What Use is "Different," if it Isn't GOOD?
Truth in advertising: I tend to be pretty content with consistency and having a good sense of where I'm going and I don't expect my direction and preferences to change a whole lot. It's not that I don't like change, but I don't go seeking it out for its own sake.
I realize that marketers have a whole category of people they refer to as "early adopters" who'll get new products the moment they are introduced, but I have never been able to gather the value of always being on the lookout for something different.
I mean, I might be at the grocery store and I don't quite gather - as my ex used to do - somebody who will look at the fruits (for example) and say "ohh I've never seen one of those before; that would be really cool, let's get that!"
And so, we get this really expensive piece of fruit that ends up sitting on the counter and rotting because the only thing it has going for it is that it's different but it isn't actually all that good... it's just different.
What the holy hell is the point of that?
I might be a little bit more supportive if the different also happened to be truly excellent but so often excellence is sacrificed in service of simply being able to say that something is new.
And that's just not really in my nature.
Now I'm not some grumpy old dude who's unhappy unless I can have the same bowl of oatmeal every day for 50 years! And that's not really my point here.
My point is.. isn't something new and different supposed to add value to our lives rather than simply bank on the fact that it's new and different?
Of course, what my ex never admitted to was that there were "social status points" to be earned by having something different, and by having it before anyone else. And those "points" are very important to some people.
And that's likely where some of my mystification comes from... as I am not a very social person, at the best of times... and that also means that the whole "being different" is a pretty meaningless thing to me, at least from an ego perspective.
Yes, I get a bit set in my ways... but the preferences I have arrived at came from extensive trial and error; I am content with them. And most "new stuff" I have tried in recent years have been pretty disappointing, compared to what I already preferred.
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Created at 2024-09-23 01:40 PST
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That title got me, same is better if different isn't good 😅
Lovely flower pictures by the way.
I think the terms on philosophy are "appeal to novelty" and "appeal to tradition," but regardless, both newness and they way things have always been done are biases we all face to one degree or another. In the auto industry, car manufacturers are starting to realize consumers don't always want giant touchscreens and other electronic gizmos that eventually fail and can't be replaced as easily as mechanical gauges or control knobs. However, it's generally recognized that fuel injection is superior to carburetors despite the electronic controls and whatnot.