|
Top-level
 You buy a second-hand but still quite new wireless gamepad. It dies unexpectedly at the approximate age of 16 months. There's a listing for a replacement battery on Amazon and a disassembly guide on iFixit, so you take a punt on a new battery and swap it in. The gamepad's still dead, so you email its manufacturer for A) a repair, or B) spare parts, or C) to offer them even more money to fix it, but they don't provide any of those for a device still sold new today. Get fucked, Steelseries. 4 comments
This shit is why, when banks announced they were going to stop processing physical checks and a whole wave of elderly folks protested, I understood. It's one of the last fleeting vestiges of anything in their lives that still makes sense, and arguing about the cost of supporting obsolete systems is an absolute red herring. It's not about the money. It's not about the tech. It's about kindness, and being fucking human to each other. Do you work in IT? Do you support a system? Do you work on a helpdesk? Do you take calls, answer emails? Congratulations. That's no longer your job title. From the moment you read this, you're a user advocate. Process issue holding something up? Bug in the app? Is a particular system always down? Advocate for your users. Go to bat for them with the teams responsible for their struggles. Folks will say "oh thank christ, it's you" when they hear your voice on the phone if you advocate for them. tl;dr: In a world where companies will fleece you, scammers will steal your grandmother's savings, your chat program algorithmically charts your gender, and your car's manufacturer sells analytics about the way you drive without a second thought: The only thing that matters is kindness, and we could all do with a lot more of it. Also, I'm going to go have a drink or two now. Holy hell, that little rant has been building up for a while now. |
Gregory's Server
And here's the thing: None of this stuff makes me angry. Annoyed, sure, but I've been around computers since I was a toddler, and I have to solve shit problems like these for myself every day.
What makes me angry is: What about all the folks who aren't computer people? How the absolute fuck do they survive in a world where you can no longer function as an employee, a family member, any sort of citizen without encountering this stuff?
Those people are fucking heroes, and I'm angry for them.