The mechanical keyboard hobby carries an implied promise: a better keyboard makes you a better, faster, more productive typist. It is a comforting justification for an expensive habit. I think it is mostly false, and I think the hobby is more honest and more enjoyable once you let it go. What you are actually buying is a feel and a sound you love, plus an object you customised to your taste. That is a wonderful reason to buy. It is just not "performance."
The performance myth, gently dismantled
Your typing speed and accuracy are overwhelmingly determined by your skill and practice, not your switches. A fast typist is fast on a cheap membrane keyboard and a custom mechanical one alike; a slow typist does not become fast by buying nice switches. There can be marginal comfort effects over very long sessions, and comfort is worth something — but the dream of buying your way to better typing is just that. The keyboard does not type for you.
Why the honest framing is better
Because it frees you. If the keyboard is about feel and sound and personalisation, you can choose purely on what delights you, without pretending each purchase is a productivity investment you have to justify. You stop chasing a performance gain that was never coming and start choosing for joy, which is what was actually motivating you the whole time. The hobby is more relaxed when it stops lying to itself about why it exists.
The takeaway
Buy the mechanical keyboard because you love how it feels under your fingers and how it sounds in the room, and because building and customising it is fun. Do not buy it expecting to type faster, and do not let anyone sell it to you on that promise. It is a sensory craft hobby wearing a productivity costume — take off the costume and enjoy the thing you actually came for.