Why care? Don’t yuk someone’s yum. Envy is a bad look tbh.
I’m probably someone he hates, bought a shit load of hardware for my Farming/Truck Sims. But I use them ~40hr week and it makes me happy. But I guess go fuck myself because I can afford it.
Sure is, where’s that applied to something used 40+ hr a week? You really don’t know who you’re talking to - I’m the guy with hardware purchased 20+ years ago and will repair them and they move with me.
I spend $$$$ on pro-grade gear but because I’m /c/buyforlife. Don’t be mad because people have different views on frugality than you.
See your other comment defending gatekeeping, strange hill bb, but like I said envy not a good look tbh.
Did you drop all that money the second you got into the hobby or did you wade in the water a bit to see if ya liked it? Big differences there, and the relevance to this post hinges on your answer.
Holy shit I had no idea you were THE guy with hardware purchased 20+ years ago and will repair them and they move with me! Big fan of yours I even got a poster of you in my daughter’s room so that she grows with a positive rolemodel in her life!
You spend $$$$ because you can and because you never stopped to think if you should. I am “mad”, or rather, annoyed, by people burning resources because “those objects are totally necessary for a fulfilling life experience”.
And what’s funny is, you say that and then you go on detailing that you got a wheel and some pedals. Because that’s totally what a full simulation slurge rig setup is.
Your actions agree with me while you defend the principle that you don’t.
I think there’s different personalities involved here. The other thing that I’m personally curious about, did you play the sim and then think, “I should get this gear” or did you get the gear before ever playing it?
I think what’s mostly the target of ire is people that have the mindset of having to buy their way to the top. Or trying to make up for lack of skill not by continuing to try the sport/event/game out, but getting the best of everything trying to avoid ever looking ‘not good’ at it despite it being obvious to everyone play that they’ve not done this thing before.
And not everyone is like this obv, but a lot of these people don’t want to put in the effort to get better, just want to buy their way to the top. Somewhat related are the poor folks that put in huge amounts of time trying to get better but can’t afford good gear. And then someone shows up with the top notch stuff, plays once and never uses the stuff again. Obviously it’s their money, but is a shit feeling when you’re cash strapped to see good gear rot.
Haha I did buy the gear as I bought the games, but not before I read a ton of posts and watched a bunch of YouTube videos for a few months to get a feel for the games and the gear. I eventually was like “ok I think I’ll love this but hate it without any gear” which was very much the case haha. I totally love it and keep watching/reading about the sims and trying to improve my setup. I also didn’t buy it all at once that’s true.
I suppose I can see what ya mean especially if they think their gear makes them superior in some way or covering up skill issues. For the sim community it’s not really as big of a deal because everyone is really chill there isn’t much competition. We’re basically all nerds who love to dial up immersion.
Think you’re missing the point. If you use it 40 h a week you’re not just buying it to flex on everyone. Have fun farming brother 🤙🤙
Very surprising to see so many peole lashing out at “gatekeeping”. Frugality is a very important thing (something something global warming?), a beginner can not get any meaning out of the very best gear, diminishing returns are a thing.
Wasting resources because you are unable to resist the temptation of marketing is dumb, selfish and harmful.
No, of course I’m not talking about safety gear. No, I’m not advocating for buying the cheapest stuff.
Just to go ridiculous:
You can get your Private Pilots License by buying a Phenom or Citation or Lear jet and doing all your training in top of the line luxury, if you spend the money. If you then find that what you want out of flying is going into backcountry airstrips and camping your initial investment is now worthless to you, and you not only need to buy a different type of plane, but learn an entirely different set of skills. So you should probably do the “basic beginner thing” and rent a basic flight school / club plane and see what you like/care about.
Every hobby is fractal. If nothing else, if you buy the top of the line super specialized equipment you might miss out on the other branch of the hobby you would actually be interested in. (that has it’s own, different, top of the line super specialized equipment)
Higher quality, more expensive gear does not necessarily contribute to waste. Sometimes, it can just be more expensive because their workers are paid good wages and materials are ethically sourced. Some very cheap gear can break much sooner, ending up being more wasteful.
A slur? Why?
Who cares what people want to do with their money.
Buy once cry once.
Be advised, for anything that requires preference or tuning “buy once cry once” is totally fallacious. The most expensive anything is not guaranteed to be the thing that suits you best. Still don’t need a slur, but you don’t walk into a clothing store and just buy the most expensive things. You have to put in some time and develop some preference before it makes sense to spend hard.
Now if you’re just buying an angle grinder, sure, whatever buy the pricey one: it is probably made better.
Someone sounds like a jealous little bitch.
It’s really common advice to not start with the cheapest gear. Yes a lot of us learned to play on dime store guitars but would have suffered less with a quality instrument. The same is true for just about everything.
Exactly. I started learning harmonica on those $20 pack of 8 and struggled for weeks to get anything to sound close to what I wanted. When I spent $60 on a decent instrument, I could suddenly do what I’d been practicing. There’s a sweet spot for getting good enough equipment to actually learn without blowing the budget on something you may not continue doing
You have to adjust the price of harmonicas (assuming you’re talking about diatonic ones aka blues harps) to scale for this discussion. A $2.50 harp isn’t a beginner’s instrument, it’s a child’s toy. A beginner one would be more like $20. That’s where I started and it would bend notes just fine. You can’t really spend much more than 60 bucks on a top end harp.
The OP sceenshot is phrased negatively, but the basic premise is in a lot of hobbies people don’t need the top gear because beginners won’t actually be able to tell the difference. Mid tier gear is a different story.
Absolutely agree with you, it’s about finding that value curve, where quality scales well with price. Say the cheapest ‘something’ is $10, the $20 one is twice as good, the $40 is maybe 70% better again but the $80 might only be 10% better than that.
As a beginner, I’d go for maybe the $20 option or the $40 if I were confident I’d stick with it. But yeah, it’s a pain when your ability to enjoy or succeed at a hobby is hampered by buying the cheapest option off AliExpress, haha.
Woodworking planes.
You can go to Home Depot and get a plane for $15-20, and it will - mostly - cut wood. Spend $50-60 and get a decent name brand tool that gives a lot less grief. Spend $500 and get a Lie Nielsen that’s just on another level.
Here’s the thing, though: you have to be pretty competent to appreciate the difference between the $50 and $500 tools; and if you know what you’re doing, you can easily tune the $15 so it works almost as well as the $500. Buy cheap to get started; upgrade if it turns out you stick with the hobby. I’ll never know if I could have learned easier/faster starting with a $50 plane, but my guess is that I’d still have been gouging the shit out of everything.
The setup thing is no joke. I made a sub $200 mandolin play well out of its league with just some sandpaper to lower the nut height. I still got the nicer one but for the time inbetween it was great. Now the friend I bought it from for $50 has it on loan since she can actually physically play it now with the lower string height.
I’ve learned that the ROI on most expensive stuff just isn’t really there unless you’re deep into it and want to treat yourself or you’re a professional(which is kinda the same but I’ll keep it separate). The caveat of course is that you have to start at a semi-reasonable place like you mentioned.
I don’t know why we want to believe that the high-end stuff is made with fairy dust and that we’re not capable of these things with just a bit of effort and trust in ourselves.
Yeah fuck this guys (OP, not the person I’m replying under) take. Hobbies need less gatekeepers and if I want to do research about gear, make nice purchases as a way to deepen my investment into the hobby so be it.
Example: I just got into fitness. I have almost no need for some of the products ive been buying, however through the research ive stumbled across some excellent articles and a few YouTube channels that inspire me. Even if the gear / gadgets do nothing more than inspire you to show up and try them out, its worked.
eh, i think in photography you actually learn better habits and skills on older, more limited gear. it’s easy to nail exposure when your camera can handle work at 3,000 iso, but then when you’re at the edge of what your camera is capable of you’ll be less able to tease out the performance you need. it’s why i will keep my old canon rebel t2i. whenever someone wants to learn a little i toss them that thing. it can still take great pictures , you just have to work within its limitations. it’s why my broadcast school made me learn to do reel to reel tape editing. when you know how much tape you have and how much of a pain it is to edit you will be way way better about getting your shot right the first time and every time.
these days, instead of using these tools as a crutch to shoot sloppier knowing that the gear can handle it now, i use them as a booster to do when more than i would have been able to before. i still shoot at the minimum viable iso every time on my a7siii, the difference is now i can keep shooting until the stars are plainly visible without needing a tripod.
ironically, this doesn’t seem to hold quite as true for video now that i think about it. video is so tech and tool based. often it’s newer guys that embrace the new tech and techniques that the old heads snub their noses at that end up doing the best. maybe not in Hollywood, but Hollywood is a totally different animal from what 99% of videographers do. I’m talking about video outside of Hollywood. often these newer tools will be lower quality less professional tools for quick turnaround. the kind of thing that corporate America is all about these days. quantity over quality is the name of the game in today’s video world more often than not.
a video camera from 15 years ago is likely almost useless today for any real work, a stills camera from 25 years ago could be used to make a billboard ad right now.
Eh. I’ve been playing an $80 no name bass for five years. No one has any idea, because it sounds fine.
You don’t need to go all out. Ability is more important than name brand.
It must have some decent machine heads to hold tune. Did you buy it used?
It’s pretty great actually. It rarely goes off tune. Takes about 20 seconds with a snark.
It was brand new, off Amazon of all places. I did have to buy a new strap though, the one that came with it broke immediately.
To be honest it does have a “trumpet” sound that I’m not fond of.
No not to start with cheapest gear, but get the cheapest one that makes sense, then upgrade it to the best you can afford once you like it.
Makes sense as in the recommended entry level equipment, not the cheap waste from aliexpress/amazon.
This way you can get the feel of the hobby before you plunge a huge load of money on it.
I don’t typically see people advocate for the cheapest gear, just not to go all-in. There is something to be said for how much you can learn from stuff that requires a bit more tuning or customization.
In airsoft we had people who didn’t even know there were other options show up with $40 clear plastic guns from Walmart (they’re awful) and guys with $2000 air-powered guns from the best brands show up all the time, and both of these people sucked. Typically, they both also had a bad time, because neither could realistically learn anything from their guns considering they were already as good as they were ever going to be.
My advice was always to start with a low-mid range electric rifle that can take a high-capacity magazine. Having like 400+ shots in a match is more than enough. Pick a design that is easy to get parts and accessories for so you can build on it. Someday you grow out of it and then you drop the real money on an airsoft rifle, but you can run a good starter rifle for a long time. I only replaced mine because it catastrophically broke after years of rough play: I learned a lot from modifying it and it made my next gun choice much more educated that I ever could have managed as a newbie.
Skateboards with no pop. Guitars with shit intonation. More broadly: consumables that wear through too quickly and cause people to nope out of the hobby because it is ‘too expensive’, the list goes on.
There is something reassuring about quality gear because beginners don’t always know or properly understand this stuff.
With that said there is a point beyond which those returns begin to diminish.
I think with many hobbies there’s a two-sided trap:
If you buy the absolute cheapest, you can end up hamstrung and unable to progress. On the other end, you can get caught up in having the very best, and miss out on actually progressing because you’re convinced you just need to buy a better one.