The photo above shows a landline desk phone my parents got some 30 years ago beside a cell phone I got in 2017. One of them died a long, slow, painful death, and the other is still functioning fully and completely. Anyone older than 30 surely can figure out which is which.
I got my first cell phone in October 2001. At the time only about half of all households in the U.S. had at least one cell phone. They were commonly associated with business professionals and the elite. Now it seems everyone and their pets own such a device. Since 2001 I’ve gone through at least 5 cell phones. To put things in perspective, I still have a digital clock/radio my parents bought me in 1978, and it’s been functioning ever since.
My truck is 20 years old. That’s the longest I’ve ever had a vehicle, and I find it somewhat surprising. Products of almost any kind in recent years just don’t seem to last too long. That a cell phone would crash faster than Donald Trump’s economic plans says quite a bit about the companies that build these devices.
No wonder American consumers are cynical!
But I now feel it’s a corporate conspiracy. Large companies now deliberately make products with a finite lifespan; therefore, people have to buy replacements or repair their current items. I guess it’s a scheme devised to keep people financially destitute.
Or maybe it’s just that too much of these things are made overseas where workers don’t really give a shit how they put it together.
Regardless, it’s amazing what consumers have to do now to remain viable members of society.
Chief Writing Wolf 