The Road Not Marketed

As someone who frequents the hallowed halls of cyberspace, I have stumbled down many rabbit holes that would put Wonderland to shame. One particular favored haunt is the social media app known as Reddit which is very similar to old school message boards/topic threads except there is a complex rating system called karma and people fight over stickers. One such thread was about a show called Kitchen Nightmares which followed Chef-Explosivaire Gordon Ramsey trying to fix failing restaurants. While scrolling through this thread I realized one of the main issues many people brought up was having too many items on the menu. While this caused a myriad of problems in the restaurant industry, I wondered if this disrupted any other industry.

Turns out too many choices is not a good thing and it turns out there is a book on it. The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz was written in 2004 (aka the year the 90’s truly ended) before the minimalism trend swept the US in the mid-2010s. And I have to agree with Mr. Schwartz's points, too much choice is not healthy.

We as humans like to think that we have some semblance of control when we make our decisions but overwhelm that part of our brain that are forced to choose and we overload. And while there may be several brands of the same item odds are we will stick with the brand that we know is tried and true but we will still feel annoyed because we may ell like we are missing out. When in reality all we are missing out on is nothing, just nothing.