Even now i do a small repair shop as a side business. Broken hdmi connectors because someone forced the connector in upside down isn’t exactly common but it’s not exactly rare either. Some people think stuff really needs to be forced together, apparently
Using electronics needs a drivers license like equivalent. Some people shouldn't have access to them if getting an HDMI connector wrong is an issue.
I bet everyone seriously wishes there were a "seriously honestly just not a fucking idiot" license. The fact that we know which way a connector goes puts us in a whole different league from the rest of the population; most people are so braindead stupid that they can't even fathom being smarter. Sometimes I wonder if being neurodivergent is even worth it. Do I even want the privilege of knowing enough of the bare minimum to outclass half the Earth, if it means that I'm constantly depressed by how stupid everyone else is?
BTW I wouldn't pass a graduation exam if my life depended on it, because my brain is not a textbook database of things that I don't care about. But that just means my ADHD has gotten the better of me.
Normal people will try to push a plug in with a normal amount of force, find it doesn't fit, then realize they're doing it wrong and try something different. (Or in the case of USB-A, turn it over and try again, find that's wrong too, then turn it over yet again and find it fits perfectly.) But there's some sector of the populace that just doesn't seem to understand how much force is appropriate for things like delicate electronic connectors. I'll bet that if you took a tour of their homes, you'd find many other broken and beat-up things too.