"Planned obsolescence is not really a new concept. God used it with people"
About this Quote
Leave it to a professional joke-writer to take a term from midcentury corporate cynicism and pin it to the oldest institution imaginable. Orben’s line works because it collapses two kinds of “design”: the sleek, profit-driven engineering of consumer goods and the messy, existential “design” of human mortality. Planned obsolescence is supposed to be a scandal of capitalism - the quiet decision to make your toaster die right after the warranty. By dragging God into it, Orben flips the complaint into a cosmic shrug: if even the divine model comes with an expiration date, what are you really mad about, your phone battery?
The intent is comic deflation. It’s a one-liner that turns righteous indignation into gallows humor, making modern anxieties about being “used up” feel both petty and painfully true. The subtext is sharper than it looks: we’re already trained to accept replacement cycles, upgrades, and disposability as normal. Orben suggests that this isn’t just an economic system; it’s a worldview. People, too, are built with a timer. The joke lands because it taps a buried suspicion that the whole culture runs on churn - products, jobs, even identities - and that “new” is often just the next version of the same old fate.
Context matters: Orben’s era is the golden age of mass marketing and built-to-break appliances, when the phrase “planned obsolescence” carried real bite. His punchline doesn’t absolve corporations; it exposes how easily we mythologize our frustrations to avoid the simpler truth: everything ends, and we keep shopping anyway.
The intent is comic deflation. It’s a one-liner that turns righteous indignation into gallows humor, making modern anxieties about being “used up” feel both petty and painfully true. The subtext is sharper than it looks: we’re already trained to accept replacement cycles, upgrades, and disposability as normal. Orben suggests that this isn’t just an economic system; it’s a worldview. People, too, are built with a timer. The joke lands because it taps a buried suspicion that the whole culture runs on churn - products, jobs, even identities - and that “new” is often just the next version of the same old fate.
Context matters: Orben’s era is the golden age of mass marketing and built-to-break appliances, when the phrase “planned obsolescence” carried real bite. His punchline doesn’t absolve corporations; it exposes how easily we mythologize our frustrations to avoid the simpler truth: everything ends, and we keep shopping anyway.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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