There are nice cheap pens out there, but fountain pens are beautiful and separating the choice of ink from the choice of pen gives a lot of flexibility.
What’s particularly wrong with appreciating tools? Why brand it ‘fetishisation’? For me, a good fountain pen is a work of art; the fact it happens to be useful for work is an added bonus.
Yeah. I’m a bit of an audiophile (used to be a music producer) and have almost no interest in audio hardware other than how it sounds.
But it seems strange to me to apply the same reasoning to stationery. With sound, there is literally only one thing that matters: how accurately and precisely you can vibrate the air. With pens, it isn’t so easy to quantify. How do you measure what it means to feel nice to write with, or to hold in the hand? Or what makes a particular ink pleasing to the eye? There’s huge scope for personality and opinion that isn’t present in other kinds of what you might call tools.
And, separately: what is meant by ‘fetishisation of x’? Is it synonymous with ‘interest in x’? To me it seems to be used simply to look down on those who have interests not considered worthy; if one disapproves of singing one might as well refer to it as ‘fetishisation of the human voice’. But perhaps there’s more to it than that.
> With sound, there is literally only one thing that matters: how accurately and precisely you can vibrate the air.
I’d argue that that’s not what matters. What matters is does the song you’re listening to sound good.
The measurement that you’re talking about is precisely the bit that obsessive audiophiles get wrong, and it’s the parallel that I’m drawing with folks who obsess over stationary too.
I’m not saying that hobbies and interests are wrong, just that often they miss the point that makes the tool useful in the first place. A cheap pen can write nicely without needing to obsess over then pen, paper, ink, etc, just as much as a song can sound great without obsessing over which particular tube amp sounds warmer.
> What matters is does the song you’re listening to sound good.
Good point. I still think there’s very little scope for customisation though. Once you find what sounds good, you can stop.
With stationery, there’s no such thing because the question isn’t as simple as ‘does it sound good?’. It’s more like ‘does it feel good?’, ‘does it inspire me in my work?’, ‘does it work well for this particular situation?’.
I personally think you’re wrong to write all of this off as fetishism; it can be a life-enriching interest. Of course there are people who take it too far, and you only have to go to Reddit to find those people.
To some extent it’s also a matter of fashion, and if you’re one of those people who doesn’t ‘get’ fashion (in clothes, or in anything else) then there’s not much to be reconciled — it just doesn’t please you and that’s fine.
> obsessing over which particular tube amp sounds warmer.
I agree that that kind of thing is just boring as hell and detracts from any possible discussion or enjoyment of music.
Seeking perfection actually is particularly boring to me, which is why it’s not what I do with stationery either. It’s more appreciation of an object, flaws and all, than it is a pointless never-ending (and wallet-draining) search for some fictional nirvana like it is with speakers.
Sometimes the journey is more important than the objective.
I have a 3d printer because I wanted to play with a 3d printer. Same with a drone, zero-turn lawn mower, welding machine, oscilloscope, and a host of other things my wife would be more than happy to tell you about.
Most of us here are engineers of one sort or another. We tend to have disposable income and a predisposition for gadgets.
I doubt many of us are truly ever under the delusion that we need these things.
1. Tools are important. "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."
2. There are cheap and good fountain pens. There are disposable fountain pens. Fountain pens are not some premium product, they're just a different type of pen (like wooden pencil vs mechanical pencil).
The main tradeoffs compared to ball point pens is that they write more smoothly and require less pressure (thus better for people with weak hands like children or elderly) but they can dry out if left uncapped or unused.
