The Illusion Of Choice

Blogger doesn't have a huge variety of fonts to choose from, so I went into Word and looked through the fonts on there, chose eight of them, did a screenprint and put them here. Now I have eight possible titles to choose from. One of them has to be a decent one, right?

The most readable one is probably the top one, you know, I didn't need to pick the other ones at all. No Symbol, no Wingdings, Wild West fonts etc etc. The best one is Comic Sans. To tell you the truth, I probably didn't need to go through Word at all. Just because Word has more fonts, it doesn't mean that the choice of fonts offered is necessarily better, when Blogger has a few which are fit for purpose.

THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE.

See? Marvellous. Looks like the title of a top secret document. There was no need for me to go for Comic Sans now.

Anyway, there are examples of "Illusion of choice" everywhere. An Illusion of Choice is where you're given the impression that everything is better when there is more varieties to choose from. But on closer inspection, all the choices you have are either shit (as above) or at best mediocre.

Inappropriate fonts aside, I want to have a quick peek at the real world, just to try and point out all the Illusions Of Choice that are all around us. 

1) Breakfast Cereals

Coco pops.

Well, apparently, Coco would rather have a bowl of Coco Pops. But those days are long gone, when you, or he, could get just that. Nowadays, Coco doesn't just want a bowl of Coco Pops any more, he would rather have a bowl of either:

Coco Rocks, Coco Pops Choc 'n' Roll, Coco Pops Moons and Stars, Coco Pops Croc Prints, whatever else the labs can come up with;

And to follow that up, he can have Coco Pops Straws and Coco Pops snack bars.

You may say they're aimed at kids. That I can't argue with. Personally, I have to have either porridge or something branny to be healthy and that. But as a kid, I did eat Coco Pops and I thought they were great. I thought they were better than Rice Krispies because they were chocolatey (though I preferred Ricicles). But basically, with young kids, as long as something tastes nice, if you shove it infront of them they will happily eat it. Ultimately they will become bedazzled by something which looks new, but it all tastes the same anyway so if you kept feeding them the Coco Pops they will just eat it anyway.

Well, apart from my three year old daughter. She likes Coco Pops. She's tried Coco Rocks (which she does like) and Choc 'n' Roll (which she refuses to eat), so actually, by increasing the varieties of Coco Pops products, Kelloggs have actually reduced the edibleness of them. If it was just all ordinary Coco Pops, nothing would go wrong.

It's only when the young ones expect choice (and are spoilt by it) do they become more demanding. And that's where the adverts come in to pique their curiosities. They believe they're missing out on something totally unique. Well yes, the different varieties of Coco Pops products all look different, but they taste remarkably similar. All in all, it isn't really that much choice.

And what got me recently was a pack of Kellogg's Variety I picked up out of pure interest, just to see what variety of cereals were in there. The usual - one Corn Flakes, one Rice Krispies, one Frosties. But three boxes were taken up by Coco Pops (and their varieties), in place of what else Kellogg's could have put in there.

Essentially by having more variety, you actually have less choice.

It isn't just limited to Coco Pops though. I've seen Ready Brek with golden syrup (which you could add yourself if you weren't too lazy), no - forget that; You look at any premium brand cereal and you might see another variety of it with:

a) dried fruit;
b) golden syrup/honey, or;
c) chocolate.

You know, just to spice things up a bit.

They must think we find breakfast so boring that they have to liven it up with so many varieties of everything, which becomes futile when we pour it out with complete unbridled anticipation, only to take one mouthful and marvel at the sheer mediocrity that was £2.29 well spent.

Don't get me started on "breakfast biscuits". Don't even go there.

2) Cosmetics

Cosmetics. You can go to any pharmacy or supermarket or whatever and the aisles are packed to the rafters with all different varieties of cosmetics. I'm not a woman, so yeah, you may think I don't know what I'm talking about, but you don't have to be a man with a penis to state the bleedin' obvious, that if you walk into any branch of Boots (a pharmacy), precious little space is actually devoted to items of medicinal benefit, like headache pills, multivitamins, and prescription drugs.

You walk the aisles and you will see countless products which claim to make parts of your body look healthier/younger, such as face creams, hand creams with Q10, amino acids, creatine and all sciency sounding substances, which all play on a consumer's self-esteem. There are hordes of women who feel that without putting on six inches of various different types of slap every day, everyone around them will dismiss them as some haggard old crone, who looks so ancient she owes Yoda a tenner. They're so scared some of them believe this would happen without a bit of cream

She chose... poorly.

Well, it isn't just the women that are made to feel guilty, there are products for men too and men are buying tons of the stuff. Manly men buying moisturisers and anti-aging creams.

And there's the hair products too, with great promises of making your hair shine, giving it body etc etc and so on and so forth.

Basically, all I need is a shampoo that takes the grease off my hair. So all I buy for myself is tea tree shampoo. We have one hand cream and a tub of baby moisturiser if my hands get cracked or something. The whole family can use it. No added bullshit (OK the hand cream has shea butter or something, but I just picked it up purely as a cheap generic tube from Lidl). If I had longer hair, I could use a generic conditioner, but that would be it.

So what is the Illusion Of Choice here, then? Well, it all boils down to a myriad of products which claim to do miraculous things, well, if something looks to good to be true, it probably isn't.

The words "Snake" and "Oil" come to mind. Why on Earth are you putting something on/in you if you don't understand what the featured substance in it actually does? Here's a few examples of things they stuff in shampoos and that:

• Amino acids (The building blocks of protein. They're everywhere anyway.)
• Co Enzyme Q10 (substance used for energy production, concentrated mostly in the body's internal organs; when used in skin creams, it gets absorbed into the skin, which is comprised of dead cells)
• Hyaluronic acid (used to treat arthritis; may also be involved in the progression of certain tumours)

Basically, get your bottle of skin cream/shampoo or whatnot, find the most promoted ingredient on it, enter it into Wikipedia and research it. If this is what it takes to reduce the amount of product you use, then so be it.

And tans. Fake tan product is ugly. And going out to get a tan just makes your skin age considerably. Keep your skin looking young by keeping in the shade instead. Embrace your skin for whatever shade it naturally is. If beauty to you really is skin deep, then look after it and stop messing about with it. OK, let's move on to another topic.

3) Television

The motherlode.

I was a child of the '80s, growing up in England, and up until the encroachment of Sky TV, we were used to having four channels: BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4. And I was fine. Channel 4 was an '80s invention anyway, before that there were only three channels and people were fine with that too. There was also a time in history when there was only one TV channel and yes, somehow people were fine with that too. There was also a time when there were no TVs and our ancestors got by considerably well without them.

Before you tell me to fuck off and stick my blog where the sun doesn't shine, take your remote control, take a pad and pen and go through all the channels on your television. Make a note of the name of the channel and note whether you either:

a) Watch the channel regularly;
b) Watch it occasionally, say once a week;
c) Once in a blue moon when they have something interesting on for once, or;
d) Not at all.

I'm no mind reader but I can say for certain the vast majority of you will put Cs and Ds for most of the channels on your telly. In the UK, the most basic television service we have is Freeview, which offers a minimum of 50 TV channels. Cable and satellite services offer many more (apart from Freesat). We are really spoilt for choice; we have a free basic service which offers quite a lot of TV, but millions of us will choose to pay FOR EVEN MORE CHANNELS.

I just can't believe TV is really that worth it. I don't watch a lot of TV myself but I will stick to a few interesting shows and do other stuff with the rest of my time. I can't sit infront of the TV for hours a day. When I do, and when I'm channel surfing (in the vain hope that the lesser used channels might have something interesting on) there's fuck all on. My daughter will mostly have Cbeebies and is happy with that.



I could tell you more about the other illusions of choice out there but this blog would become slightly ironic if it had too many sections for you to choose from. So fuck it, to play us out, here's a song by Ballboy.

Choose well.

THE END

I know why you want to celebrate Thatcher's death but is it in good taste?

They want to get 'Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead" to number 1 in the charts, to shout an almighty yay at the fact that Margaret Thatcher is dead, amidst all the masturbatory articles published by the right about how great she was. The air is so polarised, you can smell the ozone.

What I want to say is, yes, I fully understand why you want to celebrate Thatcher's death, but I do not agree that it's the time for revelry. This is not a right-wing viewpoint at all, I don't want to start espousing her greatest points and paint her as a kind of saint. But why, like so many others, do I hold such a viewpoint?

Basically, yes, feel free to criticise what she did. But just leave it at that. This isn't a time for any kind of happiness.

Why I understand your need to celebrate

Let me tell you a story. Not about Thatcher, but about a senior political figure from the works of fiction.

Lord Sidious (Also known as Chancellor, later Emperor Palpatine) was a Sith Lord who rose to the highest station of government. Lord Sidious took control from the incompetent Chancellor Valorum, who had let the factions of the Galactic Empire rule him. It was an embarrassment, and the world of Naboo was embroiled in a rather seedy affair with the Trade Federation placing a blockade around their planet, hoping to annex the world.

Lord Sidious was this sort of person.

A leader with a tough, uncompromising attitude, never one to be wavered by troubles, and never one for turning. In fact he turned them.

An accomplished public speaker, knowing how to get people on his side.

Outwardly, appearing to be a good, moral person; in control.



The person to bring radical change, transforming the Republic totally. This did much to polarise public opinion; people either loved or hated him.

It was as if he was superhuman.

 And he had marvellous hair that made his head look bigger.

 

During his tenure, he brought order to many, a growing economy, at the cost of annoying (and destroying the lives of) quite a few people, who did much to fight back.

But what happened to poor, old Palpatine?

In the end, one of his many proteges stabbed in the back, and threw him down a ventilation shaft. Yeah, boy. For hurting his family. Nevertheless, a quick death.

And after his death, there was much celebration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, this is why I understand your frustration. I know you may have been hard done by Thatcher, and I know why you want to party.

 

Why I disagree with you

Thatcher did not enjoy the privilege of a quick death.

 

Yes, she may have had many other privileges during her lifetime, and died in the relative comfort of the Ritz Hotel, London, but when you die, when anyone dies, they are alone and no amount of material wealth can ultimately bring comfort. Only love surpasses all. But I feel that even this may have been absent in the case of Margaret Thatcher.

You see, she spent the remainder of her days suffering from the degrading process of dementia, much like her good friend Ronald Reagan, another conservative icon.

 

You may or may not have known someone to suffer from dementia. It is a horrible disease which can only be described as a slow death. You begin with a person, and you are left with someone resembling that person in appearance, but they may not know who you are, who they are, or what on Earth is going on. They may want their deceased partner, but don't understand why they can't be there.

To be honest, I fear dementia more than I do a quicker death. I like the feeling of wholeness and it irks me when I forget the most simplest of things from time to time, let alone all the time. And no one ever gets better from this disease.

 

And it doesn't just affect the sufferer too, it affects family, friends, anyone who cares.

We live in a country where free speech is promoted, and it is perfectly OK to criticise Thatcher's tenure as Prime Minister. But to go out and party, to get a song in the charts to celebrate her death with a bit of fun, all you do is bring more hurt to those that survive.

And I thought you were human beings.

I'm sticking with the option of rising above all of this. I don't want to drag myself to her level. Let's be civilised and show everyone else how good we can be.