One; the "audiophile" mindset has afflicted mechanical keyboards -- most people are buying keyboards for the purpose of showing off their keyboards, rather than to enhance their ability to interact with computers. Actual functionality is kind of an afterthought, and style is very important to people.
Two; it's easy enough to make your own keyboard out of commodity parts that there might not be any market for unusual designs. What is available in bulk is what is profitable to manufacture in bulk, and that's what you see advertised in your "social media marketing bs". But, it's easy to make your own and opt-out of all of that.
I wanted a split keyboard with the two halves a certain distance apart, thumb keys that were the exact size of my thumbs, and a numberpad in the middle. Shockingly, no such thing has ever been manufactured in bulk! So I drew one in CAD, printed it out, popped in the keyswitches, hand-wired the rows and columns, connected it to a microcontroller, downloaded commodity firmware to the microcontroller, and I had the exact keyboard I had always wanted. (Turns out: I hated it! But... you don't know until you try.)
I guess what I'm saying is that you should skip the BS and make your own.
One; the "audiophile" mindset has afflicted mechanical keyboards -- most people are buying keyboards for the purpose of showing off their keyboards, rather than to enhance their ability to interact with computers. Actual functionality is kind of an afterthought, and style is very important to people.
Two; it's easy enough to make your own keyboard out of commodity parts that there might not be any market for unusual designs. What is available in bulk is what is profitable to manufacture in bulk, and that's what you see advertised in your "social media marketing bs". But, it's easy to make your own and opt-out of all of that.
I wanted a split keyboard with the two halves a certain distance apart, thumb keys that were the exact size of my thumbs, and a numberpad in the middle. Shockingly, no such thing has ever been manufactured in bulk! So I drew one in CAD, printed it out, popped in the keyswitches, hand-wired the rows and columns, connected it to a microcontroller, downloaded commodity firmware to the microcontroller, and I had the exact keyboard I had always wanted. (Turns out: I hated it! But... you don't know until you try.)
I guess what I'm saying is that you should skip the BS and make your own.