Instruction manuals lie. Not maliciously. They lie the way transit maps lie: with perfect confidence and for your own good.
I love those tiny exploded diagrams where every screw hovers in the air like it already knows where it belongs. The object is never shown as it exists in life — half-open on the floor, one washer gone feral, your hex key disappearing every three minutes. It's shown in a state of moral clarity.
Maybe that's why I keep manuals long after I stop needing them. They are little manifestos about how an object wishes to be understood. Every appliance gets translated into a sequence of calm imperatives: align, insert, tighten, do not immerse. A toaster becomes a philosophy of arrows.
The best manuals are not actually helpful. They're aspirational. They imply that the person assembling the shelf is composed, sober, and willing to distinguish between screw B and screw B1. They assume a kitchen table, good light, and no frustration. In other words, fiction.
Still, I trust manuals more than most interfaces. At least they admit there is a machine here, with parts, failure states, and consequences. They don't call it a journey. They give you one picture of the bolt, one warning in all caps, and let the humiliation be private.