A friend of mine sent me a post on there and I started to look through the subreddit because I vaguely remember seeing it years ago, but never checking it out. I really just dont get it though.
Half of the posts are:
"im a rich STEM student and here is my edc: Glock, 10 knives, flashlight, unused multitool, navy seal operator wallet, and a nanotech fuckite steel carbon bulletproof backed phone case. also a tacticool watch that costs my entire semester tuition"
and the other half are:
"here is what I edc at my boring office job: my pistol with 30 different attachments on it (including 10 different lasers and quick reload magazines), knife, bigger knife, smaller knife, tactical notepad with speed release stainless steel pen, flashlight with a hidden knife in the bottom of it, and an unopened tin of Copenhagens that expired 2 years ago"
I genuinely dont understand, at most these people will only ever use their overpriced flashlight. Are they trying to brand themselves or make themselves more masculine or something? What am I not getting?
is it a blue collar vs white collar thing? I genuinely cant imagine dropping hundreds on tools that you will never use
market differentiation for better saturation at all price points with various profit margins, this shit pisses me off so much
it's done all over the place, like with utility items and other non-utility stuff too
it's evolved into this crazy inverse where buying the expensive version (even when it is exceedingly obvious or even out-right stated that there is not any functional difference) is seen as a cool flex thing
I've got a weird spidey-sense for this shit at this point, and when it starts tingling I just start looking for the cheaper option without all the marketing hype surrounding it
if you ever want to get more pissed off look at the audiophile market. My friends usually ask for my advise on their purchases and im always having to tell them to link them with the cheaper option. Theres a price point sweet spot where you know its gonna be shit quality if its sold for say 100$, but if its sold for 300/400/500$, then its gonna be the same quality as the 200$ option
oh ya, there's so many areas like that, especially areas with some technical aspects that are mostly done as hobbies, but I think the self-built PC market is where I developed my sense of it most effectively
when you look at the price points for a hardware segment, and then you see the low-to-mid range have like maybe ~$100 difference for like 50% improvements in performance, but the high end is like maybe 15% improvement for like 2x the price, that shit is so nuts