The Tyranny of 'the Best'
May 21, 2023 8:27 AM   Subscribe

There is a kind of person who finds the idea of seeking out “the best” incredibly enticing, on an almost spiritual level. The kind of person who genuinely enjoys perusing articles like “the nine best hair dryers of 2023,” who is overcome with clammy dread at the idea of drinking in a bar with only a four-star rating on Google, who, in order to plan a weekend getaway, requires a prolonged and extensive operation that involves several spreadsheets. You know the type. Maybe you even are the type. [single link, NYT: possibly paywalled]
posted by niicholas (86 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
it dawned on me about 15 years ago is that this is what hipsters literally were.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:37 AM on May 21, 2023 [5 favorites]




I mean, the reason "nine best hairdryers" articles are so huge now is that there are so many options available when you need to buy something, and so many of them are absolute worthless trash.

I'm not an "optimizer" at all, but I am all over the Wirecutter recommendations when I go to buy a thing, because I don't want to spend my money on literal garbage, and there is so much literal garbage for sale on the internet, and often no place locally where I can go to examine a product in person. I don't actually care about having the "best" anything, although my behavior may look like that to an observer. I just don't want to be taken advantage of in a world that feels more and more full of predatory scams with each passing year.
posted by potrzebie at 8:45 AM on May 21, 2023 [188 favorites]




potrzebie nails it, NYT underhanded shaming pieces be damned. But then of course you have to worry about reviewer capture.

Consumer Reports, which until a few years ago I literally thought was the same credibility as your local "nine dishwashers you must have before you die" articles, turns out it's a nonprofit who serves this purpose exactly. Unfortunately it's underfunded and rates many things I don't care about and lacks specificity about some that I do, but I've still been quite happy with its recommendations as a counter-weight to listicles of unclear allegiance.
posted by abulafa at 8:55 AM on May 21, 2023 [46 favorites]


This article raises some good points, but is there another article that raises them better?
posted by Western Infidels at 8:55 AM on May 21, 2023 [110 favorites]




What potrzebie said. In the spirit of "yes, and..." I also want to say that a huge part of this problem is that even if you find something you like and perfectly suits your personal use case, the next time you go to get it you can't.

- A private equity firm swooped in and now the company makes a shitty product that looks just like the old one, with the same model number and SKU, but it falls apart, or they replaced a continuous rotary knob with a shitty detented switch-thing, or it just breaks a month after you get it.

- Or maybe the company has a toxic executive culture where "changing up a product" gives a bonus but keeping an old product reliable and consistent doesn't, so your favorite cereal now has a "new, better taste!" and it's a goddamn liar's lie.

- Or because you're tall in the torso and not in the legs, so the difference between an XL T-Shirt and a 2XL T-Shirt is that everyone gets to inspect your navel lint, or everyone gets to inspect your navel lint while it looks like you're wearing a circus tent, and when you found a great XL Tall shirt that you loved by then and bought five, before you had the chance to buy ten more, they stopped making it. Not because it wasn't profitable, but because it's not super ridiculously profitable.

At some point, I became That Guy. The guy who literally went to a shoe store yesterday and ordered three pairs of the same shoes to be sent to my house because a new version is available and the old one is getting phased out, and I tried on the new ones and they don't fit right.

Is this a hipster thing? Perhaps. Is this me being someone too set in his ways to navigate through the corporate panic of late capitalism forever chasing something that's just a few cents cheaper to make, and never can find a replacement for a good product that's now worn out? Yeah probably.

I'm not even looking for THE SINGLE BEST THING most of the time. I just wish everyone from the most disposable basic brands to the ultra luxury brands would just.... keep making the thing that's good.
posted by tclark at 9:04 AM on May 21, 2023 [119 favorites]


Many things are unsettling about late capitalism, but certainly the apparent engineering of non-trivial items to break in short order after the warranty expires is certainly one of them. A major household appliance should not break beyond repair in a few years—or beyond repairs costing more than replacement. I do research some purchases for unreasonably long periods, but in general I just… don’t want something to break in a month.
posted by cupcakeninja at 9:11 AM on May 21, 2023 [12 favorites]


Yes, tclark! I just bought five bottles of my face wash on the rumor that it's going to be discontinued and felt like a complete psycho, because I don't think I can use them up before they've all, like, decomposed, but holy cow, it took years to find something that worked this well for my (sensitive, acne-prone, just damn finicky) skin and it seems like no company is willing to just keep making a good thing that sells okay. If it's not the next viral hit on SkinTok or whatever it's not worth doing.

But of course I'm to blame for checks notes reading reviews before I spend my money on something that not only doesn't work but was not even ever intended to work
posted by potrzebie at 9:15 AM on May 21, 2023 [16 favorites]


the next time you go to get it you can't.

I find this maddening too.

I have a little digital radio here at home, which works great: all the core functions I'll actually use with very few bells and whistles to needlessly complicate things, intuitive controls, reliable, sturdy in its construction, with good sound and battery life. A couple of years after buying it, I thought it'd be handy to have one for the office, as well - but, of course, now they don't make that model any more. The closest substitute from the same manufacturer (which is what I opted for instead) is inferior in every way.

I could give many other examples.
posted by Paul Slade at 9:18 AM on May 21, 2023 [14 favorites]


I am like this with restaurants, because there is so much mediocre food out there, and going out to eat is a treat for me money-wise - so I want to to be worth it. Same with travel - I don't travel much, but when I do, I want to do what I can to ensure that my money is well spent.

Which is to say, I totally get this tendency when it comes to maximizing pleasure/splurges. I don't really get it when it comes to say, buying a practical appliance. Yes, there is a lot of poorly made products out there, but I find my strategy of Wirecutter or some similar list + confirming looking over reviews somewhere results in perfectly fine purchases. Whereas my partner definitely gets choice paralysis from all of the potential options - he can easily spend hours researching microwaves.
posted by coffeecat at 9:29 AM on May 21, 2023 [9 favorites]


My big problem with “best x items” lists is if I want to see a comprehensive list of all of a thing, yknow, something there’s definitely a limited number of, and the only search results I can get are the “10 best XYZs in 2023” because that’s the article format that people publish.

If I can’t remember the name of a thing, it is extremely difficult to search for it.
If it’s from more than five years ago, and it was never necessarily the best of a thing, forget it.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 9:32 AM on May 21, 2023 [1 favorite]


I have a separate issue with wanting “the best” and equating “newest” with “best” without any consideration for need or utility or perhaps your preference differing from mine.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 9:34 AM on May 21, 2023 [2 favorites]


clammy dread at the idea of drinking in a bar with only a four-star rating

Have ... has the author ever drank at a bar with a three-star rating?
posted by credulous at 9:34 AM on May 21, 2023 [8 favorites]


Interesting article. As a lifelong satisficer, I find a certain kind of maximizer extremely exhausting in many circumstances, but also very useful in others. I know that if I follow my maximizer friend's decision on which rowing machine to buy, for example, I'll be able to benefit from his extensive research. As others have noted, there's nothing wrong with trying to make sure you don't get ripped off, or that whatever it is you end up buying really does meet as many of your needs as possible.

There are always who take this kind of thinking to an extreme, but to me, what the article really. brings to light is the way so much media is designed to provoke our anxiety and fear of missing out. If we can recognize this as often as possible, we have a better shot at making good decisions.
posted by rpfields at 9:35 AM on May 21, 2023 [7 favorites]


(NYT gift link)
posted by box at 9:43 AM on May 21, 2023


clammy dread at the idea of drinking in a bar with only a four-star rating

This sounds like someone who uses Google reviews instead of Yelp reviews!

(Because stuff is regularly half a star or more higher rated on Google than on Yelp. No idea if that's because of of business cheating cheating somehow, or that when people are angry or disappointed or whatnot that's when they go to yelp to write their scathing review, or something else entirely)
posted by aubilenon at 9:46 AM on May 21, 2023 [3 favorites]


I think what gets me about this mindset is the search for "the best". I just want to know what's good, and possibly what's not good. "Here are 20 good whatevers, you'd be set buying any one of these, here are the specific attributes that make them different from each other, or not." There are very few things where "the best" really makes sense, and definitely not for things like restaurants or experiences or other subjective categories.

(The other thing that gets me is that all the "here's the best X for those of you who are budget-conscious" options seem to be selected by people whose budget is apparently several multiples of my income.)
posted by trig at 9:46 AM on May 21, 2023 [12 favorites]


I liked the part of the article where she writes:
how even the least exciting consumer choices are framed in terms of elusive state-of-the-art options; and, conversely, how necessarily subjective things (novels, colleges, where to live) are increasingly presented as consumer choices for which there is an objective “best.” because it explains a lot of bewilderingly aggressive online conversations where you are asked to defend choices you don’t care all that much about, or worse yet, don’t have much say over.
posted by niicholas at 9:46 AM on May 21, 2023 [6 favorites]


Dear tclark,
You've realized a true thing (high five!) and also, I can tell you've never needed to purchase a bra.
Sincerely,
Atomicstone
posted by atomicstone at 9:48 AM on May 21, 2023 [20 favorites]


I can't read the article, so I don't know if they brought it up.

This reminds me a lot of shopping for deals, as well. I mean, there are very good reasons to care about the quality and the price of the things you buy, but it's also possible to take it too far. Your motivation becomes getting the best deal, not the best deal for you, which might mean paying a little more money at a store that's closer to you, spending time with your girlfriend instead of cutting coupons, buying smaller amounts, or starting on that project now instead of waiting for fall when materials prices drop.

I feel like a lot of cultural messaging (especially marketing) pushes the message that it is our role as consumers to get the best deal, or the best product, and that if we're not doing that we've been had. We're not savvy. We're failing in our role. People end up buying things because they're afraid of missing out on a deal.

And it's kind of hard to push back on, because again, it's not as though trying to find the best product or the best price is maladaptive - until it is.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 10:00 AM on May 21, 2023 [5 favorites]


There are two readable links for the article in the comments!

clammy dread at the idea of drinking in a bar with only a four-star rating

This isn’t the author of the article, this is her friend she mentions as an extreme example.

I’m definitely a satisficer which is good as I’m not rich enough to be a maximiser.
posted by ellieBOA at 10:06 AM on May 21, 2023 [2 favorites]


I checked IKEA to see if they were in stock of the spice grinder I like -- adjustable, utterly without any kind of style, just a well designed grinder -- and they are but it's "NOW OR NEVER" and apparently it's being replaced with a two-pack of extremely ugly grinders that won't fit in the space I have for them so APPARENTLY I'm going to have to buy two or three grinders even though I just need one. Same went for their ALGOT line of metal bracket shelving, which was fucking awesome, except now it's discontinued. So despite the fact that my entire condo's storage solution is entirely based on ALGOT we bought five years ago, simple and functional, I cannot ever add any more.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:08 AM on May 21, 2023 [5 favorites]


If you go to an emerging small business, it’s now normal for someone to ask you to help it out by filling out a Google review.
and

Because stuff is regularly half a star or more higher rated on Google than on Yelp.

I will give small businesses a review on Google reviews begrudgingly, and only if I think it will help them (or vice-versa, if I had a terrible experience).

But I HATE doing it because I know that by doing so, I am giving Google free data for their business.

In the last few years I've noticed a trend of companies scrapping their internal review systems for Google Reviews, my local car dealership did this and I despise the exchange that invariably happens when I pick my car.

The service person says: "Please leave a review, it's my 'report card' and is used to determine my yearly bonus".

I'm now fretting over having to leave a public review in order to help someone out, and there's an extra bit of annoyance, because again, I know that Google probably pitched this to the company as a better alternative to their previous in-house system. But honestly, I have a hard time reconciling the fact that I'm being pressured to give a review and that data is being tied to my Google account thereby fortifying their consumer profile of me, which they are busy trying to monetize somehow.

Anyway, that's a long way of saying that maybe Google Reviews are higher rated than Yelp because they are inflated by people less cantankerous than I am.
posted by jeremias at 10:23 AM on May 21, 2023 [3 favorites]


METAFILTER: being someone too set in his ways to navigate through the corporate panic of late capitalism forever chasing something that's just a few cents cheaper to make,
posted by philip-random at 10:27 AM on May 21, 2023 [4 favorites]


How do they match the Google reviews back to the specific sales employee?
posted by ryanrs at 10:28 AM on May 21, 2023


Ever look at restaurant reviews that say things like "our server Ryan was fantastic"? I've had waitstaff specifically ask that I write a review and name them. I don't go back to those places.
posted by Ickster at 10:32 AM on May 21, 2023 [3 favorites]


Go with the simpler option: Short of reviews specifically naming someone, why would you have to match reviews to a specific employee? Just penalize everyone you think is relevant if the score's below the required threshold. That's why those "How likely are you to recommend this to people?" Net Promoter Score surveys rankle so much for me. Anything below a 9 counts against whichever line-level employee has been assigned responsible for that metric. Anything below a 7 will cancel out other positive reviews.

It's the funhouse-mirror version of the article's issue. After all, companies only want to hire The Best (but without paying for it). And this metric says it determines who The Best is. So if you're not The Best, is this really the right place for you?
posted by CrystalDave at 10:41 AM on May 21, 2023 [1 favorite]


> Dr. Schwartz defines people who are happy to settle for something that will probably be pretty good (a restaurant with above average, but not excellent, ratings; the third song they come to on a playlist; the midpriced toaster on the first page of Amazon) as “satisficers” and those who search exhaustively for the best version as “maximizers.”

Disclaimer: I'm definitely a maximizer in a lot of areas in my life. That said, the examples given for the satisficer are not actually analogous, and I find that really frustrating. I've had many good times in mediocre restaurants and crappy bars. Having a good time in those places is almost entirely dependent on me and the people I'm with. But my experience with a toaster is entirely dependent on "is it a good toaster", and given the state of the modern internet, there's a pretty good chance that buying that midpriced toaster from the first page of Amazon results is going to get you a piece of shit that will irritate you a little every single day you use it. I don't want to think about the quality of a toaster, but I also want to have toast without being irritated every morning. Enter the Wirecutter: I can take five minutes, read an article, buy a toaster, and every morning enjoy good toast without frustration.

Ok, now to get fiery and defensive about my own habits and mental quirks: pathologizing people trying to cope with the vicissitudes and dysfunction of modern capitalism in favor of "I dunno, just eat whatever slop they throw at you and be happy" seems like a weird hook for an article. Also, I find it real interesting that the satisficers I know, much like this author, seem happy to use the research maximizers do to their own benefit.
posted by protocoach at 10:43 AM on May 21, 2023 [13 favorites]


My favorite essays on "the very best"

Rudy Rucker's Introduction to the Mondo 2000 Guide to the New Edge
When I first got here, I was so happy to see restaurants that weren’t Red Lobsters and Pizza Huts that I was bewildered by all the “Very Best Restaurants” guides I kept seeing in the paper. “Hell,” I’d say, “I don’t need the VERY BEST. I’m perfectly happy with something that’s REASONABLY ADEQUATE.” But of course now, after six years here, I don’t feel that way anymore. I’m a Californian, and I want the very best all the time!
Moxie Marlinspike's The Worst
Boasting expensive material possessions isn’t really anything new, but Dustin Curtis does it while framing his pursuit of these things as some admirable combination of special skill and uncompromising hardship. Stranger still, his thesis is that this is somehow the path to a liberated life. That being able to trust in the “goodness” of your material possessions will free you. Heaven forbid having to suffer the uncertainty that a dinner fork could… malfunction, when going for a bite?
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 10:43 AM on May 21, 2023 [5 favorites]


But I HATE doing it because I know that by doing so, I am giving Google free data for their business.

Something that I think about more than I should is the very different scale of how online reviews work for Google or Yelp and small businesses. For those two, it’s a Big Data problem where they just churn through the reams of reviews and train ML models to pull out quotes and rank similar businesses and feed into their advertising. For a small business, particularly a non-restaurant or a non-touristy place, it’s often a Small Data problem and there’s no help to be found. If you only have 110 reviews gathered over 15 years of business, each new one is an anxiety-provoking notification. That one review where they said positive things but only gave you one star because they didn’t seem to understand how ratings work is still impacting your score.

Consumer Reports, The Wirecutter, and other review sites that put some diligence into what they rate are valuable. Sometimes it’s hard to find them among the SEO spammers, and “crowd-sourced” reviews are a mixed bag of cranks, fraud, and hard-to-uncover truths.
posted by jimw at 10:46 AM on May 21, 2023 [2 favorites]


There is a kind of person who finds the idea of seeking out labels and categories for other people incredibly enticing, on an almost spiritual level. The kind of person who genuinely enjoys perusing articles like “The Tyranny of the 'Best',” who is overcome with clammy dread at the idea of being seen as a poseur themselves, who, in order to plan a weekend getaway, requires a prolonged and extensive research project in order to find things and places to experience that are not 'touristy'. You know the type. Maybe you even are the type.
posted by amtho at 10:47 AM on May 21, 2023 [3 favorites]


Heaven forbid having to suffer the uncertainty that a dinner fork could… malfunction, when going for a bite?

Spoken like somebody who's never owned cheap flatware, lol. You can tell the flatware we bought in grad school because all the fork tines are bent. We still use them because my husband is emotionally attached to them but every time I open the silverware drawer I get a little annoyance spike. Yeah it's not malfunctioning per se, but you can definitely tell the difference.
posted by potrzebie at 11:11 AM on May 21, 2023 [13 favorites]


How do they match the Google reviews back to the specific sales employee?

I work for a small(ish) construction company and if you get your name mentioned in a 5-star review, you get a $50 gift card. Of course, most of the time the person mentioned is the sales rep who is already earning more than most other employees - so that kind of sucks and is terrible. But people make choices based on Google reviews and they’re considered pretty important.
posted by Glinn at 11:15 AM on May 21, 2023 [3 favorites]


I should add, it’s often the sales rep because they are the one requesting the review, and they tell them to mention their name.
posted by Glinn at 11:17 AM on May 21, 2023 [2 favorites]


I'm a satisficer by nature but for Amazon purchases I rely on third-party reviews (Wirecutter is the first place I look but there are others, and if I were going for really expensive appliances or something, I'd shell out for Consumer Reports). The reason I do this is that Amazon's results are so badly skewed by advertising, and worse, advertising that isn't labeled, that I have no confidence that the things it shows me on search are actually relevant to what I want or satisfactory given why I want the item. So I do have to start with some basic research to figure out what would satisfy me when it's Amazon.

But this is actual research from sites that compare items in their class. Not those "22 Amazon gadgets that will improve your life" stuff because most of those are junk AFAICT.

It's sort of the worst of both worlds when purchasing, but it does make life easier after the purchase most of the time.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 11:26 AM on May 21, 2023 [2 favorites]


I don't particularly enjoy researching goods and services and will either take the cheapest option when there's not much to lose or overspend on a brand product in the vague hope that they have a reputation to preserve, so I guess that makes me a satisficer.

Then again, if you consider that my personal utility function is pretty much driven by convenience, that makes me a maximizer after all. It's clearly a matter of perspective. People are always maximizing, just not always the same thing.
posted by sohalt at 11:27 AM on May 21, 2023 [4 favorites]


Heaven forbid having to suffer the uncertainty that a dinner fork could… malfunction, when going for a bite?

Three or four times in my life by now, I have chomped down hard on a bite of food before the fork was all the way clear, and I have been amazed by the forces involved; the fork literally sprang out my hand and vibrated between my teeth like a 2X4 in a Road Runner cartoon.

The last two times, I happened to be using a sterling silver fork rather than stainless steel, and I think those forks were well worth the extra money.
posted by jamjam at 11:37 AM on May 21, 2023 [3 favorites]


Want to protect the environment by consuming less? Buy things that won't require you to replace them.
posted by amtho at 12:11 PM on May 21, 2023 [3 favorites]


Buy things that won't require you to replace them.

'Buy good and buy once' is very much a mantra for the wealthy. The good stuff that lasts ain't cheap, for the most part.
posted by pipeski at 12:25 PM on May 21, 2023 [10 favorites]


(If you're interested in not having to replace your purchases, btw, ffs avoid Wirecutter; every thing my family has bought on their recommendation has either crapped out after six months or refused to perform its basic function if it drops off the wifi. Consumer Reports doesn't have the coverage or funding that Wirecutter does, but does a much better job with what they do review.)
posted by phooky at 12:26 PM on May 21, 2023 [7 favorites]


My dad swore by Consumer Reports. I’m still using the washing machine and toaster oven he bought more than 25 years ago, so there may be something to it.
posted by elphaba at 12:27 PM on May 21, 2023 [12 favorites]


There's an interesting confluence of this mindset combined with what I think is the decline of search engines, and it shows itself in Reddit. A number of (mostly hobby-focused) subreddits end up almost unreadable because of the number of posts per day that boil down to "tell me what is the best x" or "I just bought x, is it good enough?" People just want to know they have "the best" but don't want to put any effort into figuring out what is "the best" for them so they just have this vague notion that something must top the imaginary rankings of pruning shears or whatever.
posted by backseatpilot at 12:36 PM on May 21, 2023 [6 favorites]


My dad swore by Consumer Reports.

same here. It led to him buying a Toyota in 1969. Which definitely turned some suburban heads.

And then he proceeded to buy nothing but Toyotas for the rest of his life, except for one (disastrous*) sidetrack into VW Rabbit land.

* it's possible that teenagers driving like teenagers may have had something to do with what happened to that poor Rabbit. Various high speed off road excursions and finally death due to nervous breakdown (ie: meltdown of its automatic transmission).
posted by philip-random at 12:55 PM on May 21, 2023 [10 favorites]


CTRL-F "hammacher schlemmer", 0 results
posted by grumpybear69 at 1:30 PM on May 21, 2023 [7 favorites]


People just want to know they have "the best" but don't want to put any effort into figuring out what is "the best" for them so they just have this vague notion that something must top the imaginary rankings of pruning shears or whatever.

A lot of entry-level tools and the like are so janky that they actually get in the way of learning/figuring out whether you like the task you bought them for/whether the item actually fills the need it was bought to fulfill. Even independently of any aesthetic pleasure arising, or not, during use. (I bet there are pruning shears that suck to use, blunt, awkward, hard to clean.) This is actually mostly not true in knitting, but if you try to learn to knit in the round on cheap plastic double-pointed needles with cheap plastic yarn you are probably going to kill yourself first because of how often the stitches drop off the ends when you're not looking. Or maybe you've managed to learn on the cheap thing, decided you like/need to keep doing the activity, and want to move up to a better tool. Either way, you have to try to screen out the total crap, but you don't have the expertise to do it yourself.
posted by praemunire at 1:40 PM on May 21, 2023 [8 favorites]




> How do they match the Google reviews back to the specific sales employee?

It looks like they use a third party system called Podium which is some sort of "local business" marketing platform. So there's probably UTM tracking to connect the dots between the review and the employee and probably the exact service appointment.
posted by jeremias at 2:22 PM on May 21, 2023


- A private equity firm swooped in and now the company makes a shitty product that looks just like the old one, with the same model number and SKU, but it falls apart, or they replaced a continuous rotary knob with a shitty detented switch-thing, or it just breaks a month after you get it.

My parents bought my sons some fighting robot toys from The Sharper Image a few years ago. If you were around in the 1980s, you'd know The Sharper Image as a ubiquitous super cool mail-order catalogue of high-tech, high-priced gadgets and toys, seemingly on the cutting edge of technology.

That was true of the 80s Sharper Image. No longer.

My son's robots were broken out of the box from minute one. That is, they never worked to begin with. I went out and bought new robot toys to replace them.

After some sleuthing, turns out The Sharper Image went bankrupt some time back, then another company swooped in and currently uses the name, and they sell absolute garbage. So mom and dad, remembering how cool The Sharper Image was, probably thought they were getting a great deal. Huge disappointment to the boys, and I didn't have the heart to tell mom and dad. So nthing what potrzebie said.
posted by zardoz at 2:28 PM on May 21, 2023 [14 favorites]


Ah, hahahaahahaaaa, this is where I laugh, about "The Best": about once a month, I do wine tastings at (local well known place with lots of wine) and, inevitably, there is some guy (yes, it's usually a white cis male) who demands to know, right away, "which is the best!" of the 3,5, 2, whatever, wines I'm pouring.
Wines are different, bud. There is no best. Other than obvious flaws, they are all good, for reasons. But, that's not what this guy--your "maximiser" perhaps-- wants to know. He wants to know What Is The Best.
Most interesting follow up question to that Which Is Best? "Which is your favorite, like you're a parent and which is your favorite child?!" Uhhh....dude...uhhh...it's just a wine tasting.
posted by winesong at 2:44 PM on May 21, 2023 [8 favorites]


On the sidebar of "buying a bunch of a thing that you know is good because they discontinued it", I am reminded of an interview with the artist Edward Gorey wherein he was asked what pen he used. His response was "a particular discontinued Giliotte dip pen nib; I bought several cards full of them when it was discontinued, and probably have enough to keep me going until I die".

I laughed.

And then years later, Wacom stopped making styluses that were compatible with the spring-loaded "brush" nib, which is far and away my favorite over the other nibs that come with their drawing styluses, and of course also stopped making the spring nib. I have something like five of them. I hope they will keep me going until I die.
posted by egypturnash at 3:04 PM on May 21, 2023 [23 favorites]


Spoken like somebody who's never owned cheap flatware, lol. You can tell the flatware we bought in grad school because all the fork tines are bent.

The first set I got when I moved out on my own were a gift from my parents -- everything color coordinated in hunter green, even the flatware for some reason, with green clear plastic handles. They started coming unglued from the business end in a matter of months.

I found myself searching for "best sugar dispenser for coffee 2023" a few weeks ago and asked myself what the hell I was doing. But I still wound up buying one that got a bunch of good reviews.
posted by Foosnark at 3:27 PM on May 21, 2023 [6 favorites]


Look, life is just too short to spend it eating bad food. I spend a lot of time researching restaurants because I don’t want to spend $18 on bagged salad mix and stale croutons when there’s a better alternative available. (And if there isn’t, I need to know to pick up some cheese and a baguette.)
posted by Just the one swan, actually at 3:42 PM on May 21, 2023 [3 favorites]


I’m somewhat a maximizer, but I tend to weight convenience fairly high in my list of goals. For example: in a strange city, I want to find a well-rated restaurant… but if there are five interesting places to eat with reasonably good ratings, I’ll immediately pick the one that’s easiest to get a table at, rather than start reading reviews.

My partner, on the other hand, has occasionally forgotten to actually go to dinner as she’s combing through restaurant reviews to pick the best one…
posted by learning from frequent failure at 3:50 PM on May 21, 2023 [4 favorites]


The older I get the more particular I get about purchases. I acknowledge that POV is a privilege so I try to be thankful that I am able - I am also reliably a product of my father and his affections too...(I tell myself) at least I'm self aware and embrace it...
I certainly apply the "Do I want to have to buy another one later?" question to many products these days. But there's a point... recently it was where I can't convince myself to see the value of a $200 coffee maker. Coulda been the occasional bad review, could be that my $29 placeholder makes a good cuppa.
posted by djseafood at 3:55 PM on May 21, 2023


Buy things that won't require you to replace them.

'Buy good and buy once' is very much a mantra for the wealthy. The good stuff that lasts ain't cheap, for the most part.

You caught me! I'm classist and ignorant. Bad amtho.

....ooorrrrr I kept my remark short to make it more readable and memorable, and I also believe we should make it possible for _everyone_ to buy once, and I know this is a tall order, and I have much anger about that, but I choose not to type every single belief I hold in every single metafilter comment I make.
posted by amtho at 3:55 PM on May 21, 2023 [19 favorites]


Oh wait! I forgot to include that I also believe that most people buy too much, and that buying and using less is extremely important!

Whew, got out in front of that one just in time.
posted by amtho at 3:56 PM on May 21, 2023 [12 favorites]


Oh wait! I forgot to mention that I deeply understand that telling people to "just buy less" is naive in today's world. Wow, wouldn't want to seem like a dictatorial Pollyanna!
posted by amtho at 3:57 PM on May 21, 2023 [14 favorites]


The "buy good items that last" needs affordable credit or spare money -- and is better explained as the Sam Vimes Boot Theory of Economic Injustice.

And "Enough!" is a counter-cultural slogan.
posted by k3ninho at 4:00 PM on May 21, 2023 [2 favorites]


I'm sure that 99% of the best things I own were not carefully selected at all. They're things that work well enough that there's no moment of friction where I feel the need for something different or better. A lot of them are things that have just kept going beyond any expectation, and have become part of the background of my activities. I have screwdrivers I bought at Woolworth's in the 1980s that are still good screwdrivers. An old Brazilian inox kitchen knife that cost pennies and looks like someone's first woodwork project, but is really nice to use. A cotton bathrobe that's going to outlast me, and probably the universe - I don't remember where that came from, a sale at a high street store probably. Maybe part of the maximiser mindset is about having unchanging, predictable, curated objects in your life. I think I'm a little too chaotic for anything like that. I mean I picked my last car because it looked like it had a happy face. I'll bet most of us are less rational about our choices than we like people to think.
posted by pipeski at 4:08 PM on May 21, 2023 [4 favorites]


I do wine tastings at (local well known place with lots of wine) and, inevitably, there is some guy (yes, it's usually a white cis male) who demands to know, right away, "which is the best!" of the 3,5, 2, whatever, wines I'm pouring.

Heh. If you spent any time in various guitar-oriented web forums in the first part of the 21st century, you would quickly encounter the derogatory term "cork-sniffer", aimed at folks - also almost always dudes - who had STRONG OPINIONS about relatively meaningless shit, like string brands, or fretboard wood, or which of 7 variations of the same distortion pedal was the THE BEST, or how if you didn't spend at least $2k on a US or Japanese made guitar you couldn't even really call yourself a guitar player. (No small number of these guys seemed to have never actually played guitar outside their man-caves.)

While the article isn't about them, there's definitely a sub set (or branch?) of Maximizers who do it because they seemingly just can't deal with uncertainty - there HAS to be a hierarchy, and Rules, and a clearly delineated progression from Bad to OK to Good to Better to Best, and any suggestion that a lot of this is a matter of opinion, and that there's more than one route to a destination, can make them VERY ANGRY.
posted by soundguy99 at 4:15 PM on May 21, 2023 [11 favorites]


"cork-sniffer"

Those are the same people who know everything about the edge geometry and metallurgy of chef's knives but only know how to cook a well-done steak, I'd guess.
posted by pipeski at 4:23 PM on May 21, 2023 [4 favorites]


I spend hours researching purchases, not because I want "the best" but because I want decent. There is so much crap. SO MUCH. And when I was broke for a long time, I knew if I bought the wrong Y I might actually not have the money to replace it again immediately if it broke in 6 months, so buying wisely was important!

Im a great believer in Sam Vines boot theory, so I don't buy the £50 boots that are barely glued together- but which of the £120 boots I'm looking at are actually going to last twice as long? Are the £180 boots worth the extra money? When youre on a tight budget, discovering the £120 boots are crap is a real financial hit.

And then there's the environmental cost and guilt of constantly acquiring and throwing away plastic, supporting these massively wasteful companies that produce throwaway crap.

I buy almost everything second hand now, mostly to reduce my contribution to Capitalism, but it has the nice side effect of allowing me to be more of my natural Satisfiser self. When I know I can buy the thing for cheap, and then re-sell it again if I don't like it, or use it until it breaks without supporting the crappy company that made it and easily get another one, well, it's not such a big decision.
posted by stillnocturnal at 4:25 PM on May 21, 2023 [17 favorites]


But yes, when I had to buy a new mattress I made a spreadsheet! That shits expensive!
posted by stillnocturnal at 4:28 PM on May 21, 2023 [3 favorites]


The very best butter in the world is very good, but I am fine having good butter most of the time. Also, rather than knowing what the best cocktail is at bar XYZ, it is much more useful to know how to order what you will like at wherever you are. Like not ordering wine at a dive bar or sashimi at a diner, but correctly guessing what the best possible thing (for you) is at each place.
posted by snofoam at 5:53 PM on May 21, 2023 [2 favorites]


derogatory term "cork-sniffer", aimed at folks - also almost always dudes - who had STRONG OPINIONS about relatively meaningless shit

This is kinda funny because, as I understand it, the only reason to sniff a cork is to quickly check if it is totally off and undrinkable. To investigate the subtleties of the wine itself, one would normally smell and taste the wine itself.
posted by snofoam at 5:59 PM on May 21, 2023 [6 favorites]


Reading through all of this, I think upon Stephanie and Harry. These are the checkers at my local grocery. Stephanie has steered me towards this great brand of bread. Harry calls out vegetables that might have expired. They are just guys doing their jobs, but my life is better because of them.
posted by SPrintF at 6:06 PM on May 21, 2023 [4 favorites]


The very best butter in the world is very good, but I am fine having good butter most of the time.

Oddly enough, butter is one of those items in which a relatively small expenditure takes you up the quality scale quickly. Like an $11 round of Rodolphe Le Meunier is 90 times better than a $5 tub of whatever. If you're using a lot of butter in baking that adds up fast, but, if you're just putting it on bread, it lasts quite long enough.
posted by praemunire at 6:16 PM on May 21, 2023 [5 favorites]


...Dan is trying to guarantee something closer to happiness. But can happiness really be found in a packet of butter?

Yes, duh, next question.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:20 PM on May 21, 2023 [20 favorites]


My library lets me read Consumer Reports on-line for free, from home. Yours might, too!
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:41 PM on May 21, 2023 [12 favorites]


There is certain category of person whose identity is caught up getting the best of everything. For many others it's more making sure that you're not getting crap or that whatever combination of tradeoffs align with your wants and needs. I extensively research bigger items like cars, electronics, etc. but find it is usually time well spent. For example, with cellphones the two most important features for me are the camera and onboard sound, but until fairly recently it was hard to find a model that didn't compromise on one or the other. Now that I've finally found a phone I really like, the satisfaction is well worth the effort of finding it. My friend would give me a hard time over why I didn't just get the same as everyone else but then often would have to admit afterward that I made a good choice. Even much smaller items though, like recently ordering some drink powders, took much more to search out than I would have thought and are still not great. Add to that the difficulty in knowing which reviews to trust and that even the best may not be good enough and it's not just a simple Satisficer vs. Maximizer.
posted by blue shadows at 8:39 PM on May 21, 2023


But anyway I don't wanna have to be a connoisseur of hairdryers or whatever, I would like to be able to trust that when I go to the store and buy the third-cheapest option I will get a hairdryer that does what it's supposed to. These days, there's just no guarantee of that. Maximizing is for fun stuff.
posted by praemunire at 8:45 PM on May 21, 2023 [1 favorite]


At some point a few years back, Amazon's reviews and star ratings became completely useless, as the site was flooded with low-quality direct-from-factory products with "brand" names like XBNTBHF and CoolMoshoTech. All of these had 5-star ratings and obviously fake reviews — some of which didn't even try to hide that they were fake (or computer generated, or sometimes for completely different products). Amazon doesn't seem to care about this at all, even though everybody I know has noticed this. The end result is that you have to go to some external site like Wirecutter to find out what the high-quality version is of the thing you want to buy.

Does anybody actually want to read Ten Best Hairdryers of 2023? I kinda doubt it. Hairdryers are boring. But when that's the only way to know if you're going to receive a working hairdryer or a useless piece of garbage, then yeah, you're going to read that hairdryer article. At least Wirecutter seems impartial, as opposed to sites with obscure or unknown ownership which could be pushing their own products on the sly.
posted by panama joe at 9:08 PM on May 21, 2023 [4 favorites]


I think the only time I find myself truly "maximizing," like actually doing my research beyond the "is this a real brand" level, is when I'm buying something fun for a hobby that I'm into. Like, I dunno, travel gear. Okay, yeah, definitely travel gear. But is that so different from the 70s or 80s version of me shopping around for the coolest camera gear because I have a photography hobby? That's been around forever, and is legitimately fun. I wouldn't want to see that pathologized.
posted by panama joe at 9:14 PM on May 21, 2023


METAFILTER: like a dictatorial Pollyanna!
posted by philip-random at 9:56 PM on May 21, 2023 [3 favorites]


Article was ok but not the best, three stars.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 11:28 PM on May 21, 2023 [5 favorites]


Concerning forks, the difference in quality primarily affects their heft which acts as a dampener of anomalous fork motion. Shitty forks require more fine motor control. More work. So, you're unlikely to have a malfunction per se but there is a material difference.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 2:59 AM on May 22, 2023 [3 favorites]


On the one hand, you have people with a perhaps-annoying-but-ultimately-harmless selection fixation.

On the other hand, Amazon is filled with knockoffs from companies called ZZARBONT and XFLENIX that seem like words I am trying to read in a dream, which does not inspire confidence in the underlying product. Particularly where a product plugs into the electric (and therefore might catch fire) or attaches to the plumbing (and therefore might flood the house) there are risks over and above the product failing.

Perhaps more to the point, buying things that will last represents not only thrift and convenience; it also supports values that one may hold around reducing the amount of waste one generates. Even if this value has no moral weight and is just a consumer preference, I am old enough to remember when the promise of late capitalism was that you could express your preferences this way if you wanted to.
posted by gauche at 5:45 AM on May 22, 2023 [3 favorites]


But does it have Bluetooth®?
posted by djseafood at 6:13 AM on May 22, 2023 [2 favorites]


I'm a satisficer, but I'm married to a maximizer, and IMO the difference between the random 'good enough' product I tend to buy (no I don't read reviews) and the best are often very minor or large but aesthetic/cosmetic (ie: it looks more expensive/better, but it works the same), so I'm still pretty happy being a satisficer.

I also have Old Navy shirts that I bought for $5 that last 15 years, so maybe I'm also just really gentle or possibly have lower standards than others too.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:40 AM on May 22, 2023


'Buy good and buy once' is very much a mantra for the wealthy. The good stuff that lasts ain't cheap, for the most part.

People still believe stuff like this when the carbon footprint of the wealthy is like 15X the average person? Yay they put a patch on their jeans or whatever. Way to go.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:44 AM on May 22, 2023


... companies called ZZARBONT and XFLENIX...

1. Create web game where users choose if the presented nonsense word is a company name from Amazon or a $2000-a-dose drug by a major US drug company.

2. ????

3. Profit!!!
posted by COD at 8:20 AM on May 22, 2023 [3 favorites]


Also, I find it real interesting that the satisficers I know, much like this author, seem happy to use the research maximizers do to their own benefit.

Having lived with a maximizer (who, to be fair, was probably dealing with some other stuff on top of that), I can assure you I had no choice in the matter of whether extreme research was going to be done on a purchase. I can also assure you it was a double-edged sword: during the entire decade-plus that I lived with said maximizer, we had no rugs on our wood floors because maximizing a rug purchase as regular folk without tens of thousands to drop on rugs was an impossible task.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:33 AM on May 22, 2023 [5 favorites]


I often search for "best *whatever*" and read about five of the top articles. Sometimes there's a consensus on a brand or even a specific model.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:44 AM on May 22, 2023 [3 favorites]


Particularly where a product plugs into the electric (and therefore might catch fire) or attaches to the plumbing (and therefore might flood the house) there are risks over and above the product failing.

Fulfillment by Amazon (where is how all these incredibly lazy brands take the Less than Container Load worth of products they bought on Alibaba and then sell them to you on Amazon/Walmart/etc) requires that everything on their marketplace is tested by one the Nationally Recognized Testing Labs (NRTL) such as UL, Intertek, TUV SUD, etc.

So, even if you are dealing with someone who is making an effort to circumvent FBA and roll their own fulfillment, it would cost significant more money than it would be to get product that's UL (or whatever) Listed, since all the Alibaba affiliated distributors are already going the following the rules since they what their stuff sold in the North American markets. No one is commissioning their own critical components (motors, power supplies, etc) and then trying to sell it for as cheap as possible on Amazon as a brand like FEXXITO.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 11:44 AM on May 22, 2023 [2 favorites]


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