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A Grand Unified Theory of Buying Stuff | WIRED

A Grand Unified Theory of Buying Stuff | WIRED

Section titled “A Grand Unified Theory of Buying Stuff | WIRED”

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  • Years ago, I asked a friend what kind of case she planned to buy for her shiny new flip phone. She paused, a little offended. “I don’t like to buy stuff for my stuff,” she said. Those words drilled directly into my hippocampus, never to depart. She’s right! I thought. Don’t buy stuff stuff! So simple!
  • I often trick myself into thinking that the road to less stuff might be paved with more stuff.
  • I bought the Sonic Spreadsheet with the fantasy of going offline, escaping the centralized world in which I live, making sick beats in the backyard or at the kitchen table. I wanted to stare at a little screen instead of a big screen, which is how I do back-to-the-land. Instead I ended up hunched in front of my regular monitor, watching YouTube videos of various nerds demonstrating how they make beats. Most of their beats were not that sick. Their lighting was good, though. Maybe the people making the sickest beats are not making YouTube videos.
  • Each thing, each unit of stuff, came with its own, pet stuff—a stand, a foam cover, cords, a manual, a little drawstring case. The supply chain is fractal: Zoom in on your stuff and there’s more stuff, ad infinitum.
  • I am not a musician. I am a systems administrator for my digital audio workstation. There will be no SoundCloud for me.
  • I have come up with a personal Theory of Stuffness, a way to structure and understand my local stuff ecosystem, especially the digital stuff. I divide Stuffworld into the Object (drum machine), the Enhancements (all the extras), and the Experience (sick beats). Another example: The Object is the phone. The Enhancement is the Spotify app. The Experience is that of listening to music.
  • What I was doing with my drum machine was trying to skip learning, attempting to buy talent and accomplishment by configuring my workstation. That’s the promise of buying stuff for your stuff: The Enhancements will make the Experience so much better and give you more of the power of the Object.
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  • So I’ve limited myself to one sample and one track, trying to figure out how music works. And doing that—going into student mode, humbling myself before the task of making just one passable beat without using a ton of reverb—has almost instantly made me a better listener, a greater appreciator of the talents of others. I’ve started to pick songs apart as I commute, suddenly aware of filter sweeps across the drum loops or where they cut the bass before the chorus.
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