Planned Obsolescence - Tumblr Posts

My work boots are the most expensive shoes I’ve ever owned.

Also the most comfortable. I chose them after trying on several different brands and comparing lifespan vs usage vs comfort - I needed them for a physically demanding job, not the weekend hiking trails. I could have easily chosen cheaper boots that would have lasted long enough to be worth their low price, but I know the Sam Vimes Boot Theory and knew weaker, less comfortable boots would make my life harder in the long run.

So when the outside edge of the heel started wearing down after three years of heavy use I went to the shop I got them from and said “hey this is a common problem for me with how I walk but now it’s affecting my ankles and knees and I don’t wanna have to buy a new pair, is there a way to fix this?”

The salesman at this very fancy upscale boot store said “oh yeah, there’s a shoe repair place that can give you some heel guards - it’ll keep the rubber from wearing out.”

So at 8am this morning right after my 9hr shift ends I went to the shoe repair shop and it is the most hole-in-the-wall, is-this-a-real-business-or-a-mafia-front, am-I-gonna-get-shot tiny cinder block cube I’ve ever seen in my life. I grew up plenty poor and love me a good hole-in-the-wall business, but going from upscale store to this cash-only repair shop gave me whiplash. Wasn’t expecting this when a guy who wears three piece suits to sell boots said it’s the best place to go.

The skinny kid behind the counter looks somehow 16 and 25 at the same time, but when I tell him this place was recommended he smiles and says to hand over my boots. I hand him the vaguely warm foot-smelling boots, and stand in my socks in the 3’ square entryway surrounded by every color leather polish you could buy and watch as he turns my boots around in his hands, sizes up a crescent moon bits of plastic, and unceremoniously hammers tiny nails through them before handing them back.

The heels are perfectly level again. I can walk without almost rolling my ankles. They don’t clack loudly on the pavement or feel different. This is gonna fix my knee pain. It cost $10.

This kid had every tool he needed within arms reach, worked fast and smoothly, I was in and out the door in less than 8 minutes, and it only cost $10.

I didn’t think anything could cost only $10 anymore. I’m so used to hyperinflation prices I was spiritually thrown back to the 1400’s visiting the cobbler in town square. This kid might have been that cobbler and just decided to never die.

I’m still reeling from the whiplash, and gobsmacked at the price, and thrilled I didn’t have to go buy new, worse work boots (cuz I don’t have that kind of money for a second pair, I’m expecting these ones to last a decade) and it feels like I just experienced one of the rare little chunks of magic that floats around our world.

You know what I hate about modern mice? how pointlessly anti-repair they are. I have had plenty of mice break over time, and often it's just that some fluff or skin-flakes got wedged in the mouse wheel or under the buttons. You just need to open them up and clean them. Except.. where are the screws?

OH THERE THEY ARE. under the little skid-pads, which cannot be put back on once you take them off, because the adhesive has been ruined! You have to buy replacement pads, if they're available, and maybe cut them down to size, as well as clean off the residue of the previous pads.

You know how this problem could be fixed? JUST DON'T PUT THE PADS ON TOP OF THE SCREWS!

Then you'd have no problem. Easy to disassemble and clean.

But then it'd look 5% uglier because apparently people are scared of seeing screws, and also people might not just throw it out and buy a new one!

It's the terrible sort of weird planned obsolescence that happens as an almost accidental side effect of improving the product. Like, ball mice? They were designed to be disassembled. You didn't even need a screwdriver! Because you had to clean them regularly, or they'd gunk up too fast. Modern optical mice? They still get gunked up, the buttons and wheel still die eventually. They can be cleaned and repaired. But now that it's not required for all of them to be cleaned regularly, that function has been removed. they're designed to be disposable.

The same thing happened with TVs way back when. If you open up a TV from the 50s (or just look at the back, honestly, many of them were designed to be always-open), you'll find a schematic showing where all the tubes are and what models they are. Was this because the 1950s was a golden era of reparability? NO! it's because they burnt out all the time and you had to replace them! As soon as TVs got reliable enough that replacing tubes was no longer needed, the schematics became hidden behind paywalls and for authorized-service-personnel-only.

It would be only a minor change in aesthetics to make your mouse repairable/cleanable. Hell, most of the time when it's not simply fixed by cleaning it, it's because one of these broke:

This is an Omron D2FC-F-7N microswitch, used in a bunch of mice. It's designed to last about a million clicks. With a soldering iron and some solder (like 25$ on amazon) you can trivially replace it. New switches cost between like 10 cents and 2 dollars, depending where you buy it and how many you want. A couple bucks of parts and half an hour's worth of work, you can repair a 40$ mouse that's "died".

But they make it unnecessarily hard with the slide-pads being unreplacable. You have to find ones that match, you have to carefully clean off the old residue with IPA, or the new ones you just bought will fall off. All to make it look SLIGHTLY better (how often are you looking at the aesthetics of the bottom of your mouse, exactly? (no furries are allowed to answer this question!)) and maybe, just maybe, to push it over into "not worth it". You could do all that, but you have to buy new switches, new slide-pads/mouse-feet (SHUT UP FURRIES), and can you remember where your solder even is? you last used it when you were trying to fix that keyboard...

Basically one thing that is maddening to anyone with the very basics of electronic knowledge (seriously: the amount of skill you need for this is the kind you can get in less than an hour from watching a youtube tutorial) that we're surrounded by all this electrical nonsense that will break and have to be thrown out, but is mostly breaking in ways that could be fixed in a very short amount of time with relatively little work.

It's infuriating to go on amazon to buy another damn mouse and it pop up "hey you last bought this in 2021, you fool" and you're like I KNOW, IT SHOULD STILL BE WORKING TODAY!

I have computer parts from the 80s in my room right now that are still working when stuff made in the last 5 years is already dying! There's no reason it should be this way. It's an endless waste of time and money and resources and it's just to make some logitech or whoever executives slightly richer.

It's deeply bullshit. The modern day is going to be identifiable as the geological layer where most of the trash was generated. We're living in the middle of the quisquiliarumferous period: the layer of garbage.

apple phones are so funny cause my friends just dropped her XR like 1 meter off the ground, now the screen is like. fucked beyond repair. Meanwhile my iPhone five is still chugging along albeit shittily but chugging along nonetheless after soaking in water for three hours, getting launched out of my bag at high velocity and hitting a tree then the ground, and getting dropped countless times.