ever be able to use in 10 years. Realising this thanks to an HN post a year ago I stopped completely acquiring new gear and started finishing projects. Sometimes a get a cheap sketchbook though I had several ones unused :P

Do you happen to recall the post in particular that helped you with this realization?

Re: Gear Acquisition Syndrome

#93

Post by leptons »

cwenham wrote: post #4

I do this for electronics; Parts, Materials and Kit. I don't buy PMK because I think it'll make me more skilled, I do it because I want to. I have noticed, however, that when I've got something physically, and can examine it and play with it, then it becomes like a new word in mental vocabulary that I can think with.

I look at my electronic parts collection like a chef looks at their spice rack.

But I'm often a victim of laziness - I just bought some more transistors because I couldn't find the transistors of the same kind that I know I have somewhere. It's easier to just buy some more parts on Amazon and have them delivered tomorrow than it would be to search every single place the parts I know I have could be. As a result, I have too many electronic parts. I'll probably donate some of it to a local high school eventually.

Re: Gear Acquisition Syndrome

#95

Post by dheera »

bborud wrote: post #71
jerlam wrote: post #50

I think of myself as resistant to the pull of advertising and gear acquisition, but I've developed a related problem. When I find something that I like, I want to buy multiples of it, even if there is a very low chance that I'll wear the item out or lose it, and it may become unusable in that time. I've had many objects in my life that I thought were great, and then they become unavailable and I spend an inordinate a…

The problem is that it usually takes me a while to realize that something is good. Not least because I like durable things and ... well, it takes time to determine if something is durable. I bought my favorite jacket 12 years ago in Tokyo. A very neutral/timeless thing. After 3 years the jacket still looked like new. Although I had worn it almost every day for 3 years. I searched for it online and found one for sale.…

I use a lot of 30-50 year old camera lenses. Stuff was just built better back then. None of all this plastic jiggly crap.

Re: Gear Acquisition Syndrome

#96

Post by sandspar »

The recent meme of the unequipped Turkish Olympic shooter comes to mind. The other competitors in the shooting event had expensive specialized gear. The Turkish guy had no gear and he got silver.

>Reflecting on his viral moment, [the shooter guy] said, "People sometimes say, 'It's so easy, you won a medal with your hands in your pockets.' But there's 24 years of work and effort behind that medal. I train six days a week for 4-5 hours a day. I wish it was gold, but we still achieved a lot."

Re: Gear Acquisition Syndrome

#97

Post by [deleted] »

sandworm101 wrote: post #83

Rock Climbing. Trad/aid climbing. Hundreds of pounds of gear. All manner of little twists of metal on loops of string or webbing. Ropes. Harnesses. Shoes. Bespoke ascender rigs. Bags of various belay devices. Some of it is expensive, costing hundred of dollars a piece. Other stuff is dirt cheap. Once you buy that second rurp, then you are an addict.

[deleted]

Re: Gear Acquisition Syndrome

#98

Post by kelnos »

pengaru wrote: post #12

aka consumerism

At first glance your comment looks low-effort and flippant, but it's really the crux of the matter.

Our economy only works if people buy things. Especially things they don't need. Advertising is only getting more and more pervasive and intrusive, and our purchasing habits are tracked, cataloged, and categorized in order to better market things to us.

Re: Gear Acquisition Syndrome

#99

Post by tomxor »

ip26 wrote: post #49
Filligree wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rock-climbing with shitty gear sounds less like a matter of enjoyment, and more like one of survival.

The difference between nice and average gear in rock climbing is pretty slim. A few grams, smooth action on the moving parts... it's also primarily a failsafe, so it's inherently obvious that it won't help you climb dramatically better, any more than a nicer parachute will help you fly a plane better. There's also a long tradition of the strongest climbers you know climbing on mank (i.e. safety gear so ragged it is t…

> There's also a long tradition of the strongest climbers you know climbing on mank (i.e. safety gear so ragged it is terrifying to behold)

It's not uncommon for trad climbers, or maybe it was. When I was younger I couldn't afford much, and I climbed with others in basically the same situation. My rack consisted of mostly passive protection, some nuts, some rocks (not literal rocks, i'm not that old). I eventually got a few micros and cheap cams (literally 3).. Some of the climbing I did back then was terrifying, not only because I was so new to it, and climbing relatively hard dangerous routes, but because they were made so much harder by having limited active protection, and a limited range of passive gear.

I got very very good at creative nut placement, threading the gnarliest of threads, and was very sparing with cams, trying to save them for only where it was completely impossible to place passive gear. I also got good at hanging on in uncomfortable positions for stupid amounts of time while trying to engineer a safe piece of protection out of very little.

In more recent years I added a couple totems (which are amazing, and amazingly expensive), and then got gifted a rack of cams the likes of which i've never seen. A lot of my trad climbs are feeling a hell of a lot easier now I can just chuck tons of cams with far less sparingly especially big crack climbs... It makes me wish I bought better gear earlier, maybe I would have been able to try a wider range of routes, but I'm also grateful for my hard earned skill of making the absolute best of poorly protected routes with passives, my opinion "well protected" is often very different from other peoples provided it's not literally blank run-out. And what others consider "unprotectable" I can often find perfectly safe protection on.

A very decent trad rack can be had for under £1000, and last a long time - In the scheme of things that's not a lot compared to most activities. I don't know why I'm still so frugal about it, I can afford it now. I feel like ropes are the most expensive part of climbing because you can go through them so quickly and have to buy new ones pretty much every year.

Re: Gear Acquisition Syndrome

#100

Post by dingnuts »

sirsinsalot wrote: post #34
drblastoff wrote: post #22

I’ve fallen victim to this, though perhaps fortunately with digital synth plugins that take up no physical space. This is related to another problem of mine: ignoring things I’m naturally good at, and fixating on things I’m naturally bad at. In this case, I have no real musical talent, can’t play instruments in rhythm, can’t arrange a song, and I’ve nevertheless been pursuing this in my spare time for a decade with n…

You don't need to be good at something to do it. What is good or bad anyway? It's comparison with others. If you enjoy it, it doesn't matter if you're good or bad at it, if joy itself is the aim. If your aim isn't joy, but success, then of course you'll lack joy. It is very liberating to do something, knowing you're "bad" at it, but doing it only for enjoyment.

I relate strongly to the comment you're replying to, and I can tell you that it's very frustrating to have a vision of something you want to create and be unable despite struggling towards that goal for a long time.

It has nothing to do with other people. My art doesn't live up to my own standards. That's frustrating as hell! It's not a simple as comparison to others -- who cares about them if I just can't seem to create the sound I want to create?

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