But who cares if its badly made or badly designed? It's not going to last. In a few months you'll be off down to Tesco to buy another one anyway. That's just the way things are these days!
You're a fucking idiot and you're killing all the children and all the fluffy animals. Let me explain that last rather controversial sentence, which some of you may take offence at.
Hundreds of tonnes of raw materials go into the manufacture of each and every device. These things are then assembled by people on crappy wages (although, hilariously and ironically, this situation is slowly improving thanks to Apple - who should really be doing more to help but are at least doing something, unlike most PC manufacturers and phone manufacturers who use the same factories...) and shoved into plastic packaging and shipped halfway across the globe on massive diesel-guzzling filth-spewing ships and loaded onto lorries and driven across countries and stacked on shelves in brightly lit shops for us all to drive out to spend our hard earned money on so we can take them home and plug them in and use them for a few months until a bit drops off and then we chuck them out (observing local WEEE regulations if you're lucky) and...
And the whole sorry process repeats itself on and on and on.
So what is the solution to this? Don't ask me... There are some interesting ideas I've picked up that I can pass on, however.
Firstly, buy the most expensive bits of kit you can afford. The reason these things are expensive are not just because of the "badge" or how fashionable they are, although that is certainly part of the reason, but because they are usually designed well and have better quality components. Better design and better components means longer life. As an example of this, I have an amp that is roughly 15 years old and it works just as well now as the day I got it. I have speakers that are more than twice that age. I have expensive cameras and computers that have outlived their cheaper brothers by some margin. I'm not trying to be showy or fashionable (I hate the fashion industry - it is yet another driver of pointless short term consumerism as far as I'm concerned), I don't really care if I have the latest and greatest sound system or computer. I just spend as much money as I can on the thing that I think will do the best job.
Sometimes this is tricky and I have to save up for a little while, or rely on a family member popping off and leaving me a bit of cash (thanks for my iPhone 5, gramps!) but the upshot of this strategy is this:
- The stuff I own, even if it isn't the latest model, is nice and solid and performs well
- Most of the stuff I own is well designed and constructed and looks nice in my home
- Something else important about natural resources and the job market and the importance of long term thinking that I read on the net but then forgot to make a note of but it really nicely underlined my whole rant... dammit.
This doesn't just apply to gadgets, of course. A friend of mine spent almost £100 on a new bin for her kitchen and all her mates spent the next few weeks taking the piss out of her. This bin is well made, looks nice, feels solid and will last longer than almost everyone I know. Clearly her mates are morons. Another friend of mine spent just under £50 on a pedal bin that stopped working properly after just three weeks and broke completely after just a few months. Buy cheap, buy twice...
You might be thinking, yes that's all very well but what about the people on rubbish incomes who can't afford some big shiny telly, computer, ridiculously expensive bin, whatever. My answer to this would be to ask you to read the above couple of paragraphs again. I don't earn much money. I don't have savings or shares or a benevolent uncle. I save up. This used to be quite a common thing on the olden days when all round 'ere was fields and a copper would clip you round the ear if you gave him back-chat and if you fell off a swing and died it was your own bloody fault and Jeremy Kyle was still just a twinkle in Satan's eye, etc.I think we should try and get over this ridiculous instant-gratification thing (one of those lovely destructive societal traits that is nicely helped along by advertising, marketing, certain branches of the media and fashion industries) and play the long game. Save up a bit. Live a bit cheaply for a while. Don't go out quite so much. I don't know... Whatever it is that you spend what we laughingly refer to as "disposable" income on, just hold back for a little while until you've got enough to buy that nice thing to replace what was undoubtedly a cheap thing that just broke down. I know saving is tricky in the current economic climate, but people managed it during the last couple of recessions. What makes you so special? I guarantee it isn't your sodding shampoo, you vacuous nipple-jockey.
And the big companies can help out with this as well. Recently we've started to see a fall in the sale of DVDs and BluRays and their players. Slowly the film distribution companies are catching on to the idea of allowing people to stream or download stuff to their iPad's and computers and games consoles. Games consoles have allowed people to download content (that's what we have to call it now...) to their machines for a couple of years now. Smart TV's are about to take off over the next year or two. Samsung have just brought one out which looks great but functions like a turd in a butchers. This is the Samsung way...
Anyway, this is all sounding super, right? Just think of all that oil and pollution and crap that is saved by not having physical copies of this stuff! It truly is the future. Just think of all that shelf space that can be filled with books or godawful ornaments lovingly fashioned by your mewling offspring.
There is just one small problem with this. At best it costs EXACTLY THE SAME to buy the digital version of a new game or film. At worst (and this is much more common) I can get the game or film considerably cheaper in physical form. As an example, the new Snow White film starring Thor and that miserable girl (you know, the one where she shagged the director and pissed off thousands of teenage girls because she upset the miserable boy who she starred with in all those films about necrophilia) - is £13.99 for HD or £9.99 for SD on iTunes. The physical copy is a pound less in Sainsbury's. In a few weeks I'll be able to get it for even less than that in some bargain bin. On iTunes (other overpriced services are available - Sony, I'm looking at you) the price will remain the same.
That's just fucking stupid. I bet it's the distribution companies in cahoots with the production companies that are specifying the prices. You have no idea how irritating I find this. Greed is a nasty, destructive trait. These "content producers" could save millions of tonnes of raw materials and waste every year. The benefits to the environment are easy to demonstrate. But no, let's not bother thinking about that because we haven't had a brand new car this year and if I get one of those new Fisker things then people will think I'm brilliant and doing my bit to save the planet and I might get a blow-job from Mitzi in marketing and I'll be able to hear all the slurping noises because the Fisker is so damn quiet.
Well Mr Content-Producer, I don't think you're brilliant. I think you're a ridiculous, short sighted, greedy, dismal little wrinkly bag of festering horse water and I truly hope your smug pampered face rots off and your wife catches you with Mitzi hooked on to your malformed tackle and has you castrated by a team of cack-handed blind Mexican wrestlers before you can spread your seed about the place, creating more selfish prune brained little fuck nuggets to bound across the planet spewing shallow thoughtless butt wind into the face of any poor sod unlucky enough to have to suffer the consequences of your pitiful existence.
Or, if you are going to keep the cost of this "content" artificially high then at least use that extra cash to improve the lives of the poor overworked people who manufacture all the actual stuff - even though they will be manufacturing less and less so giving them more money seems almost like a crazy red commie bastard thing to do...
Oh, Jeebus... I could go on but my sausages are ready.
I'm in quite a bad mood this morning...
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