I wonder if āa hegemonic masculinity is a primary constitutive social forceā applies to Elektronauts. Less so than GearSpace, certainly, but it is certainly not absent here. Still, my sense is that what effects we see at Elektronauts are primarily due to it being a male-dominated space (we males being socialized in ways that are hard to shake), and while there is certainly fetishizing of gear, there isnāt a lot of discussion of it in sexualized terms. I could be wrong, though, or deluding myself.
Careful what you postā¦your desk pic might end up in some grad studentās slide deck!!
I think both gearspace and modwiggler have attempted moved away from this stuff as a whole alsoā¦ makes the paper feel a little biased and dated calling it Gearslutz over and over and just once noting it was renamed to Gearspace. Also a bit like a paper treating the past as if it were the present in many ways from what I read. It might just be my personal bias of what I have used gearspace and modwigglers of which I have not run into any sexual undertones. To me though it seems like a paper someone got the idea for 5-10 years ago and then decided to force it out today despite relevance.
Not to deny this stuff is happening in those spaces I just think the amount happening has diminished massively. Mostly remaining old heads acting that way who just refuse to change with the times I would guess.
Standard academic paper speak.
I find people sexualising gear/cars/things that arenāt people fucking weird. I do see a bit of it on here, but hardly any and it tends to stick out like a sore thumb.
Wiring a paper about how people on gearslutz are twats is pretty low hanging fruit. Why donāt they write about some more positive things, like how women rule techno or how people like Lisa Bella Donna, Sarah Belle Reid and Sarah Longfield are doing the whole YouTube/gear demo thing better than all them geezers (except Nick Batt).
Instead of denigrating the worst of the men, how about they big up the best of the women.
The paper is looking at a subsection of people who are on the decline, that most of the smart people have moved away from and whom few gear companies pay much attention to these days.
I guess the point of academic writing and study is to talk about all aspects. Whataboutery will always raise its head with but what aboutā¦ā¦. and thatās where academic writing should take that paper and compare and contrast etc. one needs the other etc.
Also I guess a good paper should have balanced arguments and consider what opposes their opinion.
I havenāt read this one though, far too early 
Those are certainly good topics to cover - Iāve seen some material recently celebrating the role of women in electronic music and Iām all for it - but itās not research in the academic sense that just sounds like an article.
And more importantly that wasnāt what they wanted to write about, in fact the topic of sexualisation might be fairly key to their area or topic of study.
Not sure if it applies to all levels of study but when I did my dissertation it had to be āoriginalā - no one else was allowed to have written a paper on the same thing before.
This alone made the exercise somewhat of a challenge.
Academics is mostly just thought exercises, this sounds like complete nonsense to me but itās still interesting that someone explored the topic - itās not a manifesto.
(Sorry Fin that sounds like Iām railing at you, just using your comment to springboard a general response )
Not being in any way flippant, but why donāt you write that @Fin25 ? Stick it on here, Iād read it!
I donāt mind, Iāve got a raging hangover and I fucking hate academics.
definitely in 2022, there exists a sort of ignored triple-contradiction. which is (at least to me there is) a recognition that material possessions, consumerism and so forth is bad. also this sort of āweāve got to do it for the environmentā attitude - people constantly in your life berating you about Keep Cupās or plastic bags, driving less, whining about vinyl and so on. but then at the very same time this voracious, total gorging on tech, and music tech included, that absolutely and completely ignores everything i just said. sure, thereās mushroom packaging, the earbuds are wrapped in cardboard now. but on marches the unstoppable appetite for lithium batteries, phosphorescent screens, and any piece of technology that will make a human feel better about themselves. and lets face it, tech does feel amazing to use, like a pair of noise-cancelling headphones - absolutely brilliant technology to navigate the cacophony of the modern world. but thereās something kinda scary about humans, weāre so ready to wave the finger, but weāre also definitely having our cake and eating it too. people call it late stage capitalism as if itās losing steam, but the whole enterprise has never been more ferocious.
Goodness I wish this wasnāt true! Well worded.
The paper isnāt hugely well written, it seems kindof thrown together to look academicā¦
However, I recently stepped out of my predominantly queer lefty āwokeā bubble into the world of academia and music tech, and Iāve been shocked at the language of the white-cis-het-men on the course describing gear as sexy, giving it female pronouns, and making misogynistic comments in generalā¦ I thought this stuff was dying out but apparently not as fast as I thought!
Iām glad people write stuff like this to create discussion, thanks for sharing.
To me āacademic paperā means nothing.
Sounds more like a claim to be part of a self proclaimed āeliteā that has the right to tell other people how to behave and what to think.
My Akai Force is named Shirley. She has a cousin named Sheena and she has āSP404ā tattooed on her forehead.
Sheena is a punk rocker.
I said, Sheee-eee-eeena is a punk rocker nah-ah-ah-ah-now.
Its a fair paper. When equipment came out in the 70s its was ugly as fuck. We didnt care about looks or aesthetics. But today so many people talk about appearances and how it will look on their desk next to the cactus. Teenage Engineering lead the way here. But objectifying stuff is easy and quite masculine.
theyāre just getting greedier as things burn, just look at what theyāre trying desperately to find a use case for with the gimmick āweb3ā of creating every interaction we have with each other into a series of hourly microtransactions. Or self-described boy genius Elon who bought a bunch of doggy tokens in the hope he could force Twitter to use them.
lol
Hahahaa
I wonder why theyāve chosen music gear as a fetish study?
did they see people build cusom PCs or desks or ābattle stationsā or gaming rigs to drive a truck or fly a plane or even people that spend thousands to build custom keyboards?
Because they work in the music department.
ah, time well spent then!