This has been an issue since before the internet. Growing up in the 80s my parents and grandparents would always be making comments like, "They don't make things like they used to!"

Well I, for one, am extremely glad they don't. I remember cars from the 1960s and 1970s, and they were ####ing terrible: unreliable, unsafe, slow, poor handling. Cars today are vastly better, although I think the accelerating trend for packing them full of complex electronics and gizmos may bite us in the arse. There is simply a lot more to go wrong in a car from 2019 than a car from 1979, even if individual parts and subsystems are much more reliable.

My uncle and my step-dad both have more realistic views. My uncle used to ride motorcycles back in the 60s and 70s and looked at me askance when I'd complained that the problem with doing long distances on a bike with chain rather than shaft drive is that you always needed to carry chain lube with you to oil the chain every 200 - 300 miles. His comment, about an old Norton he'd had, was that he needed to strip down and rebuild the engine every time he'd done 100 miles (he didn't keep it long; even back then this was considered awful).

Likewise, about 15 years ago I'd mentioned some relatively minor part needing replacement after 50,000 miles on my first car, and my step-dad pointed out that with a lot of the cars he'd driven in the 60s, after 50,000 miles you'd need a replacement engine, never mind the odd part.

This has been an issue, however, once upon a time durability was actually a marketing term used for regular appliances. Companies sold people on it.

Now durability as a term exists only for things like jeans and trucks where it’s not supposed to indicate that you can use the thing for long, but rather, to indicate a macho DIY culture.

I believe marketing has played a large role in moving consumers away from even considering how long a product will last.

And if the engine didn't need rebuilt, the frame was probably rusting out by 50,000 miles if you lived anywhere that it snowed regularly in the winter.

50K miles was about how long my parents' cars lasted. 100K miles was considered exceptional at the time and the owner probably babied the car and didn't drive it in places or seasons where it would be exposed to salt.

The consumer is not informed on the quality of a product. How am I meant to know how long a product will last? Price is only a vague estimate of quality. You can spend a lot of money on something that won't last long at all. In fact if it cost a lot of money it was probably built for people who can afford to replace it regularly.