I’m not claiming it’s a standard maintenance practice, most people won’t have the spray, and aren’t accustomed to needing to needing to maintain a joystick like that.
But it is truly a simple, cheap, easy fix for almost all cases of joystick drift (not just on joycons, but all controllers). I really think nintendo should have worked to spread the knowledge, and provided free cleaner to people with issues.
The drift that joycons get is almost always just caused by dirt/gunk under the joystick flaps. If you spray a little electrical cleaner up under the flaps it fixes the drift immediately. Might have to repeat it 1-2 times a year.
It’s always bothered me how big of deal joycon drift is when it has such an easy fix. Obviously it would be better if I didn’t happen at all, but it seems silly that people are throwing away good controllers that only needed a 5 second cleaning. Only thing I’ve ever had to replace any of my joycon controllers over is problems with the rail connections to the switch, where it swaps back and forth between wireless and direct connected. But my original 2016 joycons are still going strong, just stuck as wireless only joycons.
They need two walls, one to keep Americans out and one to keep emus trapped in the middle.
I can understand that, as an American, Australia is near the top of the list of countries I’d consider moving to.
Opening up the controller and cleaning the joysticks directly might have actually made it worse. The joysticks have their own lubrication, if you clean the directly you can remove that and ruin them.
My experience has been that cleaning up the joysticks with the controller closed up is safe and generally fixes any drift or sticking buttons. Opening up the controller and trying to clean it with the same spray can be damaging and isn’t recommended.
And to be clear, the actual stick mechanism can break down and cause drift too. But every case of joycon drift I’ve ever seen between my couple sets and friends’ sets were always fixed by a quick spray of cleaner.