I own four old ThinkPads now. I blame the algorithm. It really doesn’t take much, watch one nerdy video and suddenly your whole feed is people doing cool things with old laptops, and a few weeks later you’re scrolling eBay looking for one, or four.

So let me be clear, I’m not pretending I was listening to the band before they were popular. I actually kind of went right into the greatest hits album, and bought these during peak ThinkPad.

There were a couple of forces at play. Windows 10 end of life forced a bunch of businesses to offload their ThinkPads to e-recyclers, making them super affordable and decently capable machines, if your goal was running Linux. And let’s be honest, it’s been another year of Linux again, and I’ve got a little prediction for you, next year it’s going to be the year of Linux again.

This isn’t a tech review, but no one can talk about ThinkPads without mentioning the amazing keyboards. Yes, they are amazing to type on. And specifically this generation I dove into are all solidly built machines, durable, reliable, and ridiculously upgradable, everything from higher resolution screens to keyboard upgrades, things you typically won’t find in a $200 laptop.

I did time it right. I was able to hit up shopgoodwill.com and Facebook Marketplace to grab 4 ThinkPads, max out their RAM, and drop some super cheap SSDs in them right before hardware prices skyrocketed. It’s interesting, just on RAM and drives alone, these things are now positive ROI appreciation assets (that doesn’t happen in the hobby a lot).

Now why did I see so much ThinkPad content? And why did I join in the fun?

I think there’s also a huge shift in how nerds hobby these days. The days of basement dwelling have shifted, geeks and makers are all content creators now. Everyone’s documenting projects, filming upgrades, taking photos, creating YouTube channels, sharing their hobbies with the world.

Me? I absolutely “did it for the gram.”

I knew after watching enough ThinkPad videos and watching people “rice” their desktops, I wanted in the club. I knew I was going to be writing this blog post before the first ThinkPad hit my doorstep.

These hobbies we love, that used to be pretty isolating, now give us the ability to share and seek out like-minded hobbyists. For instance, I’m an avid homelabber, but it’s not a hobby you can invite people over on a Friday night to come over and “homelab” with you. Unless you guys are doing that, in that case, invite me over!

And you’ve most likely realized by now, this isn’t a post about ThinkPads.

This is a post about wanting to be a part of a community, force myself to write more, break out the camera and play around with some photos. It pushes me to learn Linux desktop customization. There’s this entire flywheel effect by wanting to create content, no matter what kind of content it is.

So today when I’m scrolling through eBay, Facebook Marketplace, and shopgoodwill.com, I’m no longer just thinking “oh, I’d like to mess with that retro computer.” I’m thinking about how I can create a story with it. I know I’ll be challenging myself to make even better content.

This shifts the hobby, but I think what it really does is give the hobby purpose. I’m not just buying and hoarding old gear, I’m sharing stories and hobbies with the world… (even though most of the time it feels like I’m buying and hoarding old gear).