Hate it when TikTok farm cosplayers and cottagecore types say stuff like "I'm not going to use modern equipment because my grandmothers could make do without it." Ma'am, your great grandma had eleven children. She would have killed for a slow cooker and a stick blender.
I’ve noticed a sort of implicit belief that people used to do things the hard way in the past because they were tougher or something. In reality, labor-saving devices have historically been adopted by the populace as soon as they were economically feasible. No one stood in front of a smoky fire or a boiling pot of lye soap for hours because they were virtuous, they did it because it was the only way to survive.
Taking these screenshots from Facebook because they make you log in and won't let you copy and paste:
It can get a little confusing because of how many current modern devices are built for shit, pack full of bloatware or tech waste or other enshittfied features, or both, or worse, or both and worse. So there is a degree to which "the old version worked better," which is a completely detached conversation from "I do it how my Pure & Righteous Ancestors did it because of white supremacy if it worked for them it'll work for me." But the point of commonality, that some important and fairly significant modern mechanical equipment was better in an ealier iteration, the cottage core stuff snealily pulls in people whose general frustrations are down to corporate greed, which makes them vulnerable to "Reject Modernity, Embrace Traditional" style indoctrination.
There's also further complications in that a good deal of older durable equipment that was designed to last longer and be repairable has passed its completely sensible period of operarions, and also the period of time anyone could expect continuous manufacturing of parts. So you got this situation where even stuff that people remember as very durable, and which also enjoyed a brief period of being cheaply available used with considerable remaining lifespan + repairability, is also vanishing both through owners now retaining + repairing, or refurbishment now having a much higher cost than it had in recent memory - meaning those ancient, industructable washing machines are not as viable as cheap solutions to modern enshitification. Which also makes it easier for the cottage core bullshit because it's much more satisfying to be like "well I just beat the Modern Elitists With Their Expensive Houses by using a washboard" than trying to get any kind bare minimum organized action together, even stuff like pooling resources for shared costs of durable goods and shit. Which, admittedly, also modern corporate practices are bent on turning rent seek models into ways to further isolate organization. But the point is all that might make the idea of going off grid and to live off the land in isolation seem like a good solution when it's really more of a way to drive people away from organized action and also a shitload of the cottage core stuff is heavily loaded with white supremacist stuff and you might be like "what does that do" and the answer is "get people more comfortable with slavery again" which we still have it, but it got pretty concealed for awhile, but it's maybe something that's getting more attention (it never stopped getting attention if you were a minority but that's another conversation) anyway at a certain point it gets too spun up but the point is that the shitty smart TV playing advertisements in screen or the fridge that requires a voice command in total silence to open and has no other handles shouldn't drive you to the belief that your problems are all going to be solved if you just make your own laundry soap at home. Idk
