Microblog Memes

Also, a number of them will still fail quickly. Survivorship bias.

GNU Terry Pratchett

A man is not dead while his name is still spoken

😭

Yeah people don't realize that appliances were a LOT more expensive back then too, especially as a proportion of income. A washer dryer set in 1959 cost $380, at a time when the median household income was only $5,400. That means to buy a washer dryer set, they would have to spend 7% of their pre-tax income. Currently, the cheapest washer dryer set will set you back $1300, and the median household income is $83,000, so it's about 1.5% of the annual household income. If you're willing to pay what people were proportionally willing to pay in 1959, you can still buy a washer dryer set that will last a lifetime. Most people just aren't.

Th problem with that is most people don’t repair anymore as it’s often cheaper to replace.

And if it’s good quality without breaking down, why would the repair person ever work on it?

and the right people to repair them.

Also, the right to repair them.

There have been shitty products from back then too. Many. We just don't see them now, because only the few good products have survived.

So we built on that knowledge and kept making the good ones as they were and didn't see how cheap we could make them right? ..right?

Do the appliances the rich currently buy follow this rule or do they just get fancier low durability goods

I was a subscriber to Consumer Reports for years and trusted them implicitly because they seemed so thorough and rigorous. Then they did reviews on a subject with which I am intimately familiar (it was computer related), and I was shocked at how badly they fumbled just about everything. I've also seen some really dubious ratings on high ticket items like cars that I knew were not great, so I take their ratings with grain of salt anymore.

The fact that Whirlpool is even on this list makes it a joke to me. I will say I've had a Miele dishwasher in the past and it was fucking awesome, and have heard great things about a lot of Bosch appliances. But LG and Whirlpool frequently put out trash appliances.

I got a manscaped electric face razor to replace another cheap one that was dying. It was the first electric razor I got that didn't come with a tiny bottle of mineral oil for lube and even said in the manual that it didn't need lube.

I bet if I had listened to that BS, it would be dead already, especially because I have had it fail to start with full battery just from the friction of the blades (giving it a tap can get it going, adding lube makes it run noticeably better).

Fucking liars. Let's see if it lasts any longer than the other ones even with lube.

Okay but my parents never maintained much and it all lasted a very long time. I think the point still stands. Things nowadays require much more maintenance. Of course maintaining them will make them last longer

TBF, there are lot of the “10x as expensive” appliances that are absolute garbage, have awful reliability and are very expensive to repair. The “best” would be to buy commercial kitchen gear, but it isn’t pretty enamel colors or designer chic. Of course there are still a few reliable standouts like the typical Kitchen Aid stand mixer, but like you said, a hand mixer can be had for $50, and Kitchen Aids can cost $500+.

And WiFi.
And AI.

Yeah, the bummer is that you can pay that much for appliances, but you are paying for extra features, NOT for extra durability and repairability. They simply don't make them like that anymore.