I’m begging you: Stop calling mechanical keyboards ‘creamy’

Have you ever met someone who really hated a word? The go-to example in English is “moist.” It viscerally repels some people. See also “preggers,” “phlegm,” etc. I’ve found one of my own, thanks to online keyboard discourse. It makes me cringe (ooh, there’s another one, thanks Gen Z) every time I see it in reference to anything that isn’t food.

For the love of whatever god is listening, stop calling keyboards “creamy.”

What’s “creamy”? Ugh, I even hate putting it in a section heading

If you aren’t terminally online, you may need me to bring you in and shed light on what exactly is “creamy” about keyboards.

There are lots of adjectives that mechanical keyboard fans use to describe keyboard switches, because there are thousands of variations. The tactile sensations and sounds of each type are crucial to their appeal. But they’re all subjective and hard to get across in text. “Clicky,” “clacky,” and “smooth” are the most common, but we get into some weird contextual territory when we add terms like “thocky.”

Which brings us to “creamy.” I had a literal cringe reaction when my editor Brad Chacos said it on a Zoom call. I don’t want that word associated with anything I put my hands on, at least in the context of a computer.

But to ask the obvious question, what the hell does “creamy” even mean, in the highly specific circles of obsessive mechanical keyboard fans like me? And I have to answer that question with “I don’t freakin’ know.”

MetaPCs on YouTube describes it as “soft and buttery,” which to me reads as something with a lot of cushion in it, maybe gasket mounting. But those are aspects of the keyboard itself, not the switches. (“Buttery” is yet another food term applied here, ugh.) I searched Reddit for more specific descriptions since Reddit is the nexus of a lot of the social aspect of mechanical keyboard trends.

I found posts that broadly agree with me: this is dumb, this is driven by “keyboard influencers” looking for buzzwords. But Royal Kludge (hey look, another viscerally bad word!) posted a link to the company blog, which once again described a “creamy keyboard” as having “smooth, buttery keystrokes with a satisfying, soft sound.”

Royal Kludge

Okay, so, soft and smooth. There. We can at least apply those adjectives to something with a physical, tactile sensation rather than a taste. (But since we’re on the topic of sensations that have nothing to do with typing: that post from “RK Gaming” has the whiff of ChatGPT output to it.)

Brands are now “creaming” themselves

And here we come into the really annoying part. It’s not my place to police what a bunch of people on the internet choose to call their keyboards. But companies? Well, that’s another story. Calling out their BS is part of my job.

Royal Kludge is a manufacturer brand, not an influencer. Yet the brands seem to have taken “creamy” as a term and run with it. “Creamy” keyboards are all over Amazon, with Epomaker and Womier (why do all these words make me want to gag!) being a particular offender. They’re on eBay and Best Buy and Newegg, too—anywhere that accepts third-party vendors, you’ll find an infestation of “creamy” keyboards.

The tipping point for this article was Keychron. I really like Keychron as a brand, they make a ton of different keyboards in a near-unlimited number of layouts, and they’re generally good value at lots of different price points. Keychron, perhaps more than any other company, has made “customizable” keyboards accessible to tons of people.

I got the new Keychron C0 HE in yesterday. It’s an update to the one-handed gaming board, now with magnetic switches for adjustable actuation. And it comes with stickers in the box, one of which is…

Michael Crider/Foundry

I keep a lot of little spaceships around my office, because I’m a nerd. Some of them are LEGO, some of them are just cool little statues. But I had to stop myself from going full action movie Captain Picard on them when I saw that sticker sheet.

I hate this, and I can’t give you a technical explanation or even a defensible position on why. I just hate it.

There’s something so organic, so squishy, about the idea of a keyboard being described as “creamy” that instantly repels me on a deep and personal level. It is, to use the language of the Gen Z people I insulted at the start of the article, giving me the ick.

Make it stop

I take solace in the fact that this is a trend, and trends end—trends like stupid little screens on the top of keyboards that do nothing but waste energy and drive up prices. We saw “thocky” come and go as the must-have, almost equally useless keyboard descriptor a few years ago. This too shall pass. At least I hope so.