‘Feeling’, on the other hand, focused on combinations of plate materials and switches, keyboard mounting styles, and comparisons between the very few switches at the time. For example, the ‘layout’ category would be focused on board layouts, typing angle, keycap profile, keycap material, and some other less important details. Back when I first had started, it seemed as if discussions on keyboards were primarily focus on either the layouts of the boards or on the specific, in-hand feeling they’d have. One of the more subtle, and albeit entirely subjective trends which I’ve begun to notice in parallel with this shift in popular keyboard content platforms is that of a change in what newer hobbyists are looking for in a keyboard.
Knowing damn well that there is no such thing as endgame out of the gate, these new hobbyists seek out more information largely via the swarms of Discord servers that exist nowadays but are also following further increasing numbers of creators on the audio-visual platforms mentioned above. Options for switches and keycaps are effectively infinite in terms of pricing, quality, and availability relative to that of when I started. Nowadays, though, users often come into the hobby by way of Twitch Streams or typing tests on YouTube, searching for GMMK Pros or Keychrons which fit their various desired traits. This decision wasn’t reached lightly but ultimately left me a bit underwhelmed, leading me to read nearly everything I could from Deskthority, Geekhack, and the relatively new keyboard Discord servers at the time in search for an endgame.
Clicky switches keyboard pro#
Fancying myself a well-read beginner, I overlooked traditional classics like Ducky or DAS Keyboards in order to pick myself up an Obins Anne Pro II with Gateron Browns, of course, given that there were only a small handful of switch options and I wanted something nice to type on. Speaking only for myself, since everyone’s journey throughout the hobby is a bit different, the entry level boards of my day were nothing like they are now. With this shift in ‘go-to’ platforms for mechanical keyboard related content, though, it’s also worth noting just how much times have changed with respect to what is available for beginners. Long gone are the days of just GeekHack and Reddit going back and forth about u/Ripster55 and his ‘charismatic’ ways – now platforms like Twitch, YouTube, and even TikTok are driving swarms of new enthusiasts to plan, buy, wait for, and eventually build their first mechanical keyboards. What makes these two years in particular rather interesting, though, is how drastically the platforms on which the community operates on (over here in the west, at least). While these two years may seem like a relatively long time for those who joined within that window, its merely a blip on the radar in the grand scheme of the over decade-long history of the mechanical keyboard hobby.
This is even further surprising considering there was a similar post about passing 300,000 subscribers only a short two years ago. While the ever-present, classic entryway into the hobby of the r/mechanicalkeyboards subreddit demonstrates this well enough by its traffic alone, it recently passed a huge milestone in 1,000,000 subscribers. There’s really no preface needed to this one, except to maybe carve off a bit of the edge in the tone by caveating that statement with the fact that it’s probably not entirely your fault.Įntering now the something-th year of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s completely impossible to ignore just how much the mechanical keyboard community has grown in such a short period of time. You suck at talking about the sound of switches.
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