Earphone drama

Though I do use my earphones to listen to drama, this story is about the dramatic demise of far too many earphones in far too little time:
I listen to podcasts a lot these days. Accompanied by stories, chores become substantially more enjoyable, but only with clear audio. When I got a new phone five years ago, I declared it my podcast machine and happily used the earphones that had come with it and with volume control to catch up on all my favorite podcasts. After two and a half years of dependable service, my earphones finally broke, and I was left to look for a worthy replacement. At first, I thought it would be best to order a cheap (probably knockoff) replica with all the same functions. Despite the visual likeness, the replacement shared no resemblance in longevity as six months later, the new earphones shared the fate of their predecessor. Thinking I might have received a faulty set, I went for an identical replacement. And, six months after that, another one. After my third set of earphones had also broken after half a year, I did some math: If three-to-four-euro earphones broke after six months, 10 euro earphones would function for about a year and a half, right? Well, after eight months of ignoring the duck’s chuckles whenever I confidently and naively plugged my neat new earphones into my portable podcast machine, I had to learn that that was not one of the real-life uses my math teachers had referred to in response to the regularly occurring question “why?”: My comparatively expensive earphones broke down after less than half their predicted lifetime.
At that point, I was frustrated. For a while, I made do without a functioning set of earphones. But I soon came to realize that the happiness I would feel from not getting guaranteed headaches after wearing my over-ear headphones (that I tend to only use with my laptop or on a plane) for too long would outweigh the anger from having to replace my earphones more often than some people – not me! – replace their toothbrush.
Well, these days, I sport over-ten-euro-earphones, and I’m optimistic that these, at last, will feed my podcast addiction for a minimum of two years!