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An Anthropological Look Into The Case Modders Domain
Editors note: some profanity
As everyone in the country is aware, there is a huge culture of people out there who use computers. From enthusiasts, to businessmen, to teachers, lawyers, and everyone from all walks of life above, below and in-between. While this is a really cool thing and is helping out people with education, informational access and all kinds of other abilities they would not normally have, it also poses an interesting problem. There is no accurate way to classify the group of computer users. This mainly falls to the fact that this category of people spans more layers of society than most other descriptions can. This means that to talk about computer users in detail, you need to look at a smaller portion of the group. One such subculture of computer users would be power users, or people who are dedicated users and know a lot, if not close to everything about their hobby. Well, this part could get somewhat long here, so I'm going to break it down here:
| Kingdom: |
Humans |
| Phylum: |
Computer Users |
| Class: |
Power Users |
| Order: |
Dedicated Hobbyists |
| Family: |
Power Tweakers |
| Genus: |
Case Modders |
| Species: |
Dedicated Case Modders |
The culture I plan to write about here is one that I am very near and dear to, and that is the "Dedicated Case Modders" culture. In my effort to look at this I spoke to some old friends in the field, who are all experienced, skilled and all around cool people. They are:
- Kitty: One of the few females dedicated to the hobby and passion. She has a true artistic flair and has a lot of very good abilities. She has an eye for what looks really cool and what isn't quite as cool.
- Ultragooey: One of the 'fathers' of the culture. He was one of the first on the scene with one of the best-known, and best-done Case mods. This was the Unreal Case, and it is truly a marvel of construction.
- Cold Dog: A definite old-schooler here. He's been chillin' in the forums for longer than most, and has done more cool things with cases than most other people have dreamed of. The Atomic Case springs to mind as one of his cooler projects.
- Echo42: Not a new guy to the scene, or an old timer. Echo was among the earlier influx after it took off. He is also one of the more knowledgeable modders as he keeps up with what's happening in the field.
- AllUrBaseRbelongUs / TKitch: A.K.A. me! I'm a long time case modder and have learned from the best and have thrown a lot of curves into the field of my own, just to make it more interesting.
Now what exactly is a case modder? Well, I'm going to have to go into a fair bit of background here and while some of it may sound a bit demeaning, it isn't intended to be. Case modding isn't any specific thing that can be nailed down with as definition so much as it is a hobby that constantly changes its form and meaning and value standards.
Case modding is actually a very recent creation, as it is only about 2 years old as far as active participants are concerned, however the roots extend much farther into the origins of the computer field. The first case mod isn't really something that's very important or critical information; all that is known, and needs to be known is that this has been happening for over 20 years now. Kitty specifically had some feedback on this part here:
"I began modding when I bought my first home computer about ten years ago. I hated beige so I had to paint it. It all went from there."
- Kitty
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