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this post was submitted on 05 May 2025
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Typewriters
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A community dedicated to everything related to manual, electric and electronic typewriters, their history, use, collection, service, maintenance, …
Things published with a typewriter but about something else should be published in !typecasts@sh.itjust.works
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I've contradictory feelings about that. On the one hand it's great to see some promotion of what I consider a great tech. On the other hand, if this does boost sales and raises prices I also doubt it will help the slightest new actual young users get their hands on affordable models...
Fashion and trends are such a pain. I would love to see more people actually write using a typewriter, and spend a lot more of their time away from their too many screens, but I'm a lot less excited having fashion-victims artificially raise prices of used typewriters so they can put a vintage piece of low-tech on display in their Instagram feed, or whatever. That's just silly.
I understand your POV, but trends come and pass. The prices will go down again, but in the meantime, a small proportion of these “fashion victims” will have discovered them and will keep using them. And that's cool!
But to be honest one of the reasons I like typewriters is because it's not trendy.
My reason is mostly that, as a kid, I learned to touch type on my grandfather's Olympia SG1 and I grew up with that one machine that stayed with me up to the university. Back at university, I already had been using using computers for quite a few years also (it was in the late 80s) but I still preferred to type all my papers on what was back then an already 30 years old or so machine. Heck, I even published a fanzine using nothing but this machine, a pair of scissors, glue and one of... the university photocopying machine ;)
This Olympia was heavy as a tank, but it was so smooth at the same time. I loved it... still I gave it away when I got my first portable Mac computer. Always regretted it.