I tried that, the o-rings made things worse. They soften the bottoming but they also increase the force required to actuate the key. They also make the feel of the keyboard horrible IMO.

There's something about the tactile nature of the keys which just doesn't work for me and/or some other people.. the tactile nature makes us use more force instead of less, and there is no getting around these keys require more force X a greater distance so they literally make your fingers do more physical work.

They certainly did feel nasty to me, but they shouldn't increase the force required. A narrow enough O-ring should provide cushioning just past the actuation point. What I would have to do when I used O-rings is press every key very hard after installing them to ensure that they were pushed as far up as possible.

I didn't go off on a wild goose chase trying different O-rings. I believe I did the experiment on a Das Keyboard Professional something and I used the O-rings that Das Keyboard recommended and sold.

It all got silly at some point. The Mantra is that mechanical keyboards are better. If you have trouble with RSI typing on them the community suggests a never ending series of high effort and/or high cost solutions. No one ever suggests the easy and cheap solution of just not using the mechanical keyboards.

When I finally figured it out it was like I'd escaped from a cult. Interestingly I used Mechanical Keyboards at the office from about 2009-2014. During that time period tons of developers I worked with were steadily buying up Mechanical Keyboards, it was basically a trend/fad at that time.

Fast forward to 2020 and I don't think there's a single developer left in my office who still uses them.

I'm 1 of 2 devs in my office that use mechanical keyboards, and the other one is only in the mechanical category because they have a Kinesis Advantage to eliminate the wrist pains they were having. It's all down to personal preference with input devices and there's no shame in using whatever suits you best.