Consoles.
I'd forgotten this one. I think I've tried to wipe its very existence from my memory and only attempting to use it this evening has reminded me.

I bought a PS3. This seemed like a sensible decision at the time - a humble PS1 had entertained and delighted through University years, my PS2 had been a thing of joy and wonderment, so when Sainsbury's had a cut-price deal on the latest incarnation I thought I couldn't go wrong with Sony's portly wunderkind.

It is the single most disappointing object I have ever owned. Turning it on is akin to opening a crushing vortex of disappointment, enough to envelope the entire lounge with a sense of despairing gloom.

I bought a game for it. It has a picture of a car on the box, but from the gameplay I've experienced so far it would be better titled "Downloading Update". Sometimes I get to the second level, where you have to download a "System Update" to "Sign In", and once I discovered a driving minigame where AI cars ram you off the track until you get bored and start again, but mostly it's a slightly more graphically enhanced copy of Microsoft Progress Bar Simulator.

So anyway, I cut my losses and stopped trying to play games on it, assuming it would at least need electricity to disappoint. At which point it rebelled and used some kind of magic disappointment force to give my personal details to Bad People From The Internet.

This wasn't so bad as I hadn't really given it much more than my name owing to being too disappointed by the awkward input scheme, and I did get some free games as an apology. One of them is the Neutral Entertainment Game. It entertains me to precisely the level of my natural decay towards boredom. I will finish playing it exactly as entertained as I was before I started. Some might question how this is disappointing but - aha! - it's the psychological long game of disappointment, disappointing through the medium of questioning the existential emptiness of everything.

The other game I haven't tried, but every so often it wakes the PS3 up at a random time and re-downloads all 7 or 8 GB of game files. I assume it's a version of "Downloading Update" that plays itself. If you weren't already in enough of an existential crisis from Neutral Entertainment Game then hah, how do you feel now you realise the console doesn't even need you, the player?

The worst thing about it, though, is it has somehow managed to infect an HDMI cable with its disappointingness, as if the plastic casing has failed to contain such a huge amount of disappointment. There's a MTBF of about 15 minutes before the screen will go blank and you'll need to wiggle the cable to get a picture back. So the one thing it could do well, playing DVD and Blu-Ray video, it has managed to render itself useless at. All it has left to give now is disappointment.

(At least until I buy a new cable for it to consume with its overpowering negativity.)
(Timberwolf, Sun 2 Oct 2011, 22:42, 4 replies)

This recurrent disappointment theme
makes it very hard to understadn what you're saying.

I think you bought a PS3, and didn't like it much.

The stuff about your personal details, and the HDMI cable - anyones guess, but I think you were disappointed about something.
(username failed moderation, Mon 3 Oct 2011, 11:14, closed)

I love your way with words. I actually had to walk out of the office while giggling like a loon!
(Jester_, Mon 3 Oct 2011, 15:44, closed)

Awesome in every way
And several other ways that have yet to be discovered!
(Deadly Octopus no deaths since, Mon 3 Oct 2011, 16:09, closed)

I felt the same way
When i acquired an XBOX360. Played it for 10 minutes. Took it back to the shop for money back. Went back to my PC
(andythepieman Is surfing the waves of indifference on, Mon 3 Oct 2011, 16:42, closed)