I have a weird confession to make. I love my printer. I love it with the wild-eyed fervour of a convert who wants everyone to know about it. (Yes, I am good fun at dinner parties, why do you ask?) I’m not the only one. My machine — a very boring black-and-white Brother laser printer — has a devoted following. It’s not because it does anything special. It’s because it just?.?.?.?works.
This phenomenon — of people who are pathetically grateful in the year 2025 to have found a product which does what it’s meant to do — tells an interesting story about capitalism and consumer psychology at a time of technological change.
I only love my printer because I have had so many terrible ones in the past: ink priced like champagne; clogged nozzles; paper jams; connection problems. In the US, people hate printers so much that you can pay to go into a “rage room” and smash them up. Many have given up on the idea they can ever be anything but awful. “Stop expecting printers to ‘just work’,” urged a bleak New York Times article in 2016. “Most of you are going to hate something about any printer that you buy, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Even the printer-makers know the score. In 2023, HP produced an advert of an infuriated man kicking a printer off the table, with the tag line “Made to be less hated.”