{"id":27579,"date":"2019-12-16T15:54:28","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T20:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=27579"},"modified":"2019-12-17T16:22:09","modified_gmt":"2019-12-17T21:22:09","slug":"shopping-sucks-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/16\/shopping-sucks-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Shopping Sucks Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

Casey Johnston<\/a> (tweet<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Looking up “lined leather gloves” yields 40,000 results. On the first page, there are two different gloves listed, one for $17 and one for $60, that look exactly identical and come in the exact same colors. Both have the same exact star rating (4.5\/5) and hundreds of positive reviews.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

For a long time, our problem was there were not enough things to choose from. Then with big box stores, followed by the internet, there were too many things to choose from. Now there are still too many things to choose from, but also a seemingly infinite number of ways to choose, or seemingly infinite steps to figuring out how to choose. The longer I spend trying to choose, the higher the premium becomes on choosing correctly, which means I go on not choosing something I need pretty badly, coping with the lack of it or an awful hacked-together solution (in the case of gloves, it’s “trying to pull my sleeves over my hands but they are too short for this”) for way, way too long, and sometimes forever.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

If big box stores represented the problem of the “tyranny of choice,” the problem is that now, somewhat suddenly, perfect knowledge of the perfect glove, for you specifically<\/em>, exists, if you simply do enough research.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

I’m realizing what I actually want is not the perfect glove; what I want is for the world to be small again.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s frustrating how long it can take, but I do like being able to (usually) find what I’m looking for. I think the keys are knowing when it’s worth spending the time to do a deep dive vs. “settling” with a quick decision; and knowing which area-specific sites to search, since Amazon doesn’t have everything nor always surface the best results.<\/p>\n

Amazon reviews, as bad as they can be, have been extremely helpful overall. For example, they recently helped me figure out that almost all products in a particular category don’t work with 5 GHz Wi-Fi networks (the only kind my Google Wi-Fi supports).<\/p>\n

Sites like Wirecutter are a great help. Although I don’t always agree with their picks, they at least get you started with an overview of the main options and what to look for. But they don’t always give you all the options. For example, Wirecutter’s humidifier review<\/a> omits the entire category of console humidifiers. For less than half the price of their upgrade pick, I found a model<\/a> that’s easier to maintain, has a 6-gallon tank (vs. 3-gallon for the largest they tested), and is much easier to fill (short hose from the faucet, no need to carry tanks around).<\/p>\n\n

Update (2019-12-17): See also: Nick Heer<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Casey Johnston (tweet): Looking up “lined leather gloves” yields 40,000 results. On the first page, there are two different gloves listed, one for $17 and one for $60, that look exactly identical and come in the exact same colors. Both have the same exact star rating (4.5\/5) and hundreds of positive reviews. […] For a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2019-12-16T20:54:31Z","apple_news_api_id":"f6b2453d-725c-4767-bfff-5ff0895cfef4","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2019-12-17T21:22:14Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A9rJFPXJcR2e__1_wiVz-9A","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[19,509,96,187],"class_list":["post-27579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-amazon","tag-shopping","tag-web","tag-wifi"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27579"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27589,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27579\/revisions\/27589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}