After recently purchasing a sewing machine, I quickly chugged through my cupboard’s emergency sewing kit thread. I went to purchase new thread on Amazon. Three hours later and I was still torn between thread options. You wouldn’t believe the kinds of hardened opinions such a humble purchase could summon.
Amazon’s thread “pick” has a total of 1046 reviews. Ranging from “this thread saved my life” to “this product is the bane of my existence.” It’s just another tick on the list driving me towards a full Amazon boycott, but today let’s focus on how vocalised the internet has made us.
…
A better illustration could be when I was searching for 00 flour, which by the way is what you need for pizza and pasta. I know everyone in my household wishes I’d known that before serving up my hunks of tagliatelle dough, still raw in the middle.
Anyway, I found this review on weevils in the 00 flour. This woman was fuming, and she made that point rather vocally in the reviews. Underneath the seller had apologized and reimbursed her.
Now let’s project this into a pre-internet shopping situation.
A lady buys some 00 flour, sees weevils and goes in to complain. Gets a reimbursement or spanking new 00 flour, leaves. OR a lady buys 00 flour sees weevils, storms back to the store and stands in flour aisle with a foghorn blasting at potential incoming customers about weevil danger. Then she pastes a sign on the window, warning any passerby that 00 flour could have weevils.
If it happened to her, it’ll happen to you.
…
We’ve become too vocal.
A constant torrent of opinions tramples on the convenience of online shopping. Buying on the internet has mutated into a stressful test of your judgement of the accuracy of other people’s judgements.
Consequently, by the time you’ve carefully weighed the opinions of 1000 strangers, you may as well have popped to the shop.
Which is exactly what I did when the thread comments were sinking into my conscience and causing anxiety I’d never thought a humble string could muster.
