Content warning: This article briefly discusses suicide and grief.
Throughout my teen years and early adulthood, I struggled to find a sense of community or belonging with most people. I had a group of friends from high school, but it still was isolating being one of very few people that I knew who chose to take a gap year after high school. Where I grew up, in northern California, not going straight into higher education was unusual. I was taught that anyone who doesn’t go to college was probably a failure or terrible at school. But, despite how people around me made it seem, I knew those things weren’t true about me. I just simply didn’t know what I wanted out of life. Yet, somehow, everyone else around me seemingly knew exactly what direction to go in and where they fit in the world.
Eventually, I moved out of my parents’ place and left for Los Angeles, where I shared an apartment with a friend. We lived near a college campus that some friends of mine were attending, and it was while I was hanging out at a friend’s dorm that I came across, for the first time, custom mechanical keyboards. My friend’s roommate had three different boards displayed proudly on his bookshelf, and I was immediately entranced. One of them was the QK65 v1, with a PVD mirror weight. I gingerly held the heavy, aluminum board in my hands and watched the light coming in from the window flicker across the mirror weight. Never had I imagined that keyboards could exude so much personality. Soon after, I was going to keyboard meet-ups, joining group buys, and fervently checking the Geekhack forum for new interest checks. The rest, of course, is history.
It’s been almost four years since then, and I’ve accrued quite the collection. Honestly, it’s rare these days that I feel the need to get a new board. And it isn’t really that there’s nothing exciting coming out – if anything, the keyboard hobby has been growing and changing at an absurd rate that is sometimes hard to keep up with. But I’ve also noticed people slowly drift in and out from the hobby, saying they’ve found their “endgame keyboard,” or that the hobby doesn’t bring them joy anymore. My heart always sinks when I see those messages. It’s not that I want them to unnecessarily buy more boards, but that they don’t see the value in the keyboard hobby in the same way I do.
In the summer of 2024, I went to Keeb Life’s annual meetup in LA. The venue they had rented was massive, and possibly almost a thousand or more people had shown up. I couldn’t help but smile seeing so many people together at once, smiling, laughing, bonding. It was then that I realized just how much value this hobby had brought into my life. Not only had I made lifelong friends, but I also had improved my photography skills and found joy in writing for my keyboard blog. And now, here I was, at a convention center, tabling as a vendor for The Key Source, right alongside other fantastic designers like Archetype and Keebscapes. I had found my place in the world.
As 2025 rolled around, my life was unfortunately hit with turbulence that sent me spiraling down. I lost my job, my health was in decline, and then, amidst the chaos, I lost one of my closest friends from high school to suicide. I was shattered. Everyone in our friend group was hit with so much grief. I knew we all had our struggles, and feeling like we mattered in the world sometimes felt hard to believe, but I had hope for us. She had helped me feel like I mattered, during a time in my life when I felt the most unsure about myself.
Around that same time, I remember seeing Matt, the owner of the UK keyboard site Thocc Exchange, post about the release of a new silent tactile. Known as the Unity tactile, a portion of the profits would be donated to a men’s suicide prevention charity in the UK, called Andy Man’s Club. My friend was a girl, but it still hit hard all the same. I imagined myself sharing the news of this switch with my now late friend, telling her how excited I was to see someone like Matt promote kindness in the keyboard community. I still shared the news amongst some other friends from the hobby, but with her death still so fresh on my mind, I couldn’t feel anything but the heaviness of the loss.
Months went by, and even through the fog of the grief, the Unity tactile still stuck on my mind. It reminded me of how grateful I was to have a keyboard community to fall back on, even when I was too stuck in my depression to write any new articles or contribute much to the hobby.
Eventually, I bought a pack of them for myself, to support the cause.
Manufactured by Outemu, the Unity switch is based off of Thocc Exchange’s most popular silent switch, the Outemu Silent Cream Yellow Pro. With a 55g double-stage spring, a PA66 housing, and POM stem, the Unity tactile isn’t here necessarily to innovate.
The Unity switch, Matt says, first began as an idea while he was going through one of the hardest moments in his life.
“I was caring for my mother at the end of her life, and when she passed away, I found myself in a severe mental health crisis. A number of people independently recommended Andy’s Man Club to me, and their organization became a genuine source of inspiration as I slowly began to stabilise and recover.”
Matt described Thocc Exchange as something that happened practically by accident. “It began as something to occupy my hands and mind while I stepped away from traditional employment, intending to rest only for a year. But that rest didn’t last very long. Within a couple of months, the store had taken on a life of its own.”
“I didn’t want it to be product first and charitable second. I wanted the cause to come first.”
“Creating an in-house switch felt like a natural next step,” Matt told me. “But, I didn’t want it to be product first and charitable second. I wanted the cause to come first.”
“I began thinking about what a product line could look like if it existed primarily to support something bigger than itself. That’s how Unity was born. It’s now part of what I call the Impact Series: a growing set of switches, each tied to a different cause, and designed to generate resources, visibility, and conversation through the medium of keyboards. If even one life is helped as a result, then every ounce of effort will have been worth it.”
When the switch was still being prototyped, Matt looked to Chen, from Moyu Studio, to help lead the project and guide him through the material and manufacturing decisions. Everything else though, from the marketing, to the included sticker and flyer in the switch’s packaging, was designed by Matt, self-taught, on his iPad.
“The only real hiccup was almost poetic,” Matt says. “The first shipment was destroyed by heavy rainfall. I’ve come to think of that as quietly ‘pouring one out’ for those we’ve lost.”
By January 2026, Unity tactile had sold over 12 thousand units, with £0.50 from each 35-unit pack donated to Andy Man’s Club, generating almost £200 in donations. Approximately 800 Unity switches sell per day, and according to kbd.news, the Unity switch is the 35th most popular switch in the world.
The switch itself, of course, is filled with symbolism. As stated on Thocc Exchange’s own site, the red stem represents the male heart, while the semi-transparent housing reflects the sometimes hidden nature of men’s inner emotional worlds.
“The decision to make it a silent tactile was deliberate,” Matt says. “Silent tactiles are by far the most under-represented switch category despite how well they sell.”
For Thocc Exchange, almost a quarter of all sales come from silent switches. Yet, ironically, very few notable, high quality silent switches exist.
Similarly, Matt told me, male suicide risk is often overlooked and absent from the conversation.
On the business side, Matt noted that Unity tactile has the highest repeat-purchase rate at his store. And while the charitability aspect does matter, he believes it is because “it’s silent, refined, and dependable,” especially for boards that people use at work.
“I want people to feel that they can ask for what they need, or ask for help, and know that they’ll be met with patience and care.”
Online, Thocc Exchange has a growing and thriving Discord community. Matt feels that it plays an important role when it comes to his wellbeing. “We talk about keyboards, mental health, and life. It’s been a backbone of my own recovery, and I hope it’s helped others, too.”
The Unity tactile is also not the end of this line of products for Matt. He’s partnered with NyxKeys to create a Unity artisan keycap, and he plans to design a deskmat as well as potentially a Unity-inspired electrocapacitive keyboard.
“The biggest thing I can do, in my own self-interest, is to help make keyboards a genuinely good hobby space,” he says, “and I have huge respect for the retailers who’ve helped build that before me.”
If there’s anything Matt feels the most intensely, in regards to both Thocc Exchange and the hobby at large, it’s hope. “The world is intense and uncertain right now, but there are still pockets of humanity full of people trying to create safety and inclusivity. I want people to feel that they can ask for what they need, or ask for help, and know that they’ll be met with patience and care.”
Holding the Unity tactile in between my fingers, I’m reminded of both the community that keeps me going, and also the people that many of us have lost. I’m so used to keyboards making noise that, pressing down on such a soft, rounded bump and hearing nothing, is a bit of a surprise. The vibrancy of the red on the stem is also simply so eye-catching in contrast to its white housing – the meaning behind its design weighs on my mind every time I press down on it or see it.
Each and every one of us in the keyboard hobby brings something important to the table. Even if we aren’t the ones designing the boards or shipping out keyboard supplies, it is only when we come together that there is a community. I hope the Unity tactile helps remind you of that, and that there is always someone out there looking out for you.
You can buy the Unity tactile here: https://thoccexchange.com/products/the-unity-silent-tactile-10-pack
If you or someone you know is struggling, please use the resources below.
https://findahelpline.com/i/iasp
https://andysmanclub.co.uk