It seems conspiratorial but consider that the companies making the standards and manufacturing the cables have an incentive to get people to buy as many cables

It seems conspiratorial but consider that the companies making the standards and manufacturing the cables have an incentive to get people to buy as many cables as possible and to do so regularly. It’s the same complaint that people leverage against Apple normally - that Apple designs their Lightning cables to be fragile so that people are forced to replace them. I don’t think there’s actually strong evidence for either argument. I have USB cables that I’ve had for years and then I’ve had cables that I had for a few months that went bad or were poorly made. I’ve mostly had good luck with my Apple cables and never had a problem with chargers or headphones like some.