The little plastic bits always snap off. Ethernet is great for semipermanent wires but not very good for peripherals like portable hard drives that are constantly disconnected and reconnected.
Even with the protective guard the little plastic tabs inevitably break on me. I can't even say those have fared any better than the unprotected versions.
My main complaint is that the protective rubber often gets stiff as it ages, which can make it pretty dang hard to remove old cables (until you resort to pliers).
Yeah, live hinges (that is, plastic bits that intentionally bend, not rotate on pins) are always going to break eventually. They're just so easy to make that it's a trade off that doesn't fall in the consumer's favor.
Living hinges can have lifespan in the millions of cycles with the correct materials and design. I'm sure it's possible to make an Ethernet connector that doesn't break easily, but it would cost more, and people aren't willing to pay.
I plug/unplug from my display several times daily, since the MBP connected to it travels with me. Granted, the end of the cable in the monitor typically doesn't move¹
¹well, one of them. The crap LG monitors we have constantly forget about the peripherals that are attached, and one easy way to fix this is to detach/reattach the peripheral. I suspect that the company is never going to RMA these devices, sadly.
