my headphones broke! kind of...

okay, i'm exaggerating. they still work just fine. but they're getting super old (i think 4 years now? these things predate covid), so the pleather ear cushions are deteriorating... to the point where one of them fell off and i can't get it back on because the fabric has become too weak!! the other one seems okay, because i don't grab it as much when i take off my headphones, but i don't think it's gonna last much longer.  (つω`｡)

i guess it's on me for waiting so long to find a replacement, but i'm a bit of a cheapskate lmao. as much as i love these headphones, they've aged really badly... i had to replace the microphone already, and as much as i try to keep the cord untangled, it's still managed to curl up and get all twisted. which sucks because the longer it stays twisted, the more it bends into that new shape, and the harder it is to untangle. >_< 

the worst thing that's happened so far is that my audio will get all gross and crackly, and the only way to fix it is to take it out and plug it back in again at the back of the computer. so i have to lean over at a really awkward angle and fiddle with the cords for an uncomfortable amount of time, so that maybe it'll fix itself. sometimes it has bad days where the audio stays crackly no matter how much i try.

the most confusing part about this is that these are legitimately great headphones! i've heard from heaps of people that theirs have aged flawlessly and still work fine ages later... and i just sit there, really confused, because mine clearly haven't! i'm not sure if they're referring to a smaller time frame than i'm thinking, and that all these headphones end up like mine eventually, or if i just got super unlucky and got the ones made out of balsa wood and styrofoam. 

the ones i'm talking about are the HyperX Cloud IIs by Kingston, btw. i would still recommend them, but just... keep in mind they may not last forever lol. i'm not an audiophile or anything but they sound pretty great. 

but they definitely don't compare to my old headphones... my dad got them for me as a gift, and i'm not exaggerating when i say they were the most heavenly, comfortable pair of headphones ever. the padding was so soft and cushiony you could probably drown in it, and even though they were kind of big, they didn't feel too heavy or annoying. those things must've cost a fortune... which is why i still mourn them to this day (ಥ﹏ಥ)

they died in the stupidest way possible: by the cord twisting so much it broke. it was entirely preventable, but i was a dumb child who didn't realise you could just spin the headphones the other way to fix it. 

this is basically what it looked like, except way worse. 

(the headset in the photo is a hyperX cloudII, btw. like mine! :D)

anyways, after suffering through some cheap crappy headphones for a few months, i got to enjoy the luxury of comfy headphones again (even if they weren't as good as before). so i've been really proactive about making sure the same thing didn't happen to my current headset. thankfully i can actually fix what's wrong with them, unlike last time, so i'll be surfing amazon for a little while. 

i'm a bit nervous though because i HATE returning things. absolutely despise it. i've probably wasted an embarassing amount of money on things that don't fit me because i was too lazy to return them. and these amazon reviews for ear cushions are pretty mixed.. like, most of them will be good, realistic reviews (as opposed to obviously fake botted reviews), but there'll be one or two like "the cushions they sent me were twice as small as my headphones, wtf??", or "i got a weird gross foam donut instead of anything resembling headphone parts".

real reviews btw, i wasn't making that up. wtf are those..??

even in the best case scenario, everyone seems to have the same consensus that they're not as good as the originals and reduce the sound quality by a pretty decent amount... obviously, you get what you pay for, but i don't want to spend a fortune on these things. even if i wanted to, i couldn't buy them directly from hyperX, because like most websites, they have a really horrible selection for australia.  (Ò﹏Ó)

15 results!! that's for ALL accessories (which includes keyboards), by the way. they have literally no headset accessories!! i mean, i'm sure i could just buy from the US version of the website, but the shipping is probably enough to pay for uni!  Σ(°ロ°)

thankfully, my current interest is spacehey, so i don't need my headphones for anything.. i guess i'll just have to hold off on video games and music for the time being. (╥_╥)

on an unrelated note, check out this cool thing i found! it's this really cute quiz. i would put it on my profile, but i can't find a good place for it, and i want to replace the image with something a little cuter. so i'll just leave this here!

I taste like Smoke. I'm an unusual taste; I can be strong and potent, or I can be a mere hint, almost not there. I can blow away on the wind, or I can stick to your clothes that you left out when your neighbour was having a bonfire. I'm mean that way. What Flavour Are You?