Things That Still Work OK (But We're Being Shamed for Using)
Who's responsible for the public shaming and why? What are they selling?
MY Walkman got stolen in 2003 along with my Discman (brand names used by Sony). The Walkman had been used since the 1990s and it was a gift from my aunt. Neither of these "appliances" would work today (extremely unlikely), but my stereo from 30 years ago - a gift from my father - still works, albeit not the CD tray (the optical bit has barely worked for 20+ years) and the cassette compartment is also damaged (self-deprecating, such mechanical bits barely endure for decades) though tuner and auxiliary still work OK, so chaining of signals is possible. It is functional at the core. I still use it right now.
It's not that I cannot afford something new. I do not need something new. This one works for me.
Using old stuff is nothing to be shamed of (or afraid to do). Society is being indoctrinated to revere people who buy "the latest" as if it's some class symbol, perhaps an indicator/surrogate of economic status. Well, with a predatory payday loan almost anyone can buy the latest and "greatest" so-called 'smart' phone, so how does possession (not ownership; loans or debt preclude that) indicate wealth? To some extent, the same is true for cars and - given the normalisation of 40-year mortgages - the same has become true about people's homes (which in the vast majority of cases, more so in the past 2 decades, were actually owned by banks and typically repossessed by them after foreclosures).
Yesterday we wrote about how Thanksgiving had become "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" (there is also "Prime Day"). This transition is a symptom of an ill society which conflates gadgets with status and loan-taking with wealth.
In my experience, people who can afford very expensive gadgets do not buy (or bother with) such gadgets. So who buys these? People looking to compensate for their insecurity, emulating wealth (which they don't truly have) by collecting useless toys and gadgets they can carry around to "signal" class. There's even a popular term for this: social climber.
Being a social climber means becoming a prisoner of one's ego. Don't fall for or you'll fall behind payments. Delusions cannot eternally sustain themselves. █