The MSRP Is A Lie

Spent $200 on an NVMe SSD only to lose the one thing loading screens provided—forced breaks to check Twitter. The system boots so fast now that those precious "Did You Know" tips vanish before my eyes. My code compiles before I can even grab coffee. My games load before I can respond to texts. Progress has robbed me of my excuses for procrastination. The spinning wheel of death has been replaced by the crushing weight of productivity. What's next? CPUs that compile code before I even write it?

Remember when buying a GPU was just an expense and not a second mortgage? In 2009, dropping $500 on a graphics card felt like a splurge. Fast forward to 2025, and you're staring at a $4,799 price tag with the same horrified expression as someone who just found out their entire codebase has no comments. Thanks crypto miners, AI enthusiasts, and whatever unholy alliance of market forces conspired to make rendering pixels cost more than my first car. At this rate, we'll soon be trading organs for ray tracing capabilities.

The UK gave us Alan Turing, Tim Berners-Lee, and the ARM architecture, yet somehow pays their developers like they're interns at a failing startup. Nothing like inventing modern computing and the World Wide Web only to reward your tech talent with salaries that barely cover a London flat share and a Tesco meal deal. The classic "we'll pay you in prestige and rainy weather" compensation package.

Behold the evolution of PC justification logic: Normal brain: "I need this RTX 4090 for school spreadsheets." Glowing brain: "This 64GB RAM setup is essential for my remote work meetings." Enlightened brain: "My liquid-cooled rig is purely for watching YouTube at 1080p." Transcendent cosmic brain: "I spent $3000 on this battlestation to play Stardew Valley and occasionally open Notepad++."

Spending $2000 on a high-end GPU but refusing to upgrade that ancient 1080p monitor is the tech equivalent of putting premium gas in a '98 Honda Civic. Sure, you're pushing 144fps in Cyberpunk, but it's like watching an IMAX movie through a keyhole. The sweet irony of demanding 1440p content when your display can't even show the extra pixels – just developer logic at its finest. Your GPU is basically sitting there, underutilized and judging your life choices.

The eternal PC vs console debate just got philosophical! This keyboard wisdom hits different because it's painfully true—custom-built PCs are like gateway drugs to endless hardware tinkering. You start with "I just need something to play Fortnite" and suddenly you're researching liquid nitrogen cooling at 2AM while comparing benchmark scores for GPUs you can't afford. The addiction isn't just playing games; it's the never-ending quest for that extra 3 FPS that costs another $300. Console gamers finish games; PC builders finish builds .