Originally Posted by
Phatman
I don’t think niches are necessarily created out of thin air, but I do think they’re exploited, perhaps over engineered and thus
over marketed to justify the engineering investment. I mean, y’all - gravel baggies.
https://www.showerspass.com/products/mens-gravel-shorts C’mon now.
I must've been the only person to have fallen through the long arm of Big Bike's marketing machine, since I've never heard of those shorts despite actively reading Bike Forums and listening to industry podcasts and having most of the big name publications in my RSS feed. I'm sure tonight's subliminal programming will correct this oversight and I'll report back on how good the shorts work for wearing around 50 miles from actual gravel as Big Bike knows is the actual use case.
And for your second point, I don’t think people really care if you’re wasting your own money. It’s the justification that tends to irk people because it comes off as extremely self unaware. A technical justification also tends to imply that everyone else needs to waste their money in a similar way as well do be “doing cycling” right. Just own the fact that you like cool gadgets and you’ll bug everyone else less.
Thanks, you reminded me that in addition to clipping angel wings, the act of buying something nice also signals that the buyer's true intent is to make others who spent less feel bad. Believers are the only ones self-aware enough to know that the purchaser is wrong no matter what and that the only correct action is to passively accept the well-deserved shower of criticisms from them. Due to their superior self-awareness, believers know that they are never projecting their own insecurities, as they are the pinnacle of objective judgment on all things Bike (not to be confused with their diametrically opposed nemesis, Big Bike, who have failed to advance cycling since the invention of the believers' last purchase).