I feel this.
I have had the same 4GB Kingston USB2.0 stick hanging off my keyring for what feels like the last 15 years or so, and it just continues to work perfectly fine... But yet every single modern USB stick I have feels like it wants to die at any moment. I bought a 5 pack of 16GB sandisk cruzr glides at a thrift shop for $5 last year, you know the ones, black housing, red slider to pop the USB part out... Only 2 of them still work. I've gone through about 5 32GB microcenter sticks in the last couple years, and had one 128GB microcenter stick go bad just recently. I also have a 1GB Lexar USB2.0 stick that I got in 2006 and it also still works perfectly fine despite looking like it got run over by a truck. It's been the 3d printer usb stick for like 5 years now, no signs of quitting.

I am constantly on the edge of just dropping big bucks on a 64 or 128GB stick from someplace with a warranty like Cactus Tech or something and hopefully just never worrying about it again.

The trick is to read and never write.