A White Bear wrote a few months ago about getting into a bizarre conversation with a random guy at the Russian Baths about why guys are into “gear.” AWB recounts discussing this question with me at the baths, where I “was helpfully explaining something about a masculine desire for control and mastery, possibly out of a sense of insecurity about control over other areas of life” when a random dude jumped in with a reductive, sexist account of the phenomenon that also failed to explain the data.

The conversation with the random dude was indeed strange, and it’s amazing that there are people living in this town who pass as intelligent in many contexts but who can still with a straight face deploy the phrase “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” to explain a gender difference. But I feel I should correct the record: Before the random gender essentialist jumped in to the conversation, I was not in face helpfully explaining something about a masculine desire for etc. I was in fact admitting that I can’t explain the phenomenon at all.

You know what we’re talking about, right? Why guys would rather collect guitars than play one, why they spend hours on the internet researching the perfect model of cordless drill or wireless router or car or cell phone or stereo to buy. This sense that the right gear will solve all problems. The corollary to this at first appears to be a contradictory phenomenon: The concomitant fantasy of getting rid of all gear except the one most versatile and necessary piece of gear — taking on the world with your Bowie knife or roll of duct tape. It should be obvious here that the MacGyver minimalist gear fantasy is really a sick amplification of the original gear fantasy.

I say this gear thing is inexplicable, but I’m not immune to it. I’ve been making a conscious effort for the past few years to try to limit my gadget buying. (Also, I don’t have much cash.) But when I do buy a piece of gear, I get completely carried away in the research and the fantasies about how the gear will change my life. Lately, I’ve been making a lot of computer music, and I need to get a MIDI controller with a bunch of knobs on it. I have looked at all the major and some of the minor brands and at a DIY MIDI controller website. And I’m not even close to buying yet.

But there’s a dark side. The whole subject is on my mind because I just spent a hour trying to get a website running on a server that wasn’t cooperating. Then I spent fifteen minutes configuring my roommate’s new wireless router. The website thing was entirely frustrating, and the router thing was fairly painless but reminded me of the many hours I’ve spent in my life configuring less compliant networks. (The router was an Apple product, but even then it would have been annoying for someone who’d never set up a wireless network before.)

The gear thing is inexplicable to me, then, because it clearly doesn’t lead to the rewards that guys think it will. Think PC users in the early 1980s: “This machine is amazing. It will revolutionize how people live.” And then you look at it and it’s a monochrome green text display and you have to keep swapping giant floppy drives in and out just to write and print a paper. I understand early automobiles were the same way — their owners must have spent more time coaxing them into running than it would have take to drive a horse and buggy to wherever they were going.

I personally tread dangerously close to the non-masculine in many cases. Although I love gear, I also greatly prefer gear that requires less arcane mastery. I’d rather drive a modern car than a Model T, and I insist on Mac over Windows because Macs create significantly fewer headaches (although they still frustrate and annoy). My brother the Ph.D. computer engineer can barely conceal his contempt when he hears I don’t run Linux, and he can barely stay in the room for my defense of the iPod as a “really easy to use” music player. (He insists on some odd brand with a file structure only an engineer could love and the ability to play OGG and FLAC files. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please join me in a moment of silent appreciation for the iPod.)

But yeah, I agree with fictional Bave that there’s probably some interesting story to be told about “a masculine desire for control and mastery, possibly out of a sense of insecurity about control over other areas of life,” which would have to include the accolades you get when you’ve set up the goddamn wireless network or speed past at 25 mph in your horseless carriage, and the look of worshipful incomprehension that falls over the faces of your listeners when you start talking about PHP libraries or MIDI controllers or carburetors.