Theatre of Lies
A lot of things don't work very well:
For instance, I have not been able to successfully print and scan anything since 2012 - can't find network, out of magenta, or just plain "nope".
Also, I have yet to unlock the secret behind the WIFI on Air Canada. It says I'm connected, but that is a lie. It's a lie told while simultaneously flashing you an ad talking about how great the WIFI is.
Google, Apple and Microsoft compete on my devices to suck my documents into their respective clouds. This is done with the emphatic promise of secure, easy retrieval from anywhere. I know I will never see those documents again.
My high-speed internet often fails to provide either high speed or internet. The Bell Canada support-bot has an advanced AI-gaslighting algorithm designed to convince me it's an equipment problem on my end.
It's a fact, a lot of stuff doesn't work very well, and I'm mostly OK with that. Why should WIFI on planes work anyway? It's a miracle we are even flying! The internet can stream you the compendium of human knowledge, so the provider takes a break every once in a while - what's the rush? Printer-scanner doesn't work ... ever? What do you expect for $200. Going through life perennially injured by such injustices is contrary to my best attempts to be a modern stoic. I prefer to let these go, things don't work sometimes and that's OK.
What I have a harder time ignoring is the realty-distortion field being maintained around this stuff. The world would have you believe that everyone other than you is happily streaming Spotify at 30,000 feet and you are simply a loser. Or that your printer has a 5-star rating for perfect colour reproduction and speed, so the fact that you have never once been able to get it to print a black and white signature page is entirely your fault. They don’t want to admit that you need unplug your modem-router on daily basis, they would rather accuse you of having the WIFI turned off on your computer.
All these services work hard to tell you how incredibly reliable they are, and I think that has an isolating effect on those of us who choose to live in reality. So I'm not so much frustrated by the lack of performance as I am by the fact that everyone pretends these things work great. It’s a theatre of lies and we are forced to endure it as part of some bizarre service-level agreement.
I have respect for product designers and engineers that adhere to the fail-gracefully model. When things fail, the responsibly and blame should not (by default) fall onto the user. It's bad enough that things we pay for don't work right. It's worse when it comes with the tacit suggestion that you are somehow also stupid.
