Likely Normal

We live in an age where our gadgets are like sitcom characters—beloved one season, abruptly replaced the next, despite still being perfectly functional. Your phone isn’t even two years old, yet here you are, side-eyeing the latest model because it has a slightly bluer blue and a camera that can photograph the wrinkles on a raisin from space.

It starts innocently enough. A notification pops up: “Your device is no longer eligible for updates.” Translation: “Your phone still works, but we’ve decided it’s ‘vintage,’ like a cassette tape or your will to live.” Suddenly, you’re haunted by phantom slowness—Does it lag? Or am I just impatient?—until you cave and buy the new one, only to realize it does… exactly the same things as the old one, but now your wallet is lighter.

Meanwhile, your “ancient” laptop—which you swore was on its last legs in 2018—still boots up like a champ, if you give it 20 minutes and a pep talk. That tablet you replaced because it “felt old”? Now it lives in a drawer, forgotten but fully operational, like a retired superhero who could still save the day if anyone bothered to ask.

The funniest part? We do this while pretending to care about sustainability. “I recycle!” we declare, as we order our third smartwatch in five years because this one doesn’t have a blood oxygen sensor we’ll never use. We donate our old devices to “those in need,” which is code for “I hope some poor soul can tolerate this perfectly good phone that I discarded because the emojis weren’t 3D enough.”

At this rate, future archaeologists will unearth landfills of still-functional tech and assume we were a civilization that just really, really loved packaging. “Behold, the sacred iPhone 12… and its 17 successors, all buried ceremonially with their charging cables still wrapped in those impossible plastic tabs.”

So here’s to the gadgets we abandon too soon—may they rest in peace (or in a junk drawer, next to the expired coupons and single AAA battery). And remember: The real cutting-edge feature isn’t a better processor… it’s the willpower to resist the upgrade cycle. (Just kidding. That new folding phone does look cool.)