Actually, I do enjoy speculating on why anyone does pretty much anything. 
Maybe all of our favorite gear sites need a âPsychologyâ sub-forum.
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As someone who really really hates all the fantasizing, my anti-GASness is because the discussion of workflow, sound design or actually how to use the various things i own gets pushed off of whatever front page so quickly in some forums.
Itâs not a personal judgment so much as it strongly affects default culture and encourages carbro calvin pissing on sticker grade arguments on what people shouldnât own and who makes âtoysâ and who is a girly man and itâs just toxic shit.
I own things and occasionally buy things but we need less consumerist attitudes.
GAS is a phrase that necessarily represents toxic elements to individual and community culture, i donât tend to see people overusing it over lamenting.
I do see people occasionally trolling
and heckling âanti gasâ threads, the amount of gas discussions that happen in anti gas threads is itself sadly amusing.
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But⌠Thatâs really only on ONE PARTICULAR site.
In my experience, thereâs not much of that going on here. Which is why I come here more than one of my previous favorite sites, and actually deleted my account from THAT ONE site.
Stupid girly men donât understand that if they didnât buy three Baloran: The Rivers then theyâre just playing with toys. 
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How does one talk about anti-GAS without also talking about GAS?
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Overloaded language, i mean that instead of talking about stuff theyâre doing or want to do it occasionally delves into talking about what they didnât buy or are going to buy or couldnât buy, which is just noise (to me.)
I am not empathetic and victories are still good! I just feel itâs missing the point to free my brain up to how to use anything i have.
Learning and helping drop knowledge gets a bit shoved aside for talking about stuff accumulation in some form or another.
Anyway, the problem is not stuff obviously, or buying anything. Our personal relationship with instruments (or objects) is what is generally getting in our way.
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Well, if your gear hates you, then it really is time to start thinking about kicking it out, and find some that can show you a little affection. 
Honestly I got into the gear phase because I thought it would help with productivity. For a while it did. Iâd just plug in, twiddle, record and then slice and dice. Then you realise you want to add something and have to spend bank for the privilege. Then with $$$'s worth of gear in front of me, in the long run I wasnât getting the satisfaction with results I got in the box, but told myself I work on computers itâs an escape yada yada yada.
So Iâm slowly selling most of my gear after buying a MacBook Pro. PC for work, Mac for play. Iâll still keep some gear and will probs buy some more at some point, but it has to complement what I already do⌠until a plugin sale comes along. Ah Iâm such a fiend! Devil makes work for idle wallets.
Itâs not them, itâs me.
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Then I have the perfect forum for you
I guess it could get âtoxicâ but those people/comments would be irritating if synths were free or if we were talking about cracked plugins. I donât see it as âconsumeristâ even though itâs technically âconsumingâ a thing
Some people donât have a Sam ash in their town. How else are you going to learn whatâs possible or what other tools are capable of if you canât try them in person
I do think that there is a problem of manufacturers continuing to make things for consumers rather than artists, musicians, sound designers and Iâm constantly hoping for a new tool that brings something new and exciting to work with. I like and understand limitations but I also hold out hope that someone will make a new groovebox or something I can arrange clips with outside of a daw or something with synthesis that goes deeper than oscillator sync, limited fm, ring mod, subtractive
The problem is, that If you want to dive deep into sound design or music making without a computer, you really do kind of need to have at least 3 different synths, a sampler, a midi sequencer, eurorack, mixer, interface, subtractive synth, fm synth, analog poly, phase distortion synth, granular synth, drum machine
Obviously you donât NEED anything. But because of limitations and price, if you are curious about your options, youâre going to be buying things just to try them. And if you donât have a local Patch Point or Perfect Circuit, then how else are you going to research and ask questions about what might be interesting for achieving your goals?
I see it as a necessary aspect of hardware music making. And sites like this are based on making music with hardware
I think, as someone else mentioned, these kind of statements presuppose that we arenât smart or intuitive enough to discern between being obsessed with acquiring a collection and being creative. But I donât think itâs that black and white. The conversation does go to extremes at times, but it can go to the other extreme too, and Iâm just saying thatâs not a new or original idea either. I think most people can understand that there is middle ground. Itâs why the term GAS exists. No one even knows what that acronym means outside of synth nerds. Itâs a self deprecating term for people who are self aware enough to poke fun at that aspect of this creative endeavor
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Like you say, sometimes buying things makes sense? And having a wider palette can be nice.
I feel like there are divergent narratives here.
Some people, for a wide variety of reasons and preferences feel like they need more advice management of their budget, time, space, process, and expertise.
I wonât speak to how you feel about the matter, but if people have these opinions itâs because they do have to put more thought into what you feel less worried about. As you said, itâs a matter of degree and the person concerned about detrimental effects of rapid purchases is not preaching but discussing how theyâve come to understand themselves and their creative blockers.
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I bought some gear last week and used it today. I even threw up a small clip of a silly take. Mainly because I visit this forum a lot, and have been reading threads on gas. Even though I do lots of gear lusting, many times I come across music other people who are making on different gear. Lately it just inspires me to use what Iâve worked myself into.
Thereâs a lot of folks on here that crank out tracks and cycle through gear. They tend to keep me on my toes and trying harder to finish tracks rather than thinking I donât have something I need.
Thanks elektonauts
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Boxsets of old albums all glitzed up with oodles of extra discs (that usually get played once or twice), a nice big book (with some BS fawning essay and lots of photos youâve seen before)âŚall nicely remasteredâŚyet again. File away on shelf.
The desire to own it is sometimes more powerful than the desire to use/play it.
yeah i can see that. i guess i just keep reiterating that the anti-gas thing is as pointless to me as the gas thing
but i am a little lost now, so i wont pretend that im keeping up at this point
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Guitar and Bass nerds use it, too, for what thatâs worth - and the term was coined by a guitarist.
In both/all three communities, there is a common phenomenon Iâll call tone chasing or perhaps we synthesists might call Timbre Chasing (we donât call it that, but we should). What is is this: making new timbres (or the perfect tone) is hard, and maybe, just maybe, the limitation is your gear. A new piece of gear may fix that - if youâve added a Digitone to an analog subtractive synth maybe it will, but if you are buying your fourth reverb pedal or 5th analog subtractive synth, perhaps not.
At the same time there is also the Diderot Effect, or the tendency to buy additional things after youâve bought one somewhat out of the ordinary thing. E.g. âI just bought a synth last week, what synth should I buy this week?â. At the same time there is the collector/hoarder urge that crosscuts all sorts of consumer product hobbies; Iâve seen it in bicycles, console gaming, knitting - all sorts of things that donât relate much to artistic pursuits, but do tend to be pastimes with special tools or gadgets (especially if certain makers of those tools have a cachet). At the same time, there are regular sayings - how many bikes do I need? N+1. People say that about guitars, too, and donât quite say it about synths - yet.
So, there are some legitimate questions that are far harder to answer with an artistic pursuit. How many noiseboxes do I need? (What music do you make?) What type of nosieboxes do I need? (What music do you make?). I donât think itâs necessarily wrong to not have a total image of the music one makes - if this were my job that would be different, but I like being able to follow the happy accidents and not have to make a product for a specific purpose. So, I might have some of those questions - like what is a reasonable (what the hell does that mean?) hardware setup to make, say, danceable industrial glitch chiptune with metal influences? I might guess a subtractive synth, an FM synth, a sampler, a drum machine, and a good set of noise and filter tools (might be in a synth, sampler or drum machine), and a DAW if one wants to give tracks a little polish and so on. Figuring that all out might take some time and some gear might come and go (and UI for the gear is a real factor - I think UI is really the whole point). But when it gets down to oneâs 5th or 6th sampler or 4th wavetable synth, I think it is hard for me to imagine they are holding the architecture of all those synths in their heads (I donât think I would) - maybe if they are all simple monos thatâs not that bad, but if they are deep programmable synths maybe not. I think in a case like that âyou probably donât need another synthâ or âwhat, specifically do your other synths not do?â are fair and even useful questions. Some people might get defensive and lash out - but that says to me they probably donât know why they want the new thing. The ones that can articulate a reason for it wonât care if some random yahoo on the internet tells them they donât need it.
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I actually learned this term long time ago from photography community, and imo photography GAS is far more severe then synths, thereâs so much things to buy outside of camera/lens itâs just insane 
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well, i do get a little defensive because ive been in situations where iâve tried to tlk about a new synth and people are like âwhy dont you just use what you haveâ for the thousandth time. and its not that sentiment, its the attitude that the thought has never occurred to us, so the enlightened zen minimal setup king is graciously imparting his wisdom. i may be projecting a little there or whatever, but i see that sometimes
but also, i am the kind of person who gets excited about trying new tools. at the same time, every time i get something new for the past 2 years, i sell another thing. iâve sold a second polysynth that i loved many many times because i feel that its distracting me from focusing on my âmainâ poly. i do it with effects every time i end up with a pedal because i feel like im focusing too much on the heavily processed effected tone or that specific pedal rather than the entirety of the mix, so i sell that. i have intentionally bought two old cheap analog bucket brigade delays and an alesis wedge so i am never tempted to sell my only hardware effects because they wont be worth much if i do. and i know they can do as much as i realistically need without feeling like i need a strymon verb/delay or eventide or something. and i have consciously made an effort to never ever even go so far as to buy a 4ms pod so i would potentially be tempted to get a eurorack module or two after i recognized what was happening to me when i had only a little 3u 84hp niftycase. i see eurorack stuff every day that i would love to have, but i can tell myself that its not even possible because i dont even have a $300+ case to put them in
so i feel the pressure from both angles. ive bought and sold the same elektron gear about 5 times per like 3 different boxes because at first i feel like its maybe a little limiting, then i learn how incredibly powerful it can be to work within those limitations to figure out how to make things work with just that one box, then i remember that a berhinger monosynth can have a lot more character than a complex eurorack or elektron box so i sell it. then i look back on old tracks or videos, remember how fun the process of working with that gear was, buy it again and it starts over. and i acknowledge that thatâs a problem. if i had more money, i wouldnt have to sell something i definitely do not want to sell to try something else, but unfortunately thats not the case. but when i do have too much, it definitely hurts my process. wehn i had a p12 plus a peak, or a take-5 plus a hydrasynth, or a digitone plus an opsix, it felt way too redundant, it felt like i was spreading myself too thin. because i really like to focus hard on one piece of gear and really pull out the most unique beautiful timbres out of it that i possibly can and when i have two very deep and esoteric machines with two very different peculiar workflows that you have to memorize and study and refer to the manual and acquire/keep muscle memory, trying to juggle two machines is way too complicated and ruins the creative process for me.
so im getting into my own personal feelings and issues here. but thats all to say that while i am someone who always wants a new more powerful and interesting tool that can do more than whats currently possible, i am aware of that. and i recognize when it hurts my process. and i think adults can handle discussing gear without blaming forums for making them focus too much on acquiring new things
likei can see how maybe gas type threads or comments can get in the way of talk about process and sound design. and im not a fan of that either. id love to see more tips and tricks style talk. especially for specific gear, which is why i love the single synth threads on this forum. but i also think that talking about what another piece of gear might be capable of in the context of a certain process is a necessary part of that conversation sometimes. so i just wouldnt really want to discourage that or make people feel self conscious about bringing it up
i kind of abandoned this idea earlier but i do thnk that it is an invaluable resource to ask someone who has experience with a synth you havent had access to about how it sounds, what it can do, how it compares, etc
wow, i actually had no idea that this was used in other contexts. for some reason i thought it was specific to music gear. probably because its the only context iâve seen it used in
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This resonates with me, in many different ways. I get interested in solving a problem (how do I get this sound out of my bass, what lens do I need for this type of photo, what algorithm gives me insight into this data) and once I have a solution to the problem, my interest wanes.
Suspect this is ADD/ADHD.
Suspect in my case this is ADD/ADHD. Particularly the âinterest wanesâ bit.
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I donât even think thatâs required - itâs the grass is always greener effect. You have known frustrations with your current gear, but only hope with the desired gear. Frustrations probably come later, as nothing is perfect.
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I meant in my case ⌠didnât mean to imply that GAS necessarily implies ADD/ADHD