The Pesky Paradox of Choice
The other night, I decided to order in dinner. I opened DoorDash and, faced with the endless selection of New York City’s cuisines, ended up ordering nothing and eating leftovers instead. (Which I probably should have done in the first place, considering my bank account, but I digress.)
I couldn’t make up my mind. Or—looking at it another way—I made it up so many times over that I couldn’t possibly satisfy each of my minute-to-minute decisions. Italian and Indian and Thai were all presenting as valid options, so instead I went with Fridge.
This isn’t about food, however. This is about the other thing we need to sustain ourselves on a daily basis: entertainment. I’m talking film, television, music, podcasts, etc. There are over 5 million podcast titles on Spotify. Netflix released over 680 shows last year, which was a decrease from the year prior. The past three Oscars have seen 10 Best Picture Nominees, so The Academy, whoever they are, can’t even make up their own damn minds about what is best to watch. They are rich (I assume), so they can choose Italian, Indian, and Thai.
Most of us are not so lucky. There are so many television shows and miniseries to watch, that when awards season rolls around, each of us realizes how little we participated in the year’s zeitgeist. When most people see the Oscars Best Picture list, they can’t claim to have seen one (except for this year, in which Barbenheimer helped out with that). When you look for something to watch, you have to start scrolling an hour in advance to make sure you select something by a reasonable time, if you select anything at all. My sister and I sat down to watch a movie the other day, aiming for something neither of us had seen, and ended up on National Treasure. (Which I am not complaining about. #BenGates4Prez)
We end up watching the same, comforting things over and over again, because with each hunt for something new, we fear picking something not as satisfying as our go-to, and we fear the fact that by picking one thing, we are eschewing thousands of others.
How many streaming services are there these days? Even for podcasts, the baby of the entertainment era, I can name four or five services off the top of my head, and I only listen to one podcast. For film and TV, there are so many services that they’ve started to merge and come closer to looking like—gasp—cable. One person cannot possibly keep up, even without looking to the past; new shows are released in bundles of three or four these days, often within the same week.
And because one person cannot possibly keep up, a sense of paralysis kicks in: the paradox of choice. We have so many choices that we make none. We are slapped into indecision by the sheer volume of our options.
The NYT recently wrote that this year’s Emmys, held last month after delays from the strikes, signal the “end of peak TV.” I really hope so. If peak TV means studios churning out endless content to the detriment of its quality, then yes, I hope we’ve reached the peak of that perilous climb. I, for one, get upset about not being able to keep up, not being able to participate in every pop culture conversation held in the office, not being able to have a favorite for awards season because I truly believe it’s better than all the others.
There used to be a time when Americans gathered around a radio or a television and experienced the same thing at the same time. Culture was shaped simultaneously through each one of us, and each one of us was able to share in that culture with everyone else. These days, this paradox of choice is only deepening the disconnect between Americans, in a time when we need to find unity.
Events such as awards shows, or the Super Bowl, or Barbenheimer even, are so exciting to us, because for one moment, we realize people all across the country have their eyes on the same thing. We can share in that moment. For now, all we can share is frustration.