Gassing for Gear: Acquisition, Fetishisation, and Technological Exhibitionism in Gear Cultures

one more piece of gear
will help me cope with the world
in my solitude

- GAS Haiku thread [Online 2016 – present]

Drawing on extensive research to be published in a forthcoming book, this paper examines aspects of gear (professional audio technology) fetishization as related to gear acquisition syndrome, or GAS. Through a broad theoretical framework grounded in commodity fetishism (Veblen, 1899; Marx, 1906; Baudrillard, 1970) and historical anthropology (Pietz 1985), we traverse how themes of value, status and sexualization pervade gear discourse(s) and lead to what is now broadly termed GAS (Diiorio, 2016; Herbst and Menze, 2021). Focusing primarily on online gear discourses and GAS manifestations, we review the turn-based communications on message fora that produce sentiments of GAS. A key aspect involves the public displaying and concomitant voyeurism of individual technological objects, as well as collections, hoards or ‘racks’ of gear—an attribute of gear fetishization that we term technological exhibitionism. To illustrate this concept, we demonstrate how images of desirable technological objects are sexualized and incite ‘wanting’, ‘needing’ and ‘getting’ discussions among groups of young men, perpetuating culture-specific hegemonic masculine social formations. Gassing for gear often involves imagined barriers, hurdles and commendable bravery in its ultimate conquest as such challenges (debt, wives, scarcity) are finally overcome. We also look at how gassing for gear often employs metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) including objectification of the female body, militarization, and/or ludic themes. Finally, we consider how gassing for gear has broader implications on musical practice(s), individual-technological relations, as well as online sociability and performance.