Too Much of a Good Thing, Indeed

It’s not exactly controversial to claim that society is more demanding these days than it was even 10 years ago. We demand more rights for more of our citizens, better wages for the lower class, more accountability from our corporations… we even want the government to shut down less. And we demand more on an individual level as well. We want the internet to work faster, our phones to do more, our cars to be safer, get better gas mileage, start on their own, brake on their own and tell us how to get places.

And why not? Might as well max out, right?

So why do we get mad when we get our money’s worth? We complain all the time that the price of movie tickets keeps going up, but then we also complain when a movie is too long. Same with sporting events and books. “You know, at $29.95 for the hardback, they really should have cut 300 pages out of it. Who wants that much book? Gonna throw my back out reading that thing.”

We pay for entertainment and then get angry the more we’re entertained. It makes sense. We’re all infused with the desire to abandon our pleasures so we can pay more money for something else to entertain us until we get mad at that thing for entertaining us too long.

A lot of people argue that it’s because of our shorter attention spans, which I kind of agree with, but that doesn’t explain the whole story. We should always appreciate a good value no matter how short our attention spans get, right?

Short attention spans don’t have anything to do with complaining that restaurant portions are too big. If you can’t finish your meal, or just don’t want to devote the time necessary to finishing it, some restaurants have started giving customers Styrofoam boxes to take the rest of your food home in. It’s great.

We don’t even like getting free stuff anymore. We plunk down hundreds of dollars every year to get a phone that is virtually indistinguishable from the one we replaced the year before, and then bitch a blue streak when we find the latest album from one of the greatest rock bands of all time has been put on that phone for FREE. An album, I needn’t remind you, that we could simply delete if we didn’t want it. And of course everyone deleted it because a free U2 album was too much of an upgrade over last year’s model, apparently.

Even free stuff we like, we only want for a limited time. Remember when hit TV shows put out 22 episodes a year and aired reruns during the summer? Not anymore. Now we want our favorite shows to only broadcast 10 episodes a season and be off the air after 5 years. “Ugggh, do you believe they’re doing a 6^th season of The Greatest TV Show in History? I mean, enough already.”

We just don’t appreciate value anymore. Ever hear someone over 45 complain about the sound quality of CDs or digital downloads? “I miss the pops and the scratches and the static of vinyl.” Or that they don’t like HD televisions because the picture is too clear? Who can blame ‘em? I mean, all that quality. Blech!

Think those people ever say to their waiter, “I’m sorry, I can’t eat this. It just tastes too good.”

Are we on the verge of letting Uber drivers drop us off six blocks from our destination?

Are we going to pay the same price for flights that get us halfway there and then push us out of the plane with an old, dusty parachute strapped to our back?

Would you pay huge sums of money for an organ transplant if the surgeon stopped just as he was about to stitch you up?

Are women everywhere going to start dating Asian men? (That’s a penis joke, by the way. Thank you! I’m here all week)

We're clearly headed in that direction. So, in my best effort to keep everyone happy, I better end this blog po