It's dumb, but it is what it is, and people wrap an awful lot of their identity up in their chosen tribe rather than just being themselves.

> It's dumb, but it is what it is, and people wrap an awful lot of their identity up in their chosen tribe rather than just being themselves.

Cough. Written on Hacker News, but not Reddit or Digg or Facebook. Cough.

C’mon, we’re sitting right in the middle of a tribe. Even writing that Sennheisers sound better is sending a tribal signal. That’s why people write it instead of just buying a pair and listening to them in private.

FWIW, I have a $20 pair of Sony unknown model # headphones I picked up at Ross. I bought them because they were over ear and cheap not because they're white, have Sony logos on them, or because I wanted to make a statement about what group I'm in or not in.

But yeah, HN is also very group membership oriented and people spend extraordinary amount of time to build things with things that signal that they're part of this group. The trope is "yet another photo sharing app" right?

That's utter fear driven rubbish. Humans survive and thrive all the time without joining a group.

There are some survivalists who may or may not be able to operate for a while on this basis, but even if they aren’t “joining” a tribe, they are protected by tribes. get rid of all the tribes, and new ones would spring up and we’d be back to this.

The largest tribe is currently that which accepts a commonly defined currency in exchange for providing value of some sort.

It's hard to argue that this same motivation isn't driving sales of iPhones over Android and vice versa. Or Canon versus Nikon. Nike versus Adidas. Harvard versus Stanford. Obama versus (!Obama). Ford versus Toyota. We can rationalise many of these decisions, but so can the people who bought the other thing.

But it's also one of those things that, whenever you see it, is a reminder that humans have a long way to go and aren't as different from the rest of the animals as they'd like to believe.

Why Apple purchased beats, is that it helps tie together several different social tribes, with Apple now able to try to cross-sell between them, something very hard to do.

Of course, some people might have a more defined personal identity than others, but those are outliers. The vast majority of humans define their self based on groups that are important to them (with parents/family usually being dominant, followed by friends and culture).

Basically, I'd argue there is not much self left if you take away the different group identities.

I think you're confusing the two.

If you've never had a non-inter-group interaction, then I feel terribly sorry for you. For most people, that's the normal mode of interaction.

I stated the group identity replaces and/or subsumes personal identity.

You replied, "How is that personal identity formed, if not by social interaction? I think the dichotomy you refer to is illusory." I believe this indicates that you think all collections of people are "groups" regardless of the way that they formed, the size and any notion of in-group out-group membership status.

So I replied "social interaction != group membership"

To which you replied "I don't think the two are dissociable" which reinforced my understanding of your previous statement -- that you believe all collections of people, regardless of the size or reason for their formation, are interchangeable. A society = team = club = class = mob = airplane full of people = global population = tribe = clan = family = nation = citizenry = company = group = like-working tradesmen = guild = union = etc.

My claim is that this is patently absurd and a remarkably oversimplified model of how the world works, one that's so wrong as to be virtually non-functional. It doesn't provide any workable estimates or cause-effect relationship that apply even trivially across almost any pair of those words. We've decided that these things are so different that we even give them different words, definitions, legal status, philosophies, fields of study, and so on. In fact it's unusual when any of these two words even start to smell like the same thing.

For example, a team doesn't play a game against a tribe, people don't organize labor into a citizenry, a train-car full of people aren't a global population, a nation-state isn't a guild.

These concepts are vastly different and any model that conflates them is so useless as to not be considered.

Most of those "collections of people" lead to certain behaviors, simply from the fact that people self-evaluate and even construct their identity based on their membership and hierarchic position in them.

When you can have a feeling of belonging or not belong, social incentives to reject those not belonging, feelings of pride in your actions as a group, etc, you have a social group, be it a tribe, a company or a family.

Self-categorization theory explains how these groups are formed, and why they are a social group, and not just a random collection of people.

But with that said, I would not wear them in public. Apart from walking around in traffic with noise-cancelling, which is dangerous, the headphones looks a bit big on your head, so I use the headphones that came with my iPhone.

  > I just don't understand purchasing headphones 
  > as a fashion statement. I read it as "I want 
  > you to know I like popular brands over high 
  > quality and my own listening experience".

Beats aren't to my taste, although neither are $150 basketball shoes or a lot of other things. I get it, though.

It's not necessarily a statement. Look: I write music. I like music with a good quality. When I buy speakers, I look for reviews on GearSlutz and aim at the best and most transparent ones. The same goes for headphones.

But at the same time, from the aesthetics standpoint, these headphones look hideous. In fact, most of professional audio monitors and headphones look ugly, in my opinion. I have a pair of AKG K77 headphones on right now, and another pair of heavy, bulky, closed AKG monitors at home. They sound great. But they're UGLY.

And if I wasn't that much into sound quality, I would definitely buy Dr Dre's phones instead. Sound quality is not something any person can perceive easily, and see value in; but the visual aesthetics is something that you can actually see with your eyes.

Do you understand why anybody buys anything for the way it looks or is it just headphones? It's no different from people wanting nice looking shoes, bags, sunglasses, jackets etc. Lots of people care about their appearance, and say what you want about Beats, but they certainly look better than the HD 280s. And realistically I bet you no one using beats headphones would get a better listening experience by changing headphones.

Take something mastered for MP3; then badly rip it to MP3; then play it on a phone or other low cost MP3 player, while you're on a bus or subway.

Most people just can't tell the difference.

Head-fi.org (the biggest, most active forum for headphone people that I know of) has some good (although overwhelmingly long) threads on the topic, such as: http://www.head-fi.org/t/716711/the-best-bass-headphones-are...

But thats the thing, there is no best headphone.

Best for DJs Best for producers Best for listening Best comfort when wearing for 8 hours a day Best for travelling with Best for bass Best neutral sound