So I'm a Gen Z'er, a bit on the older end of the spectrum. Currently finishing my bachelor's degree, if that gives you some perspective on my age. My dad actually owned a PS2 when I was born, but by the time I started playing video games it was on an Xbox 360. We didn't get the first "new" console that I actually remembered setting up until the Xbox One back in 2013. Ever since then, every time we got a new console, even just regular console re-releases like the PS4 Slim and the Xbox One X, it was such a huge hassle setting those things up. I remember 2 years ago when we got a PS5 for the family room back at my parent's house, it was an entire day-long process to set that damn thing up. You gotta plug it in, wait for it to do its own set up for like an hour, sign into all these BS accounts, get a million setting set up, deal with parental restrictions if you need those.

Last week I bought a PS2 Slim from my coworker for $50 and I'm still in awe of how easy it was to set up. I decided to get up early so I could spend all of my day off doing what I expected to be the usual "new console" troubleshooting… but nope. I just plugged it into the wall, then plugged the A/V cables into a ADC (Analog-to-Digital Converter) I preemptively bought online. Then I plugged the controller in, turned it on, and voila! Literally just a working console. Only problem was that I forgot to get a memory card so I couldn't actually play the games that my coworker gave me, but hey it works!

It's just so incredible to me how modern technology is almost always such a major pain in the ass to set up. Every thing I own takes a million years and mind-numbing troubleshooting because there's always a problem. It feels like every time I use something old it might still have troubleshooting, (especially if it's from the 80s or 90s) but the set up process is 10 minutes at most. I remember the modem/router I bought a few months ago took two days of painful troubleshooting before I could even try to connect it to my internet plan.

P.S. It's also pretty amazing just how small this thing is. Even a PS4 Slim would dwarf this thing by a couple magnitudes. I set up tons of space on my side table expecting it to be as big as a PS4 was, but it's just sitting on there with a sizeable portion of empty space surrounding it

Edit: if you don't believe me then that's a you problem. I'm not sure why multiple people have seemed to think I'm making a generalization about millions of people because of my own experiences. This post is about my experiences and mine alone. You might have had better internet or never have run into problems with routers and that's wonderful. I'm so proud of you. But, this post is not talking about you, so save the ego.