Hello all, warning: wall of text ahead. Apologies in advance but I needed to outline my thoughts fully on this and get it off my chest.
So Wayne's last few videos of 2016 unsurprisingly paint a rather bleak picture of the hardware scene in vaping while enthusing that DIY is on the up and will be the next big thing in 2017. According to him, nobody is watching Rip, Grimm, Daniel et al anymore because there is nothing exciting in hardware, it's just the same atties/mods being repackaged with slightly different design tweaks. But DIY... well, the sky's the limit.
I see his point and why he's taking that angle but I don't really agree. In 2015, Wayne declared Colton's Bangin' Bourbon Bread the Recipe of the Year. Did anybody even make it in 2016? There was certainly very little said about it. Six months ago, Goldfish won Wayne's World Mixing competition with his Apple Buttah. For three months, there was crazy hype around Apple Buttah. Now, in discussing Recipe of the Year for 2016, Wayne and his co-hosts dismissed Apple Buttah as "meh, it was good but it's not really an ADV and I haven't mixed it since the competition".
So we have award-winning recipes that are sustaining for a few months and then people are moving on to "the next big thing". Is this any different from the hardware scene? On the forum, each new hardware announcement is met with posts enthusing "OMG, this looks great, the FOMO is too strong and I MUST get this!!!" Two months later, a bunch of the new atties are on sale in the Classifieds and the same people are now enthusing over the next "must have" piece of kit. In DIY, each new DIY hit recipe is greeted with "OMG, this is fantastic, I just found my ADV!!!!" Three weeks later, the same posters are claiming that the next new hit recipe is their ADV. In both cases, we are on a never-ending treadmill.
I've killed the hardware FOMO now. I have four mods and nine atties. They all do what I want and I don't need anything more. Yes, I can sell my old atties and keep buying new models in the hope and belief that the next one will be "the one". But I know already it won't be. So now I don't watch any of the reviewers anymore and don't even browse the Classifieds anymore. I have my gear and will replace it when it dies, not before.
In 2017, I've decided to do the same with DIY. Until now, I've done the typical DIY thing: chase every new recipe, buy concentrates just to use in one recipe, then discover that said recipe is really no better than fifty others I've made. The result is an ever-growing stock of concentrates, many of which are just gathering dust now. It's time to get off that treadmill and start rationalising.
From now on, every new recipe I try will face a brutal test. If it's something special and I can see myself making it over and over to be in my permanent rotation, it will become a keeper. If it's nothing special and no better than others I've tried, I'll delete the recipe and never make it again.
I have enough concentrates currently to still make a vast array of hit recipes I haven't tried yet. I'll be selecting my eventual ADVs from those. As I select ADVs, I will note which concentrates I need and will only restock those. I'll use up the other concentrates trying out different recipes and if no winners emerge from those, I'll simply not reorder the concentrate once it's finished. Over time, the plan is to whittle my current +/-150 concentrates down to less than half that number.
I'll still be buying a lot of DIY stuff. But it will be restocks, not new concentrates. I'm done with buying some rare concentrate to use in one new hit recipe, finding it's nothing special, then sitting with 9ml of a concentrate that I'm not going to use.
I think the DIY FOMO is exactly the same state of mind as hardware FOMO. It's something we allow ourselves to be drawn into and it results in a never-ending search for something that doesn't exist. I want stability and peace of mind in 2017. I've got that in hardware already. I have what I need and I'm content with it. Now it's time to do the same with juice and DIY: get a few favourites and just stick with them.
I used to be a bass fisherman and bass baits is the ultimate FOMO. The industry has a saying "That bait has caught a lot more fishermen than it's caught fish" and it's true. Bass anglers just have to have every shiny new bait on the market. I spoke to a grizzled bassing guide in the US who has caught more bass than I've had hot dinners. Of course, I wanted to know what baits he uses and I was greatly surprised to find out that he carries just half-a-dozen baits with him. He told me he'd tried every bait on the market and realised that none of them do anything that his favourite half-dozen don't. He still buys a lot of baits. But instead of buying thirty different new ones, he now just buys his favourite six - but five of each. He just restocks what he loses. He knows those baits, they work for him, he's happy with them and has satisfied himself that he doesn't need anything else. That strikes me as an eminently sensible approach.
So what are your plans and goals for DIY in 2017?
So Wayne's last few videos of 2016 unsurprisingly paint a rather bleak picture of the hardware scene in vaping while enthusing that DIY is on the up and will be the next big thing in 2017. According to him, nobody is watching Rip, Grimm, Daniel et al anymore because there is nothing exciting in hardware, it's just the same atties/mods being repackaged with slightly different design tweaks. But DIY... well, the sky's the limit.
I see his point and why he's taking that angle but I don't really agree. In 2015, Wayne declared Colton's Bangin' Bourbon Bread the Recipe of the Year. Did anybody even make it in 2016? There was certainly very little said about it. Six months ago, Goldfish won Wayne's World Mixing competition with his Apple Buttah. For three months, there was crazy hype around Apple Buttah. Now, in discussing Recipe of the Year for 2016, Wayne and his co-hosts dismissed Apple Buttah as "meh, it was good but it's not really an ADV and I haven't mixed it since the competition".
So we have award-winning recipes that are sustaining for a few months and then people are moving on to "the next big thing". Is this any different from the hardware scene? On the forum, each new hardware announcement is met with posts enthusing "OMG, this looks great, the FOMO is too strong and I MUST get this!!!" Two months later, a bunch of the new atties are on sale in the Classifieds and the same people are now enthusing over the next "must have" piece of kit. In DIY, each new DIY hit recipe is greeted with "OMG, this is fantastic, I just found my ADV!!!!" Three weeks later, the same posters are claiming that the next new hit recipe is their ADV. In both cases, we are on a never-ending treadmill.
I've killed the hardware FOMO now. I have four mods and nine atties. They all do what I want and I don't need anything more. Yes, I can sell my old atties and keep buying new models in the hope and belief that the next one will be "the one". But I know already it won't be. So now I don't watch any of the reviewers anymore and don't even browse the Classifieds anymore. I have my gear and will replace it when it dies, not before.
In 2017, I've decided to do the same with DIY. Until now, I've done the typical DIY thing: chase every new recipe, buy concentrates just to use in one recipe, then discover that said recipe is really no better than fifty others I've made. The result is an ever-growing stock of concentrates, many of which are just gathering dust now. It's time to get off that treadmill and start rationalising.
From now on, every new recipe I try will face a brutal test. If it's something special and I can see myself making it over and over to be in my permanent rotation, it will become a keeper. If it's nothing special and no better than others I've tried, I'll delete the recipe and never make it again.
I have enough concentrates currently to still make a vast array of hit recipes I haven't tried yet. I'll be selecting my eventual ADVs from those. As I select ADVs, I will note which concentrates I need and will only restock those. I'll use up the other concentrates trying out different recipes and if no winners emerge from those, I'll simply not reorder the concentrate once it's finished. Over time, the plan is to whittle my current +/-150 concentrates down to less than half that number.
I'll still be buying a lot of DIY stuff. But it will be restocks, not new concentrates. I'm done with buying some rare concentrate to use in one new hit recipe, finding it's nothing special, then sitting with 9ml of a concentrate that I'm not going to use.
I think the DIY FOMO is exactly the same state of mind as hardware FOMO. It's something we allow ourselves to be drawn into and it results in a never-ending search for something that doesn't exist. I want stability and peace of mind in 2017. I've got that in hardware already. I have what I need and I'm content with it. Now it's time to do the same with juice and DIY: get a few favourites and just stick with them.
I used to be a bass fisherman and bass baits is the ultimate FOMO. The industry has a saying "That bait has caught a lot more fishermen than it's caught fish" and it's true. Bass anglers just have to have every shiny new bait on the market. I spoke to a grizzled bassing guide in the US who has caught more bass than I've had hot dinners. Of course, I wanted to know what baits he uses and I was greatly surprised to find out that he carries just half-a-dozen baits with him. He told me he'd tried every bait on the market and realised that none of them do anything that his favourite half-dozen don't. He still buys a lot of baits. But instead of buying thirty different new ones, he now just buys his favourite six - but five of each. He just restocks what he loses. He knows those baits, they work for him, he's happy with them and has satisfied himself that he doesn't need anything else. That strikes me as an eminently sensible approach.
So what are your plans and goals for DIY in 2017?
