Hi!
I still haven’t 100% calmed down as this just happened, and I need help figuring out if I overreacted and if I am the asshole.
So, I \[19NB\] like to collect things, mostly tech, especially audio equipment, mostly vintage undervalued/underappreciated stuff. It’s also important to know that I hate collecting just for it to gather dust, if I don’t find a use for stuff, I give it away, lend it to friends and family or sell it.
To the story. I had an extra amp, and my younger siblings \[M15 and F15\] didn’t have a proper audio system for their TV, so I thought I’d lend them one. It’s important to note that I didn’t give it to them, as it’s worth \~€500, and that is, at least to me, quite a lot of money. It was however on one condition, that I do any setup on it (connect it together and connect any input devices to it), as it’s an older system and sometimes a bit finicky.
Then, a while later I realized that I had a TV, which I was never using, and since it wasn’t really worth anything, but way better than the one they had, I decided just to give it to them. It took me a few weeks to get to setting up the audio system with the TV, mostly because I want to have the whole day clear when I get to doing stuff like that, so I don’t have to rush and end up breaking things.
My brother plays the piano, and for his birthday, he got a digital piano. it has a built in speaker, but he wanted to connect it to the same system. He told me this at 20.30 yesterday. I said that yes, we can look at it together, hoping to introduce him to the wonders of amps and audio equipment, but not right now, as I have work tomorrow and need to go to sleep.
Today I went to work, ran a few errands on the way home, shuffled the snow of the driveway, etc. Then my father and I made dinner, and while we were making it, my brother decided to himself try to set it up. When I later in the evening found that out, I lost it, because I was afraid he’d damaged the equipment, especially since he said that "it didn’t work". I asked why he couldn’t wait until I was able to help him, so we could do it together, and he said that "that’ll be when? Never?" and I said, "Not at all, maybe in the weekend, when we have time to sit with it." But I kinda lost it and decided to then and there try to figure it out quickly (also as damage control) and low and behold, it didn’t work. I don’t know exactly why, but he fucking lost it and said that "if it’s that fucking fragile, we can’t have it, then we have to have another one", and I said that "I lent this one out of my own good will, I could just have sold it instead, and then there’d be no stereo system here." This went back and forth a few times ’til I got fed up, and here I might be the asshole. I unplugged everything and took it down to my room. My brother then called me a drama queen and said I was "making myself a victim".
So AITA?
NTA
You loaned it to him, free of charge, with some rules attached. He’s not grateful for it, and doesn’t want to play by the rules, so he doesn’t get it anymore. Simple as that. The rest of the situation really doesn’t matter. Maybe next time he’ll learn to not be a choosy beggar.
So you lent something that needed to be put together on the condition that you put it together so it didn’t get damaged and that agreement was broken so the item was taken back? NTA. But you should’ve just kept everything with you until you were ready so your brother wouldn’t have had access.
I did that, sorry if I was unclear. I had set it up with the TV – that was done a while back, but he got a digital piano recently and wanted to connect it, which he told me yesterday, and I did not even have a chance to look up if it could be done without risking damage. I play the guitar, and when it comes to that you can’t plug it into an amp made for “listening”, not only because it will sound awful, but also because the guitar can damage the equipment. guitar amps have other tolerances and protection circuits, just like you can’t plug your phone into a guitar amp (where the guitar plugs in, some modern guitar amps has a second input for phones, so you can play a backing track) because the current can cause it to overheat. For some setups it might work, but if you just do it the way it’s supposed to be done, nothing breaks. But he just assumed it’d be fine since it’s a digital piano, and I think it would be fine if done right, but I’d like to check first, then set it up properly, in a way that looks nice and doesn’t risk damage to the piano, amps or speakers.
NTA. They need to learn to respect other people’s belongings especially if they have been loaned them with the intent of it being returned at some point.
If he really wants to learn how to use audio equipment properly, winging it and potentially fucking it is not the best approach because it can be a very expensive lesson to learn… I’d be telling them if they can’t respect your belongings that you loaned (which weren’t a cheap item), then they don’t get the privilege of being loaned anything from you, now or in the future.
I’d be itemising how much it will cost to repair the damage including costs for labor so they can see how expensive it can be to repair audio equipment. If they change their tune and they can be respectful and wait for you to help them and also teach them how to use the equipment properly so that when they do get their own equipment they can set it up correctly I would consider lending them stuff again.
If they still dont understand why you are upset, they can save up and buy their own and learn the hard way.
I did try and tell him that, but his response is that “he knows how it works, he looked at his own audio setup, and he was actually able to switch CD player”, but it’s not the same. I had already set that up, and his setup is way different, and less likely to blow itself up. The one I lent them is completely analog, and albeit there are solutions that could be used to make analog electronics not blow up if you do wrong, the designers don’t put them on audio stuff, because it can make quality worse, and prices higher – they instead just count on the person working with it knowing what they’re doing. Furthermore, My brother is… not the best with tech – he says that himself.
I have not had time to do damage control, but since the place where I work will be closed tomorrow, I get the day off and can probably do it then. It might have been that it wasn’t set up right, or even that he used a faulty wire, but if it is broken the way I fear it might be, I’m not even sure if I can repair it. These old amps uses tonnes of parts that aren’t being made anymore and I don’t have the equipment nor skill to replace some of them, and then my best bet is probably just taking out the parts I can take out that have second hand value and try to sell those…
ESH.
You thought it was a good idea to “lend” a couple 15 year old kids something worth decent money? And expect that they’re going to adhere to your rules of basically not touching it?
I can’t imagine your siblings were super impressed with having an old sound system hooked up to a (possibly?) nice TV. How could it have possibly been a better option (for these specific circumstances) than a modern sound bar or speaker/subwoofer set? People generally have no respect for things other people “collect”, especially if they’re “consumables”/products that are/were actually used. Even more so if it’s not something they’re familiar with.
I personally hate when young people act so ridiculous about “vintage” stuff when they weren’t even alive to experience anything remotely like it. You should not have “loaned” it to your younger siblings at all. You could have helped them pick out something if you thought you had this massive amount of expertise, but that was pretty dumb. There’s nothing wrong with collecting things like that, but you should know most people aren’t going to place the same value on them if they’re not in the hobby. (No, you can’t claim “nostalgia” over them, either.)
And yes, I *am* old enough to have an original VHS collection, still have a VCR, have used a landline and rotary phone, was around for the rise of DVDs and CDS, the introduction of the iPhone and iPod, and I used Windows 95 the year it came out.