The Vergecast - How the mechanical keyboard went mainstream again

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

For the next three weeks on Tuesdays, Verge managing editor Alex Cranz hosts some shows focused on the creator space and, in Vergecast fashion, the nerdiest part of the creator space we can think of. In this episode, Alex talks with Jacob Alexander, a member of Input Club, one of the first groups to start making their own mechanical keyboards, and Julie Muncy, a writer and consultant who runs a service called Keyboard Concierge, which helps customers navigate the keyboard space for personalized customization. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompts something like,

Build Me a Revenue Dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data, in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash vergecast. We all need to retool how we build software. Hey, Vergecast listeners, it's Nilai. For the next three weeks on the show, we're going to be doing some extra episodes on Tuesdays

focused on creators. But in true Vergecast fashion, the nerdiest parts of the creator economy we can think of. It's going to be hosted by Verge Managing Editor and our friend Alex Kranz. Alex is here with me right now. Hey, Alex. Hey, very excited to talk to all of the nerds. That's all I've been doing for the last couple of weeks.

I mean, what else are we here for it? The first episode of your mini-series on creators is running today, but tell us what the whole series is about. Okay, so the idea is that there's a lot of these really cool gadgets out there that are really awesome, but they've kind of gotten a little stagnant. Like big companies like Logitech and Razor, they're not really making these products that we really want. But there are other people. They're weird, fun, nerdy creators out there doing this stuff and they're making it on YouTube. and on Reddit and on their weird own websites. So we went out and we found them and we talked to them to see like what they're doing, why they're doing it, and like how they're changing these really cool gadgets. I love that.

That's very much. What's this week's episode about? So this week's episode, I mean, obviously we had to start with keyboards. I think there's like no other product out there that's quite like proven this theory I had than keyboards. So we talked to some keyboard people and we're going to figure out like what's happening. in this space right now, how much has changed in the last eight years, and what it's going to look like going forward.

All right. Well, first episode about mechanical keyboards, I'm sure this will cause no controversy at all and no one will have opinions on it. I'm excited for this one. Take it away, Alex. If you're still in an office or you're on a Zoom call where nobody mutes, you've probably heard this sound. That's a mechanical keyboard.

Practically ubiquitous in the 80s, by the mid-90s they'd started to fall out of fashion, and and we're being replaced by much cheaper to make and lamer to type on membrane keyboards. I don't know about you, but I can feel the unpleasantness of that keyboard just listening to it. A membrane keyboard is squishy and quiet. A mechanical keyboard is louder. But if you're typing on it all day, it's a hell of a lot nicer to type on. And in 2010, I had to finally say goodbye to membrane and track down a mechanical keyboard to make me feel like I was typing on a tandy or an IBM again.

But in 2010, there weren't a lot of options. You could track down one of those old keyboards and use an adapter to connect it to your computer. Or you could spend a lot of money on something like the Apple-friendly lineup of keyboards from Mateus. But 12 years later, the keyboard landscape is a lot different. Companies like Razor, Logitech, and Corsair

have huge lineups of mechanical keyboards, and newer companies like KeyCron are selling really cool, really affordable, mechanical keyboards for anyone who wants to try them. What changed between then and now is a whole industry of smaller companies. A lot of which are one person's shows, have started experimenting with making their own keyboards and all the individual parts of a keyboard and proving that there's a big, eager market of people like me willing to open their wallets to take on something a little more customizable and a little more fun to type on.

I'm a huge keyboard nerd, and I've written about this community a lot, but the space is moving so fast that it's hard to keep up. If you look away for a month, there's a half a dozen new big names that you have to get to know. So to better understand the space, how it's changed, and where it's headed, I reached out to interview Jacob Alexander. My name is Jacob Alexander. I really like keyboards a lot. Jacob has over 600 keyboards that he's amassed over the last decade. And he's a member of Input Club, one of the first groups to start making their own mechanical keyboards. Since I first met him way back in 2017, his team has launched the Kono store, which is a member of

sells mechanical keyboards, and he's invented his own switch. That's the key part, between the key cap and the keyboard. Inventor of the HAL switch, which is kind of the basis of the holy panda variance of switches. Look, this guy seriously knows keyboards. So yeah, I had to talk to him again. So here's my interview with Jacob Alexander. I feel like you probably have more than 600 keyboards at this point. Oh, absolutely. I know you started initially kind of as a collector, and then you moved into building your own keyboards. Is that the trajectory? Yes, sort of.

Initially, I started collecting keyboards, but around 2009 when I got into this stuff, the older keyboards, the only of the interest was the ones that you could plug into your computer because what's the use of the keyboard if you can't type on it? Right.

And I got a couple older keyboards and said, oh, I can't plug this in. It's like, wait a second, I'm taking computer engineering and a decent engineer school. I should be able to make this work. So I actually got into kind of the TNC slash Arduino development to reverse engineer protocols.

So, like, when you plug in USB, like, how do you reverse engineer it to USB or PS2 or AT or XT or whatever the heck else, some weird, esoteric Japanese keyboard? So that's how I got into keyboard development was, I want to use the keyboard that's really cool and all these things that I'd be like, I'll never make key caps or I'll never make switches. So let's just use these cool things that were done before, right? Well, and then you started showing off your projects, right? Like, were you on forums, mainly?

Yeah, so mainly I was on forums. So I was on GECAT because I was bored at work one day when I was working in Japan. And I had all these keyboards are really cool now. I was like, well, it's kind of, I don't know, rude of me to like just keep everything to myself. Right? So, like, I want to take pictures, take lots of pictures. But keyboards aren't just a visual thing. Like, as beautiful as the pictures people take online these days of, like, fancy keyboards and get as decaps,

that's not the experience of actually using it. Keyboards are very tactile and very functional things. So I started doing keyboard beatups in the Bay Area, initially monthly, and then I went to bi-monthly. And then, like, as they got larger, I had to make them take longer because it'd take too much energy to organize readouts. So you started kind of showing off your stuff on Geekak. And I think that's how I first heard about you, is you had a very, you had a name on Geekakak.

Like, you were known. What was that name? Hata, so H-A-T-A. It came about because of the, it's somewhat related to, you know, martial arts, the word Hara, a censor. That's kind of a mis-renunciation of that. But at the time, when I was picking a name online, I talked about like 2006 or five, I hate numbers in names. That's like one of the things, like when you see like 1926 or whatever, like I hate that. It has to be no numbers in my name. And so that's kind of how it came about.

So you kind of got started there. And I feel like for you, it was almost a natural evolution from being this guy who's just making cool stuff and putting it on the forums and connecting it to these slowly giant collection of keyboards you'd acquired, when did it start to shift into something that became a business, that became like something more? Yeah, so that was a little bit organic kind of happened. As I was doing these meetups,

I gave a presentation on KLL. So KLL is kind of like a language, DSL for the technical people, the main specific language, like a programming language just for keyboards to say, like, this is how I wanted to do my layout. And the purpose of that was so I could use it on all these converters I'd use. I didn't want to make my Kool-Mack for every keyboard I did. I got tired. He had to do QWERTY first, and then Kohl-Mac, and it was paining the ass.

So I wrote a language to do that. And as I gave a presentation for this, Jesse from Keyboard I-O walked up to me and they go, do you want to work for me? They're like, not really. But at the time, I wasn't interested in, like, working on things. I don't even know if I was on an 8-1. H1BVC, so I'm Canadian. So there's lots of complications with me, like, working for, like, a small startup,

especially because I just graduated, basically. And so I was like, okay. And then a few months later, I was also hosting meetups at MassDrop, or not Drop. And Andrew, who's one of the co-founders of Input Club, he approached me and says, hey, can you make us a keyboard? And so for those that are unaware, the keyboard market at the time was really difficult. What year was this? This would have been 2014.

Okay, 2014. I think at that point, we'd just seen like the DOS keyboard was still the main keyboard that people used if they wanted to seem cool. Yeah, DOS keyboard are Philcos, and if you're really cool, you're into Real Force, and you bought them from elite keyboards.com. Great website at the time. Absolutely wonderful. So 2014, Andrew reaches out, and he asks you to build a keyboard.

And the problem was they had these group buys and they would sell out immediately. They could not buy enough keyboards from the manufacturers. And it turns out that they could get quote-unquote black market switches. So cherry was all the giant contracts at the time. So you could only buy it for people who bought these giant orders, like millions and millions of switches at a time. Of course, the community is very small. Nobody in the community, even DOS could like buy millions of switches, right? Right.

And so there are ways to buy these switches in. like a gray market area from like Chinese suppliers and things. So they could acquire all the parts for a keyboard, but they couldn't actually build a keyboard. And so they asked me, like, could you please build us a keyboard? And that's where the infinity 60% came on. So I called a couple friends, mechanical engineer, PCV, and I saw for firmware and software and overall design and build it. Those keyboards, those initial keyboards were a success. Like when I first met you, it was because people were saying, you've got to talk to this guy. He's incredible. He's doing these great keyboards and he's building this movement. Was that, was that interactions on those

forums was working there part of why you had that success? I think so. A lot of it had to do with, like you said, my interactions. I was very active at the time on Dest Authority for the Desthority Awards. By the time I sort of stopped doing it, and I can get it to a little while later. I think I had the most awards of anybody at the time. I just kept getting them. And I tried really hard to, like, make things interesting. So to me, there are collectors who collect things just for collecting things. I don't do that. I collect things because I'm searching for answers and I'm looking for information that was kind of like previously lost. It's keyboard archaeology to me. That's kind of what it is. And one of the things I'm like really happy to hear about is like when other groups or other

random YouTubers or podcasts or streamers start using terms that I coin. And that's like when I know like, I was like, oh, I actually made a difference in terms of like, so people understand what things are. Well, yeah, because when people first started talking about keyboards, we weren't talking about force curves. We weren't talking about like the pressure on a key. And now we do. And the first time I saw those curves was you were making them. You built a machine in your space to test these. What are some of the big terms that you kind of coined that I'll now hear from other creators and YouTubers and stuff?

It turned to like force curves and think that that. All those terms were already. Like, force curves have always existed. They've been, like, more artistic in data sheets. But there's, like, in my articles, I referenced, like, a pretty famous Japanese keyboard enthusiasts who did a lot of the stuff like that was by admiration. Like, I want that. That's kind of how I got to that stuff.

But a lot of things, like, switches. So the one that made me really smile was a YouTube person, LGR, lazy game reviews. And he talked about a tandy personal computer. And he called the, oh, he uses. Fujitsu Leaf Spring switches. This looks a little bit different than a lot of the photos that I've seen online, but apparently these are Fujitsu Leaf Springs, the third generation of them. They're not clicky keyboard keys, but they are pretty darn satisfying.

So I'm like, wait a second, he's not a keyboard enthusiast. Why the heck does he know that name? Because he had to look that up. And at the time, the only place he'd find out about that was articles on death authority that I wrote. That's awesome. And so, like, it's like little hints like that. It's like I or like switches and people talk about magnetic separation switches. So one of the cool projects that's up today, someone called Riscible on the Internet,

so the void switches are 3D printed magnetic switches. I don't know if you've seen solos. The body magnet and the stem magnet are attracted to each other. They want to pull each other together, right? So when you're pressing on the switch, you've got the magnetic separation feeling. So if you've ever held two magnets together and then pulled them apart, it's that sort of feeling. So the magnetic separation switches, the idea for a lot of. of that stuff comes from keyboards that I kind of sooner discovered from the 60s and 70s,

the Univac keyboards. And so I talked about magnetic separation switches. So like those terms I coined because I didn't know what the heck they're called. So people using those terms, like, and to me, that's the fun part. It's like I've done my part and sort of got people excited about old things, about keyboard things in general. Right. Like I no longer feel like at the time, especially like 2014, 2015, there are so few people interesting. in vintage keyboards or making interesting things with switches, so like the Halo and Hako switches and all the things I did. Like, there's now, Holy Panda is like a category of switches now.

If we overlay Hattas, Hattas, Hattas, force graph of the panda over the halo clears, we can clearly see that actuation point and bottom amount forces are lower. And that's based off the work I did on that slider. It did not exist prior to that. There's a patent on it. And so, like, there's all these things to me, like, just make me smile. I've been doing my part in sort of getting people interested in keyboards, making sure that it gets better. Nope.

There's all these things that larger companies do because they only think about money. Like that's the end of the day that they just think about money. And there are reasons why they do their things, but it's still a bit of frustrating as someone's like uses tools. Like why can't tools be great? Right. What I find really interesting is when you started doing this, most of the main keyboard manufacturers weren't focused on mechanical keyboards. They all but ignored them. There was, I think, like, a single guy at Corsair who really liked keyboards and would periodically be like, we're going to do a mechanical keyboard at Corsair.

But otherwise, that was it. And now everybody has a mechanical keyboard. Logitech has built their own switches. How much of that is because of this kind of movement that you were a part of? My main theory on mechanical switches for sort of the mainstream one, the main initial driving force was e-sports. Yeah. Like that's the main part. Like that's how they've gone into it.

Some famous esports players were using some Philco keyboard or whatever. And it's like, and all of the fans want to use the same thing they're using. Right? It's just like fancy, dynity shoes and that kind of stuff. So that's how it got started. And for people who are a little bit more elitist in the community, it's like, ah, esports, blah, blah, blah, blah. But to me, that's not important.

It's more that people are learning like the marketing material. Now I'm not to say this is a mechanical switch. So if I told you, I asked you about a mechanical switch at 2014, you probably wouldn't know what it meant. Right. Now, I can talk to almost anybody about keyboards and they'll vaguely know what a mechanical keyboard is. And they'll say that's pretty good. Yeah, pretty good or whatever. But it doesn't matter.

Like before it was by any mechanical keyboard, it will be better than what you have today. Now it's like, oh, what kind? And I have to like ask more questions. So like, you could do better. Like, what are you looking for kind of thing? Seeing it actually progress has been very rewarding. actually. Was that part of kind of what drove you to do it? Not just, I know that you really care about these switches and stuff, but was there always kind of this backseat desire of wanting to get

the bigger companies to pay attention? Yes. That was a really big part of it. And it comes back to my original frustration. Like, while small companies build really cool things and definitely should support them, at the end of the day, most people don't buy from small companies because they're small. Yeah. And so having things like a mechanical keyboard, like when I first got into mechanical keyboards. This was 2007 or 2008. At that time, I was looking for a computer and it's like, if money were no object for each part, like, if you look for like building a PC, that's how you look at. You look at the fanciest thing and then you go back. Yes. I see like what can you afford. For keyboard is this, the fanciest thing was garbage.

It was like some logitech rubber dome thing with a little screen on it. I typed it in the store. It's like this feels like garbage. But crappy keyboard at work feels better than that. this thing. And so, like, why is this? And, like, there were no options. It doesn't matter if I had money or not. Yeah. There's no options in terms of, like, I could buy something. There's also no options for me to search for anything. I had no idea about anything. Yeah. You know, I got into keyboards, like in 2009, 2010 or something. I think one of my first keyboards was a Matias. It was their keyboard built for Mac users. And it had these Alps mechanical keys. I still have the thing. I will never part with it because it was my first one. And I just have.

have this affection for it. And there was no way to talk about these things online. There was no language. The companies didn't seem to care. And there were these very small groups of people who liked Cherry switches or who liked Toprey switches. And that was like me and two other people who liked Alps. And that was it. And then it just slowly this community built up. And it seems like it primarily built up in places like desk authority. Is that accurate? Yes. So like these keyboard communities, they're not built full of people who play games. They're built people who use keyboards and like typing. Like initially, the large majority of the geek character members were actually writers. Yeah. People who type a lot. And also like coders and programmers, they also type a lot. So they

care. Yeah. And of course, gamers also care because they got to get the speed. The speed. They got to win. But also, what's really fascinating about this is that all these different people have different kinds of requirements and tastes, and none of them are wrong. Yeah. And what was really interesting about, especially about the early Reddit, I don't know if this is the case anymore, but at one time, the art mechanic with keyboard was the second most positive subreddit next to makeup. Because basically it was all, oh, you should just get this keyboard.

Oh, you see this one. Like, basically there were no wrong answers at that time because anything you got was better than what you had before. And because the difference is so striking, especially when you got your first mechanical keyboard, going from years of having a terrible one and not being old enough to actually experience what they were before, it was a big shift. It's like a ha moment of like, oh, that's nice. It's like having really nice headphones for the first time.

It's like, oh, I'm going to spend money, lots of money now. And so are you using Reddit? Are you using social media? How are you getting people excited? These days, I like to get people excited through other people. And so, like, one of the things I realized, and this was a while ago, is that I'm not really scalable online to make posts. Like, I really like communicating with people one-on-one because I can see the light in their eyes when they get it. I can tune the analogies to that person.

And I like to get to know the person a little bit. And I can, like, use their prior knowledge to explain to them. But it gets really hard in a written article to do that because you have to talk to the masses. Talking to the masses is actually a really hard problem because like you're not talking to the person anymore. And so if I can explain and talk to individual people who are really enthusiastic about things, then they can kind of also promote their thing in their own way. And so like I really like not being the only like central focal point because it's, I'm only so scalable. I can't cloud computing myself, unfortunately. Kickstarter seems to have been a really big, important tool for input club over the years to get people excited.

What about Kickstarter? Why is Kickstarter so successful for you guys? The blunt answer of this is they have an audience. They're the largest of the crowdsourcing audiences. In terms of services they provide, they're usually a little bit lacking on that. So in order to compete, the other companies tend to. give you a little bit more on the services side. Like, when we got started, Kickstarter wasn't really viable.

Like, there's a reason why most hardware kicksterners end up, like, failing and flopping. I'll get into that in a second, why that's really annoying for our group, is they're hard. And there's a lot of things that can fail very easily. Like, oh, everyone knows about the chip shortage now. That can affect these kind of projects extremely poorly. Like, when we did the White Fox Kickstarter, we had the initial order. but we ended up having to quickly buy an alternate part because apparently the fab burned down

and it was going to be a year and a half for them to get more parts. Wow. And I had worked years and years and years on this furboard just tuned just for this part and there were no alternate parts. I'd have to completely rewrite everything. And I'm like, there goes all the testing, all the users. Right?

It's like this was before the pandemic. Yeah. Right. And so, like, I was very well aware of, like, when the chip shortage happens, like, this is really painful, right? And so you were like, I know, I know all about chip shortages. Yes, it's not fun. It sucks a lot. And when they come back, they could be two, three, four times the cost when you can get them. And so this can really affect how, like, when you collect money for a Kickstarter, like, can you succeed? Like, do you just pull into your own pocket? You may have already spent half the money or all the money on developing the prototype or gathering materials, right? So a lot of these Kickstarters, they just can't be good either way. Working with originally, if Matt's drop was nice, it's because they would actually front the bill for the, like, the

initial production costs and stuff like that, and the prototype it got, because we didn't have any money. We started with zero, obviously, no Zee money at all, right? So, like, even with the Kickstarter, you have to get all the ad and marketing stuff. Like, actually getting the word out is a big deal. Like, there's a

measure that we use for, like, if a Kickstarter is actually successful, you'll know in the first like 24 hours. Yeah. At that point, generally, if it's, it's not going good, then you might as well just cancel it. Wow. And there goes all the PR money. And most PR firms are vultures, unfortunately.

You spend all this money. You spent all this time. And if it's not that first 24 hours, you're done. Yeah, basically. You might as well just like pack up and just take your losses because you spent money on that fancy video, on all that marketing. You don't get that back. Yeah.

And then there's all of the integration costs with, oh, your fulfillment for, of actually fulfilling something or like shipping or people like lose packages for whatever reason. Those actually matter. Like all of that comes back on to you because you're a business. So kind of current companies don't like you. They like the consumer. So there's all these problems fulfilling with these Kickstarter.

But they're interesting. And there's no other mechanism to actually make it happen. Yeah. Because a large company is not going to fulfill your dream or like builder thing. They're not going to give you the time of day, right? That's wild though. Yeah. It does kind of continue to.

to baffle me that we have these very large companies that are clearly very aware of what's going on in the keyboard space. They're paying attention. Why aren't they teaming up with you? Why aren't they teaming up with other keyboard creators? So here's an anecdote that I learned kind of offhand from someone else who went to CES this past year. They were talking to those hyperX, which is owned by HP now. And it turns out that HP is not interested in doing anything. with another like sourcing firms like in Amazon or Walmart unless it's like a hundred million dollar deal. So it costs a lot of money. So that's like an ending PO.

They want that PO for a hundred million dollars to go through and then they'll put something behind it. But it's almost impossible to think at that scale unless you have like an army of MBAs behind you to like actually plan it out. Yeah. As well as the market research and all this stuff. Like that's not feasible. Like I'm sure that's like a ridiculous number.

It's not actually that high. But that's the kind of like hurdles that these large companies end up having. They're like, they have their duty to their shareholders. They have to make money. And so the people at the top will do the take the easy stuff first. They don't take the chances on basically anything. And so that's where we kind of look at you. We look at, Jesse, we look at these other guys making these keyboards to say,

take the risk, build us the smaller stuff. Yeah. And a lot of the stuff, especially if you look at kind of the audio file space, there is a way to be successful by not making a lot of things. Yes. You make a large impact. That's what like Wall Street and Silicon Valley like is the impact, the more people, more money.

But in terms of you don't have to be a fancy investor startup to have a successful business. They're not the same thing, right? You can have a successful business with a small business, right? Now, it's not sexy and you can't, like, proclaim yourself all the time. But if you actually have a vision and you have a vision and you have to be a business, actually want to succeed and do it your way the way you want it. That's generally the way you want to do it, as long as you could pull an op course. Right? You still have to make money at the end of the day.

Just a little bit of money. Yeah. Stuff costs money, unfortunately. Well, thank you, Jacob. This has been an absolutely wonderful conversation. No problem. Man, I think it was only talking to Jacob that I really realized how much this space has changed over the years. But while Jacob has given me, and hopefully you, a really great idea of how much this industry has blown up over the last eight years, I kind of want to know what's happening right this second in the space. There's just a lot of options compared to the last time I went on a keyboard buying spree. After the break, we're going to talk to someone who's making the sheer

volume of choices in the keyboard world, their actual business. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Starting something new isn't just hard. It can be really serious. scary too. So much work goes into this thing that you're not entirely sure will even work. But here's a better thought. What if it did all work? What if your instincts were actually right all along? Shopify wants to help you get there. They're the commerce platform behind millions of businesses worldwide and nearly 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. from established brands like Allbirds and Heinz to companies just getting started. Their design tools make it simple to create the exact online presence you're envisioning with hundreds of ready-to-use templates available.

And with built-in marketing tools, you can launch full email and social campaigns in just a few clicks. So you can connect with customers wherever they are. It's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today. You can sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash vergecast. You can go to shopify.com slash vergecast. That's Shopify.com.com slash Verchcast. Okay, we're back. To recap, the keyboard industry has exploded, thanks to people like Jacob Alexander

building the dang things and showing the world there's a huge market for super customizable mechanical keyboards. It's moved beyond the forums and even subreddits, and they're now Twitch streamers, YouTubers, and even folks on TikTok, pushing the keyboard agenda and giving us all some serious keyboard envy.

To get a better understanding of what's happening right now, I reached out to Julie Muncie. Hello, I am. I am Julie Muncie. I am a writer and also a person who builds keyboards. We work together once upon a time as journalists, and Julie's work has appeared on Gizmodo and I-O-9 and Wired. And she's really fantastic. When Julie isn't writing about the best lube for your key switches or the best game to play on your PC, she spent an increasing amount of time on a very cool side hustle called keyboard concierge. The keyboard landscape is confusing, and for a price, Julie is trying to help customers navigate it.

And hopefully, she's going to help me figure out what the space actually looks like right now. So here's my interview with Julie Muncie. I've known you for a couple, for many years now. And I remember that first time you mentioned you were doing this service. And I was like, that makes a lot of sense. Because I feel like the keyboard space itself has transformed a lot in the last few years and gotten harder to kind of parse for most people. Absolutely.

Yeah. Over the past few years, it's really exploded. The amount of options have increased dramatically, and it's a lot to learn and a lot to navigate. You have to learn not only how to build a thing, but also where to find the parts to build, and you have to follow complex group buys, which are like pre-orders but worse, and all of these things. And it's just, it's a lot. Yeah, I got to admit, I've been very into the keyboard community for years. I bought my first mechanical keyboard in the late 2000s, right before, I guess, this huge kind of kickoff.

But if I take a break from that community for even a year, there's suddenly all these new switches. There's all these new keywords. Like the GMMK was something I had never even heard of. And everybody I talked to who's a keyboard fanatic now is like, oh, yeah, everybody knows the GMMK. That's the best keyboard you can get. And I'm like, what? What is it? I don't understand what's happening.

Do you think there's a reason that it's just kind of exploded like this and gotten so complex? I think there are a couple of reasons. I think one reason is that a lot of people like me got into it around the time of the pandemic. When it hit, I got my first keyboard, ordered a keyboard from a company called Ikeunix in China. They have really great keyboards. So I ordered it in like January 2020. So I was waiting for it for quite a while, as you might imagine. And during that time, I just did a lot of reading and obsessing and hyper-fixating and learned about keyboards.

And I think a lot of other people did the same. Also, video games in the gaming space have been a really big deal here. I think for a lot of people, gaming keyboards have been an entry point that, you know, they get a gaming keyboard. There's the reputation that may or may not be true that mechanical switches, you know, give you better gaming performance. And people get into that. and then they want to customize and explore and learn. And like all of the gaming keyboards, most of them. And, okay, this is changing now, to be fair.

But up until like the past year, they're all like black and red and like lime green and really garish. And if you want a mechanical keyboard to play games on, but you don't want it to look like that, up until the past year, you had to go make your own, basically. And so that was. a big thing. I think there have also been an increase in streamers and content creators in the scene, and I think they both ride the trend and add to it. I definitely see a lot of Twitch streamers and stuff. I admittedly do not watch a lot of Twitch. But when I do, I do see people are really focused on their keyboards. And it's this kind of like nerdiness that reminds me that old movie hackers, where it's

like these people are just like wanting to show themselves, wanting to explore their own personalities in this piece of technology that most of us can't even see, but we definitely hear on a Zoom call. Is that accurate? Is this really like this kind of like form of self-expression? Absolutely. I mean, one of the things that initially drew me to mechanical keyboards and kept me getting into them was that like it was a piece of consumer technology

that I use for myself every day that I can understand and build and customize. I mean, you can do that to an extent with gaming PCs, right? They're complicated and very expensive. Keyboards are expensive, but not as expensive as a good a gaming PC. And it's a thing where, you know, with some time, you can understand them well enough that you can be designing your own keyboard PCBs if you want to. I'm not quite smart enough for this. I haven't cracked that yet, but a lot of people have. And you can do all of these things.

So it's very much, it becomes this piece of tech that you can understand and customize and build yourself and have ownership of. And there's very few other pieces of technology we use nowadays that has that allure and that power and that like customizability, that sense that this is mine and I own it and I understand and picked every single part of it. When you entered into this space and you realized there was kind of this need, was it just only yourself that that drove this? Like you realized how hard it is and you're like, I want to help others? Or were you finding other people really having this difficulty too? There were a couple things. First was I did become a part of a keyboard community that I lurked on and then joined. And actually, I'm a mod there now at Mitt LaDica's cute keyboard club discord. It's great. And so a lot of people talking, asking questions, and just realizing that there's a big barrier to entry, a lot of learning. And I had to do a lot of research. And I became very fascinated by it and just learned all these things. And then I came up to a couple of things. And then I came up to a couple of things. of problems. The first problem was that I didn't have the money to do all the building I wanted to do. And the second thing was I saw that there were people in the space who will help others

build keyboards, but they tend to be big streamers. People like Teja types go and make these really, really nice keyboards in front of a large audience, and they make a lot off of commissions and they make the rest of their money off of streaming. What am I cutting? Ah, yes, I forgot to explain. So your stabilizers come like this. So you can see how there's these two little prongs that are sticking out. So when you bottom out. And this is really cool, but it's deeply inaccessible to just a normal person who wants to build a keyboard. You're probably not going to get Teha types or one of them to build you a keyboard.

So I thought I could do a similar sort of building service, but on a much smaller scale. And that's where it really originated from wanting to build, but not having the money to build a bunch of projects. myself because it does get real expensive real quick. And like I said, my day job is a writer, so I'm not making bank. And seeing that people were doing this work. And the other thing was just the recognition that I had built all of this knowledge and that I was not bad at this and that it took a lot of time and effort and that a lot of people like these things but don't have that time or just don't care enough and that it might be fun to share that knowledge with other people. You mentioned you kind of were in this discourse group.

I definitely have spent so much time in the mechanical keyboard subreddit. Oh, yeah. How are these communities kind of like escalating this attention that mechanical keyboards are receiving? I think part of it is just that there are more and more eyes on these communities. And that is drawing in bigger corporate players and hobbyists and people who think that there's something interesting here and maybe a way to make money here and maybe a lot of money. here. Like, Razor, if you look at their offerings over the past few years, they've become more and more interested in trying to release prestige products that court the more snobby mechanical keyboard hobbyists that look different and have different switches and, like, achieve a certain feel that

hobbyists really want, because I think these companies have seen how much money people spend on these things. And like, you have players like Glorious, which you mentioned. in the GMK. And that is a company that is building itself as a bigger and bigger brand in the peripheral space and doing it largely off of the back of interest in mechanical keyboards. So I think a lot of it is corporate tech realizing that there's money here, which, you know, that's both a good and a bad thing for the hobbyist. And another is, I think, you know, the interest in the hobby moving beyond the white nerd gamer boy crew. Yeah.

Which of course has caused a lot of friction in the community. There's, you know, people who love that, people who hate that. But I think it's become less of sort of an identitarian gamer boy thing and more of a thing that a lot of people who are interested in tech and video games who aren't white boys have become more and more engaged in and interested in. And that has also led to the scene. When you're doing these customizations that you do and these kind of, I guess not customizations, they're more like a concierge service, right? Like people come and they ask you, I want to, do they come to you with like big ideas or they come to you and say, I want a pink keyboard, I want some cool flowers on it, I want it to

really pop and I want it to make my fingers feel nice. It's usually the latter, but it varies. And yeah, the way it usually works is someone comes. either they want help shopping or help building or both. It's usually both. And so what I do is I just use the knowledge I have of where you look for stuff, what's popular, what's good, and based on their interests. I find them stuff. And I'm like, what do you think of these keycaps or this keyboard shape? What are your needs and what do you want to express? And then once, you know, I find that out, we get it and I build it and send it to them. And how are they finding you?

Are they finding you through like Twitter? Are they finding you through like Discord or Reddit? I think it's mostly Twitter and Discord. And like, honestly, I have gotten way more interest than I was prepared for, necessarily able to handle. So I'm pretty backed up if you're listening to this. If you reach out, there will be a long way. But, yeah, I have a website, keyboardconcierge.com and at KB underscore Concierge on Twitter. You know, I have my main Twitter that I built up a following and tagging gaming spaces as a writer there.

And I know people, you know, like you and people had a bunch of other publications. And when I launched this, everyone was very supportive and retweeted. And I think a lot of people, you know, through that, just kind of learned who I was. Do you think this is going to be a service that we're going to see more people really embracing? I think probably yes. I think right now it is very tight up in being a content. creator. Most people who do this service also stream or make YouTube videos of builds. I think it's just because that's what the prominent names in the space do and because it gets you a dual income stream.

The only reason why I necessarily don't do those things is I just haven't had the space in time. I have my hand in like five different things in a given time. But yeah, I do think more and more people are going to emerge in this space and be sort of concierge shoppers slash builders. slash content creators, and there are already a lot out there. Let's talk about some of those content creators because what is the appeal do you think of watching other people build these keyboards? Because that's like kind of the primary thing that's happening with these content creators, right?

They're like explaining it. They're showing it. They're almost like gadget bloggers. Right. They're showing it off. They're unboxing it and then they're putting it together. Lots of unboxing videos. Yeah.

I think there are a few things. I think one is. is the sort of showcasing and voyeurism of seeing really nice, expensive things. Like Teha Types, Teha types went really viral in like 2019, 2020. I'm not sure precisely, but he built a keyboard for the Fortnite streamer, Tifu. Oh my God. Dude, this thing is nuts. And that keyboard cost $3,500.

That was like the most expensive keyboard you could possibly build. And people loved it and were fascinated by it. Seeing like, you know, the case was made out of like chrome steel or something. It was wild. Yeah. And seeing that come together and how it looks and how it sounds, I think that's really interesting. I think the other thing is just, it's a means of learning and knowledge. I consume a lot less keyboard content than I used to when I was first learning because I watched a lot of that content to build my own.

knowledge base to see, okay, how do you build this? And what is good for this and this? What sort of customization techniques and modding techniques? Because that's another big thing in this scene is modding parts of a keyboard to sound and feel better. Like lots of little mechanical lubricants and like little mods you do with tape and all these things. And these are techniques invented by people. And if you want to learn them, the best way you do it is on YouTube or Twitch, watching people build things. That's very fascinating to me because I'm going to make you listen to this right now. I've got a keyboard over here. Yes.

This is my Leopold FC 660C. I went ahead and it's got the Toprey stems. Nice, nice. Very good stems, very good stems. But I replaced them. I replaced the stems because I wanted to use my own cherry stem key caps. And just listen to my regular toprey keyboard. Okay, you hear that.

My other, this keyboard sounded exactly like that until I replaced the stems. Yeah. Does it sound different? Like, to me, it kind of sounded different when I did it. And I was like, oh, did I break my keyboard? But it does. It sounds different. Massively.

People are, I guess, really focused on that and wanting to, I'm just now learning that there is apparently a large community of people who would tell me how to fix that noise. Yes, there absolutely are. Yeah. In fact, in my head, I was thinking of, oh, okay, so that's readily on the upstroke if you loob this specific thing, et cetera, et cetera. And it was going on in my head. But I know what I'm going to be talking to you about after we finish this, this conversation. Yes. But people are very invested in how their keyboards sound. Yeah. So most billed videos feature a typing section where the person just types into a microphone. They don't sound that thawky. Yeah, I mean, these are telios, though. Tilios aren't generally known for their thock. And they're even like break-off videos of just typing ASMR, where like you just listen to a nice keyboard type.

And people really like these. I enjoy them. I think it's a nice sound. I mean, part of my fascination with mechanical keyboards is when I went to undergrad, we had a collective printer in a library. And it had an old keyboard attached to it. And it was really loud and clacky and very satisfying. And I love that thing. And so when I first got into it, I got into mechanical keyboards.

I wanted to build something that felt and sounded like that because it was nostalgic. It made me feel cool. Like you mentioned the movie Hackers earlier, it made me feel like a character in that movie. Angelina Jolie and that movie was awesome, man. Yes, exactly. And like that fantasy was something that I was chasing on a tactile and aesthetic. level. And I think a lot of people have similar memories of like an old Apple 2 or IBM mile limb keyboard that was lying around the house or they've seen or felt a keyboard somewhere,

something a streamer has or something where they just dug the sound in the feel. And they want something like that. Do you think there is like that YouTube and that Twitch and video has kind of helped increase the popularity of this community because people can hear this stuff. Because like when I started doing this, there weren't a lot of YouTubers. This wasn't a thing. And now that seems to be where a big chunk of the community is. Absolutely. Like in my submissions for a keyboard concierge, I will regularly, you know, there's a space in the form where people can write what they're looking for. And a lot of times, and it's happened more and more people link me to videos of keyboards they saw on YouTube. And they're like,

I want something like this. And I'll think. I have to tell them, you know, that keyboard costed $1,200 and they waited a couple years for all the parts to come out of group buy. Here's how we might be able to approximate this. But absolutely, I think being able to see and hear them is a big thing. Where do you think keyboards are going next? Are they going to get more complex? I don't know if more complex. I think what I've seen mostly the past year or two since, you know, I've gotten really into this is a sort of.

of sideways explosion of different styles and shapes and little accessory things. Like for a while, people got really into having rotary knobs on their keyboards. Very popular at the verge. Extremely popular that you can use as, you know, volume knobs or whatever else. Those got real big. And I think certain aesthetics like very sleek modernist keyboards and then a move against that to like more. outrageous and playful and garish-looking keyboards. I don't necessarily see them getting more complex, but I'm seeing more and more aesthetic variety and sort of like in the materials coming out of group buys and corporations. It's very much like its own little art world of like, you know, what is trending, what people think looks good, and just a really intense focus right now on

aesthetics. Awesome. Well, I'm feeling bad because all of my keyboards are gray. So I am not in the future. I'm going to have to go buy something that looks like an electric guitar. I did see that just recently. That sounds very cool. But Julie, thank you so much for chatting and talking about this. Absolutely.

Sure thing. Thanks again to Julie Muncie for talking with me for the show. And thank you for listening. The keyboard space really has changed. And people like Jacob and Julie are driving that change. But as much as it's them, it's also all the other fans and creators gathering online at places like Reddit, Discord, and that wide variety of keyboard forums where Jacob made a name for himself.

It's the community, not any company, driving that change. This isn't the only community driving kick-ass change in the gadget space. This month, I'm going to be talking to a lot of really cool people doing really cool things to change gadgets. So stay tuned. And if you have thoughts about this episode, or even just what we're going to be talking about for the rest of the month, we'd love to hear from you. I'm Alex H. Kranz on Twitter, or you can email us at Vergecast at theverge.com. Our regular Vergecast chat show will be on Friday.

And then next week, on Tuesday, I'll be back for another episode of this creator series, all about trackballs. Be warned, guys, it's going to get nerdy. This episode of The Vergecast is produced by me, Alex Kranz, lead producer Liam James, and senior audio director, Andrew Marino. Okay, I'll see you guys later. Be nice.