I've been around a long time, I've travelled all over my continent, and I can tell you for a fact that the person with a 4MHz computer that they built themselves is cooler than the person who spent $3000 on the latest toy from $BIGCORP.
Go dumpster diving, go thrift store and garage sale shopping, buy a bunch of tech trash and build something cool. No matter how it turns out, it will be cooler than anything sold to you by capitalism.