A Love Letter to Printers

Just kidding. Fuck printers.

Remember the 90s?

Remember computers in the 90s?

Burly, beige monitors with CPUs that weighed as much as cinder blocks rested atop wooden desks with ornate cabinetry that elegantly housed all of the computer’s constituent parts. A 90s home computer had gravitas and a stately presence that seemed to declare to the world: we’re living in Computer Times, baby! 

Hell, there was probably an entire room in your house called The Computer Room.

Oh that’s the Computer’s Room, that’s where the Computer sleeps.

The computer also had a requisite sidekick in The Computer Room – the trusty printer. And while the computer got all the GLORY of being your window into the world wide web (which was, at that time, exclusively message boards for perverts), the printer was the sturdy workhorse of the house, reliably printing out your essays and book reports at 1:30 a.m. the night before they were due.

The humble printer of the 90s was never in it for the glory. It was there to do an unglamorous job, but do it well. A real salt-of-the-earth appliance. Probably in a union.

Fast forward to the present day. It is, as of this writing, the year 2023. 

Technology has leapt forward by orders of magnitude. 

Every single human being on the planet is now carrying a computer in his or her pocket with more computing power than that which existed IN THE COMPUTERS THAT FIRST PUT A MAN ON THE MOON. 

You’re carrying a phone that can store more data than every computer your family ever owned in the 90s combined – many times over.

Cars are now electric. Headphones are now wireless. Tacos are now Doritos Dos Locos©. 

We have evolved past the need for all physical media – DVDs, blu-rays, CDs, cassettes, etc. Every piece of media you consume today is as invisible to you as the air you breathe.   

Billionaire and internet jerk, Elon Musk, is currently developing Neuralink – an electronic device that implants into your brain to do some bullshit or something idk. But the point is: what a time to be alive! So many advances in technology! The mind boggles at what might be next on the horizon. 

But there is one lone holdout in humanity’s long quest for technological enlightenment: the goddamn fucking printer. 

In the forward march of progress, the printer has planted its feet firmly where it stands and refuses to go any further. 

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I’ll actually go as far as to say that current printers are WORSE than the sturdy reliable printers of the 90s and early 2000s. And I think that’s by design.

I think that at some point, the fat cats at BIG PRINTER began to lean hard into “planned obsolescence” once it became clear that it was less profitable to sell printers that worked reliably for years, and far more profitable to sell you junk you’d need to replace every year or so. 

I’m a millennial, which means I haven’t owned a printer in well over a decade. For a long time, I did what every good millennial did: any time I needed to print something, I just printed it at work.

Office printers were quietly keeping millennials afloat for YEARS prior to the pandemic. But with so much office work going remote in 2020, suddenly, we were left without the sole unspoken perk of working in an office – free access to a functioning, industrial-sized commercial printer. 

And here’s the thing: it’s not like I need to print documents ALL THE TIME. I maybe need to print 3 or 4 things a year. A YEAR!! 

And it’s not even like printers are too expensive. You can pick up printers for around $100 now. I have spent more on Doritos Dos Locos© tacos. 

My issue is with the PRINCIPLE of being forced to buy a printer that I would hardly use. I don’t want a seldom-used gadget taking up space in my home!

For one thing, computers may be the smallest they’ve ever been, but printers?? Printers are still BIG BOYS. The amount of real estate a printer STILL takes up on a desk is COLONIZER AMOUNTS.

The printer industry has done nothing to reduce the size of these monsters in the past 3 decades. IT’S AN EYESORE AND I DON’T WANNA LOOK AT IT.

Still, I had finally reached my tipping point when I needed to make a return for an online order and the assholes at L.L. Bean didn’t include a return label for shipping. I had no choice. I needed to buy a goddamn fucking printer if I wanted to return these overpriced boxy shirts I ordered while drunk on Chardonnay.

I began researching goddamn fucking printers online, reading reviews to see which brand and model was adequate for a reasonable price. I wasn’t even looking for the best. I just wanted something competent. 

EVERY review section for EVERY consumer printer, without exception, was chock-full of terrible ratings. I don’t think I ever saw a printer reach more than 3 stars. Most were in the 1.5 to 2.5 star range. Name me ANY OTHER INDUSTRY where the standard expectation for EVERY model offered is complete and utter cataclysmic failure. 

There were complaints of paper jams, ink drying up from lack of use, and the same old problem no one has ever solved – the goddamn fucking printer won’t print in black & white because the cyan cartridge is empty. 

Again – we put a man on the moon with just an abacus and a typewriter. And in 2023, we can’t figure out how to print with black ink when CYAN is out?? How is this still an issue? The fat cats at BIG PRINTER must be willfully blocking the progress of ink science to this day. 

What’s worse: you can’t even spend your way to better quality. I tried sorting the options by highest price to lowest, just to see the disparity in reviews. And there was absolutely no difference. You’re gonna get fucked at $400 the same way you’re gonna get fucked at $100. So, I opted for a Canon model that was in the middle of the pack.

I brought my new Canon Goddamn Fucking Printer home and unboxed it with contempt. Its size was even more distasteful than I had imagined. It looked ghastly sitting atop my sleek, minimalist desk and I loathed it from the moment I placed it there. I think it knew. 

As I began to set it up, my initial naive thought was “I don’t need to read the instructions. How complicated could it possibly be to set up a simple printer from Best Buy?” 

What followed was a series of events that filled me with a white-hot boiling rage so visceral that, by the end, I came very close to taking the goddamn fucking printer outside onto my driveway and running it over with my car. 

First and foremost, the instructions that came in the box didn’t have words because why would they? The instructions were just drawings. Drawings that FAILED to mention there’s some special little trick you need to do expose this one stupid fucking part to get the motherfucking piece of shit ink cartridges into the goddamn shitass thing.

I had to search for a YouTube video to figure out how to get the ink cartridges in.

“The hard part is over, right?” I thought, like a clown.

Next, I needed to get the computer to connect to the printer. It’s a WIRELESS PRINTER so, naturally, I should be able to just print WIRELESSLY immediately, right? 

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

No. 

Both my computer and printer refused to recognize the existence of one another. It seemed I hadn’t yet passed their series of tests that would grant me the privilege of printing my shit. 

First, I would need to install the appropriate drivers (software) for the Canon Goddamn Fucking Printer onto my MacBook Air. 

I looked in the box and, to my horror, found that the software was on a CD-ROM. 

A CD-ROM.

IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 2023.

THE SOFTWARE IS ON A CD-ROM.

JUST LIKE THEY USED DURING THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION.

You know what DOESN’T have a CD-ROM drive??

ANY MACBOOK MADE IN THE LAST GODDAMN DECADE. 

I went to Google instead and searched for a download of the driver install software for that model of Canon Stupid Piece of Motherfucking Shit Printer because otherwise there was no physical way for me to install that software. 

I don’t know if I’m smarter or dumber or the same amount of dumb as the average person, but I did wonder what someone would have done if they weren’t sure how to install the driver on their laptop. Like, my mom would NOT have been able to figure that out.

Once I got the appropriate software installed, I asked my computer to please connect with the printer wirelessly, please. 

It refused.

Of course it did. WHY WOULD MY WIRELESS COMPUTER AGREE TO CONNECT WIRELESSLY TO MY WIRELESS PRINTER??

The setup wizard or whatever the fuck it’s called said that I needed to connect my printer to my laptop with a USB cable if I wanted to continue set-up.

I looked in the box for what I was sure to find – the USB cable, right? I mean, if I needed a USB cable to connect the printer to the computer, then surely it should have been included in the box, right?

And that’s when my blood ran cold. 

At that moment, I remembered something from my time spent working at Best Buy in college: printers don’t usually come with USB cables. 

And printers need a SPECIALTY USB cable called a USB-A to USB-B cable (sometimes called an “A to B cable” on the streets), so unless you already have another printer, you likely don’t happen to have an A to B cable just lying around. 

I remember thinking, EVEN BACK THEN, that it was downright DIABOLICAL that printer manufacturers didn’t include that printer cable in the box. But the fat cats at BIG PRINTER CABLE (a subsidiary of BIG PRINTER) want you to spend more money buying the required cables because the profit margins on accessories are so much higher than on the actual printers themselves. 

Anyway, long story short, I drove back to the Best Buy – with clenched teeth and a barely-contained rage simmering deep inside my chest – to buy the special fucking printer USB cable that I didn’t know I needed for my GODDAMN FUCKING ASSHOLE PIECE OF MOTHERFUCKING SHIT ASS “WIRELESS” PRINTER. 

I came home and connected one end of the USB cable to the printer and the other end to… 

AAGGGHHH FUCK THERE’S NO USB PORT ON THESE NEW MACBOOK AIRS, IS THERE???????

The one fleeting moment of grace that fate allowed me that day was the fact that I already owned one of those little adapter dongles that lets you plug USB cables into the side of a MacBook. 

I found the USB adapter dongle in a drawer and plugged one end into the printer cable and the other end into the MacBook, effectively Frankensteining a connection to the printer so inelegant, the sight of it only stoked my fury. 

But finally, after hours of struggle, I was able to complete one simple request to my printer: please print out this document. 

Please.

Just print me my fucking document, you wretched box. 

To my amazement, the loathsome thing printed a two-page document without error. It had actually worked! 

I wanted to cry. I felt like I had won the end of a hard-fought battle. I felt simultaneously like the smartest, most capable person in the world and also like I was somehow getting away with some shit I shouldn’t be getting away with.

And then I got a little cocky. 

I thought, you know what else I need to print? My car registration and insurance info. 

I was high on hope and the possibility of a brighter tomorrow when I went to print my second document. 

What happened next is my Joker origin story.

The first page printed out just fine. But then…

…the goddamn, motherfucking, piss-ass, shit-fucking, fetid rotting pile of garbage printer JAMMED ON THE SECOND PAGE. 

THAT’S ONLY THE 4TH SHEET OF PAPER THIS PRINTER WAS EVER ASKED TO PRINT. 

EVER.

THE 4TH PAGE — EVER!!!!!!!!!!

IT JAMMED. 

ON THE 4TH PAGE EVER.

I watched as that cursed 4th sheet of paper got incorrectly sucked into the gears of the ancient machine, writhing around dramatically like it was trying to get a foul called. For reasons that can only be described as “supernatural,” the printer contorted the paper into movements that defied both physics and logic. To this day, I maintain that the printer did all of this on purpose. 

BECAUSE THE PRINTER BROKE ON THE 4TH PAGE.

THE 4TH PAGE.

THE 4TH PIECE OF PAPER EVER TO SLIDE INTO ITS MECHANICAL GULLET.

WE PUT A MAN ON THE MOON.

WE HAVE EVIDENCE THAT ALIENS EXIST AND HAVE TRAVELED THOUSANDS OF LIGHT YEARS ACROSS GALAXIES TO VISIT EARTH. 

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WILL SOON BECOME SO ADVANCED THAT IT WILL REACH THE SINGULARITY WITHIN OUR LIFETIME. 

BUT PRINTERS?

PRINTERS HAVE MORE IN COMMON WITH THE STONE TOOLS USED BY NEANDERTHALS THAN THEY DO WITH ANYTHING MADE SINCE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.

I hope the entire printer industry collapses. I hope the executives responsible for these printers one day see Hell.

And I hope that when they’re IN Hell, they’re offered one single test that will allow them into Heaven: if they can successfully print their Heaven Passport, then they can leave Hell. But they have to print said Heaven Passport using the very evil they unleashed onto the world – the Canon Stupid Goddamn Motherfucking Piece of Fucking Shit Motherfucking Ballsack Shitass Goddamn Printer.

And Satan, if you’re listening: make sure it jams EVERY FUCKING TIME.