Like today, I saw an ancient-looking dehumidifier still being sold in a store. I couldn't stand picking one of the newer models, but had to pick this old one. One other, newer model was sold at the same price. Still, I picked the old one…

While the old one does have little wheels, a low/high setting and some sort of "advanced" control rather than just an on/off button (you apparently shut it down by pulling out the cord), possibly it is inferior technically to the newer model. At least I assume so. Possibly it is in fact of better quality. It used to cost a little more than the newer model used to cost (both were on sale).

And now I feel sad for the demo unit that I was poking on in the store. What will happen to it? Will it be thrown away? Not to mention I feel sorry about the newer model that I didn't pick…

And I also feel sorry for the dehumidifier that I did pick, because it will probably break down at some point… :-(

Yes, I know that this is probably a silly feeling. After all, they are not living creatures and cannot feel or think. But still…

I feel especially sorry for low-end (cheap) hardware, especially if the exterior/design is unattractive and if it's any older than the latest generation.

Can you relate to this at all?

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A little, but humans often personify inanimate things. Just try not to take it too far. Keep remembering that you are personifying something which is just a combination of nuts, bolts, plastic, etc, and only makes you feel this way because you transpose human characteristics to it.

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I went through a phase like this when I was a small child. I assume many do. You just haven't grown out of it. IS it fucked up? Yeah. Harmful? Probably not. Just don't mention it on the first date. Haw Haw.

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I cried when my old opteron 170 died. I felt like a friend died. It's sad, I know

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i had this problem when i was about 11 ish. if i was allowed to pick one stuffed animal at a store, i would spend forever trying to find the most defective, ugly, or one that no one else would buy. but i got over it.

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Wow, no I can't relate but that's really interesting! Does this happen often? Is it always appliances or does it also happen for furniture, decorations and other things?

I write short stories, and sometime soon I will create a character inspired by you. You will live in a house full of old and broken electronics and throughout the story it will be ambiguous whether or not you're crazy or whether these old things with all their charm and character perhaps do have some semblance of life, of vitality, that is worth preserving.

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@68,319

It happens all the time and it can be any kind of object.

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I can relate. I kinda feel the same, not for every object but especially for stuffed toys and computers/machines. I know I'm too old, but I still own four stuffed toys.
I could never throw them away…or just sell them to someone I don't know. How knows if they will be treated well? It's not that I talk to them - I do know they're just toys - but still. They sit on a shelf in my sleeping room and once in a while I cuddle them a bit.

Same with my PC. It's okay to buy new hardware, I think it's like giving it a present. But when my boyfriend decided it needed a new motherboard I felt sorry for the old one and I had to get used to the thought of a "new" computer under my desk.
I usually feel sorry for every machines which gets thrown away.

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I do this still today, and im 16.

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@68,493

I was about to laugh at your story — but something in it actually touched me, and I realized all at once that I'm at least as guilty as anyone else here of undue sentimentality toward a machine. One of the first hard drives I ever owned — the first one that I ever bought with me own money — was a Seagate that I got when I was about eleven or twelve. I worked for a whole summer because I wanted that drive so bad. It was awesome. This was back when Seagate was the king of drive manufacturers, and this drive was fast and just. . . huge! It was the best consumer drive on the market, and it cost a whopping $740.

You want to know how huge it was? Wait for it. . .

. . . Wait for it. . .

. . . it was a whopping TWO HUNDRED and TWELVE megabytes. I'm telling you, it was massive. Nobody that I knew had a drive larger than about forty megs. I didn't even bother to run drive compression software on it — it was so big!

Anyway, of course, that amount of space is pathetically small these days. But I had some good memories with that drive. I learned to program on that drive; I installed my first copy of Linux on that drive back in 1993; I had my first small porn archive on that drive (obtained through the old dial-up BBS systems).

And it was a good, reliable drive. Even when I got newer, faster, bigger models, I just couldn't bear to cut it out of the traces. I thought it fitting that the drive should be allowed to die in the harness, rather than suffer the indignity of merely being thrown away. Besides, I worked for that fucker — a whole childhood summer (and arguably, it was worth it!).

So I kept the drive in my machine and used it as extra swap space. It worked hard every day. Eventually, I moved it into a tiny server and installed Damn Small Linux on it. I use that server as a little private router — to this day. That drive has been working its ass off pretty much continuously since the day that I got it, and it shows no signs of dying anytime soon.

Perhaps the fucker will outlive me.

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I don't grow a bond with inanimate objects, they're easy to replace. But they sure do my cars piss me off sometimes, high horsepower means high maintenance…

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@68,609
I'm 21. I feel even nerdier now :( (Is there a word like "nerdier"?)

@68,616
See? It's not that weird to develop some kind of relationship with an inanimate object.
I think what makes us like them is the thought that they work for us. Machines don't demand anything, they just do what we expect from them (most of the time) - and since human beings tend to seek human behaviour in the things surrounding them, we see it as devotion.
I really think most people feel this way or thought something like this at some point. That's why there are so many SF movies where the machines take revenge for being "enslaved" - we kinda expect that happening with all the machines working for us and not getting anything for it.

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@68,623

> Machines don't demand anything, they just do what we expect from them (most of the time) - and since human beings tend to seek human behaviour in the things surrounding them, we see it as devotion.

That is one of the most insightful (or at least provocative) comments that I have ever read here. If I were a psychology grad student, I would try to devise an experiment to test that hypothesis.

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@68,623

yes there is a 'nerdier'. and yes OP I remember how you and many others felt; I felt attachments to Balloons and things that I wondered would happen if I threw them away. Who would care for them? lol Im typing this from college and feel sad :(

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