When something looks flimsy, people handle it with care. This careful use helps it last longer.
The opposite is something that looks solid but isn’t. A solid look will invite people to use it as they please, often without care. The inherent flimsiness will succumb to careless use.
The ideal is something that is inherently solid. But if that’s not really available, rather have something flimsy looking on the outside than flimsy just on the inside.
The thoughts above were brought to you by this flimsy hack job surviving our all-destroying cleaners:
There’s a hole in the kitchen top where the tap needs to stand. The tap sinks in. I hate it. So I rigged together a flimsy base using chopsticks and rubber bands to keep the tap from sinking.
Our cleaners are all-conquering destroyers. If you want to test if something is strong enough, leave it out while the cleaners are around. If it survives them, it’ll survive anywhere.
My temporary rigging of the tap base survived an hour’s session by the cleaners yesterday. The reason clearly was its clearly apparent flimsiness. They knew it’d break if they don’t handle it carefully. So they did.
(Now if it only survives the even harder test—R handling it)