This whole post seems founded on the shaky assumption that all PC gamers would be on a roughly 3 year rebuild cycle anyway…

Not in my experience.

Even my most PC enthusiast friends would only ever have been upgrading every ~5 years anyway. That makes the ‘40% in 3 years’ an unexpectedly high number of upgraders.

My main PC rig is closer to ten years now, and no upgrade in sight. Cost of living with kids has made expensive hobbies untenable.

When it comes to making a stand, better late than never.

I have some sympathy with your view, but still downvoted because I refuse to accept it’s conclusion. Look at Japan, Scandinavia and many other countries where social responsibility still prevails. Throwing hands up and saying “well it’s just human nature” is the laziest get-out to avoid fixing the broken parts of ones own excessive, hedonistic culture.

It might be true that the ones that need to be convinced won’t listen to the argument itself. But we can start to re-empower more responsible citizens to impose shame - yes, fucking shame - on those that raise their kids and otherwise act irresponsibly in so many ways: the polluting shit they consume, the regimes they support with the subscriptions they pay for, the inefficient gas guzzlers they decide to drive off the forecourt. It needs checking.