Hardware Elitism - a tech scourge that needs to die.

[the54thvoid]

So, I'm posting this as a reaction to a few recent threads where I've seen people being ridiculed for having a 'below par' hardware set-up. Whether that be a lower level GFX card, a lower core CPU, or an AIO from DELL, a portion of the community reaction has been absolutely appalling. I made some life choices and have the fortune of a stable, mediocre salary and no kids. My last great PC splurge was a 2080ti. The last time I would spend 4 figures on what to me is a toy (and that came from an inheritance). And I class myself as fortunate. There are more people on this forum who can't buy 'top end' kit than those that do. And ocassionally, a thread appears where someone posts about what they've bought. Those who buy something that doesn't meet some magical 'tech standard' appear to be mocked.

It's a disgrace. A dispicable representation of the worst of ourselves.

Maybe I'm being harsh but last time I mocked somebody for being less fortunate than myself was... no wait, I'm not that much of an arsehole. And before you all get antsy and say TPU is a tech forum; that doesn't excuse the elitism that has begun to appear. Who cares what somebody buys - what we're here to do is support and advise. TPU is a community that has a broad spectrum of incomes and expenditure. Certainly, as the world has turned, hardware is getting more and more expensive. Not everybody is earning more and more cash. Heads up, I earn less than my nations average income (no kids goes a long way to making it easier to buy shit I actually don't need). It's hard for me to justify a £1000 gfx card these days.

So, when somebody buys something that might not be cutting edge, it's a loser's move to make fun of it. TPU is about tech, whether it's the cheapest, or the most expensive. We should make that person feel happy with their purchase, perhaps advise on future improvements. Certainly, laughing emoji's posted as a response to a purchase are pathetic. They say more about the member's reaction than they do about the OP's purchase. Tech starts as a bargain bucket purchase. Or a hand-me-down. By the way, feel free to Pay It Forward. It can climb all the way to a HOF RTX 3090. And just as the budget scale, it shows weakness to mock someone spending at the other end. Tech is tech. People have different budgets. Whatever that budget, TPU should offer support. Not condemnation. Certainly not mockery.

Just my two cents about some very disturbing recent trends. As a mod. If I see it happening, I'll just start handing out infractions left, right and centre.

If you can't support the community, why are you even here?

 

[Bill_Bright]

Well said!

 

[Atomic77]

I feel like it happens to me all the time whenever I do something and I am the kind of person that can’t have the best in everything but I make do with ever I can get at the time.

 

[HD64G]

Smart buying isn't to be mocked. And whoever is pleased with 1080P maxed out or even medium with 60FPS or above and has no intention on overspending is just a sensible consumer. Elitism is a bad attitude in ALL aspects of life.

 

[Shrek]

Devil's advocate: don't we need people who are willing to pay top dollar for the latest and greatest so it succeeds and becomes cheaper?

My house is full of old equipment that people dumped as no longer being hip.

 

[henok.gk]

Someone had to say it. Proud of ya son.

 

[trog100]

maybe i shouldn't say this but i see more derision aimed at people who can i do pay todays higher end hardware prices to be honest..

only a fool would pay that for that being an example..

what i have just said maybe not in the intended spirit of the thread but its what i am seeing..

trog

 

[Dinnercore]

Thanks for addressing that. I personally value and treasure all kinds of PC hardware. I'm an enthusiast, on one hand that means I spend nonsensical amounts of money way over what would be considered healthy on hardware but on the other hand I love ANY tech from ANY period of time.
I play with my HEDT platform in the same way I tinker and play with my C2Ds from 13 years ago. I love both parts equally. To me it isn't about the budget or the money, its the fun I have with PC parts.

And when I try to help someone out or answer questions I focus on what I work with instead of telling someone their stuff is outdated. If they are in a position where they need their 775 platform to live a little while longer or get some more performance out of it, I would love to help.

I think the trouble sparks from people not being able to differentiate their situation with other peoples situation. They think, oh its no problem for me to just buy a new PSU or updating a whole platform is easy and better compared to just a drop in CPU upgrade without ever stopping to think if that was what an OP asked for.

ALWAYS read, refer and stick to what someone has asked. If you think there is a better / more economical way forward you can state that neutrally without being condescending! And if they decline that path, instead of getting upset and calling them poor you can just stick to their original idea and help them out there.
Like recommending a decent and available quad-core as a replacement for a C2D on 775. Might even be able to find those for free in some waste-bins from recyclers e.g..

I don't get why anyone would ever leverage a purely fictional higher position when it comes to E-Di** length based on spend dollars. Especially with current gen its a tough situation everyone is in. So what if you got lucky and were able to get a current gen card. Who cares.

 

[JackDarx]

For me as someone who over the years 99% lurked around and read the forums, TPU over the years has always been about people doing the best they can with what they've got, whether it's vintage hardware, current low end hardware or the absolute top end that no sane person can think about, or some real white unicorns (wink wink Rare/Unreleased GPU thread is awesome). And sharing that experience with others.

And of course, eidaraman (apologies if I got the nick wrong haha) fixing the goddamn cards for people by giving them the right bios!

 

[Deleted member 205776]

Wholeheartedly agree. Being an elitist for a certain company is also frowned upon by me. It's just stupid.

 

[freeagent]

I love old hardware as much as new hardware. The only difference between the two is one is newer than the other, and I was old enough to be around for them both Both were awesome in their time. Personally, I think its ok to be a little snobby about the hardware you choose, because you have your personal experience to fall back on. Like buying one name over the other because of something in the past.. But new guy just blew a bunch of cash and rubs it in every ones face? Especially in these days? Yup pos.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Devil's advocate: don't we need people who are willing to pay top dollar for the latest and greatest so it succeeds and becomes cheaper?

That is not the point here at all!

Of course we (consumers) need buyers to buy the latest cutting edge components to help drive the costs down for everyone else. But being that buyer IN NO WAY justifies putting down and ridiculing the rest of us for not buying those top-tier (and most expensive) items. That's the point of this thread.

Many of us don't have the budgets (for any number of reasons) to spend that kind of money. Many of us don't have the need to spend that kind of money - so why should we spend that kind of money? And many of us don't have the desire to spend that kind of money. None of those scenarios deserve criticisms or belittling.

I have to say, I have experienced this myself. I am fortunate that my financial situation today does provide me the opportunity to buy top tier components. But that is due mostly to the fact I have worked for 55 years of my life and now all my kids have grown up and are out of the house that I have been making payments on for almost 30 years.

I've been a computer enthusiasts since I stood inside a NORAD mainframe computer in the early 70s. But I am NOT a gamer. Therefore, I don't spend big time money on a gaming graphics card, for example. Yet I have received comments suggesting I can't be an enthusiasts because I didn't buy a K model CPU or a better GPU, or because I no longer overclock.

That said, those comments now just illustrate a lack of maturity, a narrow scope of experience of the poster and not any lack of ability or desire, and especially any inferiority on my part.

I will say this to the54thvoid and others - it is not just this site. While it is prevalent here, it definitely is not exclusive to here. I visit several sites daily and see it every where. But this is one of the more popular/active sites, so it may seem to be worse here than elsewhere. Its not.

I will also say this - I feel over the last 6 - 8 months, it has gotten better here, thanks to the moderator staff reigning in some of the comments. But it still happens. And probably always will.

And for sure, it is not just in the computer world. I remember when I bought my new F150 with its "XLT" trim level, a "friend" made a snarky comment that I his F150 with its "Platinum" trim level (which cost nearly $20,000 more was better. Even though the trucks had the same towing and hauling capacities, same gas mileage, etc.

 

[phanbuey]

Quite the opposite. I can afford highest end stuff, but I find myself much more pleased with lower end builds that get awesome performance anyways... Nothing makes me more happy than seeing someone who is getting good FPS on a Ryzen 3500 and 5600xt and is just enjoying the game, or someone building a 12 core monster xeon off $50 ES samples from ebay . Those are the most fun builds.

 

[PaulieG]

Great freaking post! Let people enjoy their stuff. Elitism blows. Oh, and I'm kinda like phanbuey. I can buy just about whatever I want, but I focus on midgrade stuff that I can get to perform better than high end equipment through skill.

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

You finally said it. Frankly I started to see this elitism creeping out and the looking down on "low spec gamer" stuff that it turn me off from logging in here sometimes. Low spec and low end is a topic that is not often discuss unless it is in the retro or nostalgia hardware subforum. I have been a low spec gamer for many years on intel gma graphics and it was only last year that I could finally splurge for high gfx card. Low spec gaming have its place. A majority of people is not lucky enough to live in a first world country with a good paying job and low price pc part. Stepping out the Usa pc for even low end like gtx1050 can be 30% to 40% than the USA and on top of that 3rd world wages made further worse of a few hundred dollars a month if you are lucky. There is simply no way you can even step up to even a mid end PC in those place. Low spec gamer channel gives a good discussion regarding this and how US centric most reviews are and budget built are without accounting other countries where its not possible. It does annoy me and pissed me off reading on youtube comment too like "hurr durr 500GB ssd is so cheap now get a job poor sod". I may exaggerate but it common on youtube. That 500GB is probably 3 month wages in some countries if they don't use it for anything else.

It are problem when in general most tech catered to wealthy part of the world and many review and youtubers promoting them. Low end stuff rather a niche and often comes in languages other than english.

Edit : On the other hand I can see how frustrated people from this forum is when someone ask something where is simply not possible with the hardware they got. On my view though I think it can steer further to guide them to games they got play instead if low resolution hacks is too much to do.

 

[Tom Sunday]

There are more people on this forum who can't buy 'top end' kit than those that do. And ocassionally, a thread appears where someone posts about what they've bought. Those who buy something that doesn't meet some magical 'tech standard' appear to be mocked.

You are 100% correct. But it's a plain fact that the majority of participants here are in same boat financially as yours truly and who are barely scraping by in the present and trying times. Many of us have seen better times. Whereby for some others it's easy here to throwing around negative commentaries just to sound smart and or to venting perhaps some of their frustrations and which is very unfortunate. But that is the world we are living in now. Social media at its best or at its very worst. My Mom used to say: "If you have nothing good to say, then dont say anything at all." Greetings to you from the man on the street.

 

[BSim500]

Just my two cents about some very disturbing recent trends. As a mod. If I see it happening, I'll just start handing out infractions left, right and centre.

Agree 100%. I tend to buy lower-end components not out of poverty but simply because I prefer the feel of older games, have a huge collection of +2,000x games going back 35 years, have lost a lot of interest in online multi-player plus a lot of overly-recycled / flogged to death 15-25 year old IP that seems to form much of "new" AAA games anyway and already have more backlogged games than I have spare time to play them. So why upgrade / overbuy if you simply don't need to? The number of times I've seen BS uttered like "It's 2021. You need at least 8x cores for gaming" whilst back in the real world, that translates more as "Out of the 30,000 games available to buy on Steam, you need 8x cores for the 0.02% of least optimised bad-port / performance turds, but 99.98% will run fine on a 6C/12T / 99% on a 4C/8T"... Same goes for funny stuff like this, which I've long stopped seeing as a hardware problem and now see it entirely as a software problem (in the "can't code for sh*t" sense....)

I sometimes think tech sites do accidentally encourage this "Only AAA's are real games" BS though with "the gap" that lies between what gets hyped / benchmarked vs what's actually being played the most in the real world with far less hype. Eg, the serious reality check to "Can you run Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K with Ray-Tracing because that's all 2021 is about", is this page showing what most people are actually playing, as well as this page showing how they're playing it on (hardware / resolution, etc). It's definitely why I appreciate TechpowerUp reviews for continuing to include benchmarks like Divinity Original Sin 2 and Witcher 3 as a reality check. "But who plays those in 2021?" A. Clearly a lot more people than are playing Far Cry 5, Borderlands 3, AC Odyssey, etc...

Devil's advocate: don't we need people who are willing to pay top dollar for the latest and greatest so it succeeds and becomes cheaper?

I'd say it works the exact opposite - top end enthusiasts are consistently driving prices UP not down and giving manufacturers less incentive to rush to innovate with silly money pouring in for flagship phones or 4-digit GPU's. When the previous 2x generation CPU's (eg, Ryzen 1600/2600/3600 / i5-10400F / i5-9400F) were nearer £130 but soar in price to £330, and when xx60 GPU's increased from £160 to £360 even before scalping, then I'm seeing more "trickle up" than "trickle down effect" from the latest and greatest CPU's & GPU's (by far the two components usually wrapped in the most e-peen BS...) What drove SSD's $/GB to fall also wasn't a handful of elitists buying early 4TB Samsung 850's several years back, but rather sheer volume of demand for lower capacities. We'd also still have solid mainstream phones even without comically overpriced and over-pretentious "flagships". As far as income for future R&D is concerned, what lower-end components lack in margin they usually more than make up for in volume and all many enthusiasts have really ended up doing (especially for GPU's) is normalizing heavy price-inflation.

 

[AsRock]

Cannot say i seen it on here, maybe the posts get deleted before i see them ?.

 

[Sithaer]

Thanks for addressing this!

I despise any form of elitism and try to stay away from it. 'dealing with those ppl just makes my blood boil+waste of my time'
What some ppl seem to not realize or just don't care about it that this is an international site/forum and not everyone is from a wealthy country and such. 'also having to pay more for the same hardware cause higher taxes'

I am a budget hardware user but that doesn't make me any less interested in tech related stuff, I read the reviews and follow multiple tech sites/channels and whatnot just like most of us here.
Actually I enjoy following those low spec/budget channels more and see what those can do, find it more interesting and relatable.

And yea ppl who answer with the laughing emote in the tech purchase topic don't even worth my time, shows their maturity alright. 'seen this done by supposedly older users than me'

I will say this to the54thvoid and others - it is not just this site. While it is prevalent here, it definitely is not exclusive to here. I visit several sites daily and see it every where. But this is one of the more popular/active sites, so it may seem to be worse here than elsewhere. Its not.

I will also say this - I feel over the last 6 - 8 months, it has gotten better here, thanks to the moderator staff reigning in some of the comments. But it still happens. And probably always will.

Yup, it happens pretty much everywhere to some extent.
I used to be active on local tech site/forum but it was so bad there that it was like happening on a daily basis and even a moderator/staff member joined it and thats when I decided to just ditch that place and registered here instead. 'I mean being picked on cause I don't game on a high refresh rate monitor nor had a reputable gamer mouse or a keyboard..'

I would lie if I said that I never got into trouble with other users cause of such but I'm trying to ignore it as much as possible.

 

[jboydgolfer]

Cannot say i seen it on here, maybe the posts get deleted before i see them ?.

i feel this would be a great post from a member, but not so great from staff, as it presents an arbitrary 'watch out or ill get ya' message.

maybe we have differing definitions of the word 'scourge' , i dunno, im not one for pushing my beliefs on others

 

[Bill_Bright]

Well, I agree the comment about "handing out infractions left, right and center" were unnecessary and detracted a bit from the main message. But the main message is still the main take away here, and lesson that needs to be learned.

 

[BSim500]

Cannot say i seen it on here, maybe the posts get deleted before i see them ?.

I saw it multiple times in one thread the other day relating to 16 vs 8GB VRAM sizes along the lines of "Only Real Gamers (tm) like me will buy a 16GB GPU and play only a certain subset of future AAA games only at 4k and stay relevant as people". The fact that 97.5% of gamers don't game at 4k didn't even enter their heads to stop and think about...

 

[AsRock]

I saw it multiple times in one thread the other day relating to 16 vs 8GB VRAM sizes along the lines of "Only Real Gamers (tm) like me will buy a 16GB GPU and play only a certain subset of future AAA games only at 4k and stay relevant as people". The fact that 97.5% of gamers don't game at 4k didn't even enter their heads to stop and think about...

In that case, a mod should of sent them a message to clear it up as it MIGHT of been the posters intention.


I have a infraction from it and it was all ok with the person who it was supposed to of offended. A lot of shit gets taken way out of context and nothing can be taken as any thing other than bad.

i feel this would be a great post from a member, but not so great from staff, as it presents an arbitrary 'watch out or ill get ya' message.

maybe we have differing definitions of the word 'scourge' , i dunno, im not one for pushing my beliefs on others

Just history repeating, new words for those who get offended easier, Goarge Carling comes to mind he did a piece on it.


But i will shut up now as some ones about to get offended by some thing i say.

 

[natr0n]

When I work with slow/low end hardware; I say how can I make this better from where it is.

I never judge anyone on hardware every really.

 

[dorsetknob]

I have several 144hz 1920 monitor's Several 8 gig cards a few 6 and 8 core systems no way do i consider myself elitist
not when you consider literally all my kit comes to me second hand or 3/4 hand.
being a skinflint and ex hoarder i value all tech and always look for the cheap Bargin.

Unfortunatlly re the Current Electronics market S/h kit is now almost as expensive as when it was new and harder to find.