Wonderful and so much exact description !ThomasHelzle wrote:Like Peter says, G.A.S. is Gear Akquisition Syndrome.
Basically the whole Music-Gear Industry lives off this form of addiction where people basically hope that the next guitar, synth, effect, DAW, controller, sound library, sample set etc. "does it" for them. You buy stuff in the hope that your sound will get better, that you will be more inspired, that you will be able to do things musically that you couldn't before, that you will get seen, be loved, maybe even become famous...
This addiction is fueled by bold marketing promising amazing things for even the most boring EQ you already have in 50 versions.
If some popstar or producer says good things about it, maybe it will colour off on you?...
And if it looks cool, it maybe helps too?...
And sales of course are the final triggers. Many companies offer their stuff for very high prices and then have more or less continuous sales going on that push people over the threshold. They buy stuff they normally would never buy, they know they don't need it, but "the price is too good to say no". So "nobrainer" has this additional meaning of no brain being involved and it's all glands that do the deciding.
And like with any drug, after the kick there is the down, you realise you spent too much, the thing just sits there on your HD like all the other stuff that didn't actually make you happy or creative and you get "buyers remorse" or start to work out your frustration in public forums like KVR, where you might argue with devs about silly details, get into endless discussions about the perfect DAW, synth, effect or abuse other users and become a professional troll...
Of course it's mostly hogwash.
Humans get actually creative by restriction, not by being flooded with options, so GAS for many rather creates stagnating creativity and they think back of the times when they "had nothing but a tape recorder" but somehow the creative juices flowed...
If you read KVR, you would think the Beatles could never have got anything done with the crap equipment they had.
But they did.
So welcome to basically being the equivalent of a drug dealer
Cheers,
Tom
That's why the GAS is included in the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders by the medical doctors and the psychiatrists.
Because yes, it is a true disorder of the mind and of the life in that it is not triggered by the reason but by a permanent feeling to always miss something better than what can actually be already excellent to solve all the needs in a leisure activity (not only in music). And yes, it is obsessive because it can take all the time or almost all the time of these leisure activities, much more time in this activity of buying and always searching for a better product or "the missing product" and discussing about products on forums during hours and hours each day... instead of really using the objects, tools or instruments which are already owned. And yes it is compulsive because it is a compulsion, something repeated permanently and in a state of mind where the "victim" (a compulsion means the fact of being victim of a constraint impulsed by one's own mind) is practically unable to resist the temptation impulsed by his/her mind. At the extreme (less and less rare) it can lead some victims to be financially ruined, it can lead parents to miss the money necessary for the schooling of their children, it can lead couples to divorce, or to end up having their account blocked by their bank, or to be unable any more to bear the mandatory financial expenses (taxes, assurances, electricity, rents, etc., the worse being the rents and the taxes). These situations are the extreme situations, but they are not that rare, far from it! More and more couples and parents have now to face the household over-indebtedness due to these obsessive-compulsive disorders of themselves (the husband of the wife or even both) or of one of their children. These extreme situations that I cited as examples are less and less rare, and crowds of GAS victims are now months after months barely sustaining, with a sigh of relief at the last day of the month but being permanently at the limit to suddenly fall down in the financial nightmare.
The GAS is a real psychological (and even psychiatric) trouble, which seems harmless but it is like a slow-burning fire. A sudden unexpected event in the life with a mandatory expense to do... and it appears suddenly that it remains too few money in the bank account to face the event. And it is then the beginning of the deep consequences of that behavior which has been going on for a long time.
GAS is like a permanent excessive use of alcohol without feeling oneself an obvious alcoholic. It is also like a too intensive use of gambling money games, online or not (there are hundreds of thousands of people who scratch a dozen of tickets each week, and that's why all the jackpots are now astronomical each week, and it is that infernal feedback between causes and consequences which enhances the vicious circle). In all these situations, the mind process is more or less the same : a strong difficulty to face a compulsive obsession appearing like an irrepressible craving and which is reckless and never really guided by the reason nor by any real need.
. They don't wanna read a whole page of critical product info. They just wanna buy it 
