Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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How the Long Tail Ruined Shopping

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Though I can’t say that I’ve ever been a tremendous fan of Black Friday, i readily admit that i had my moments of being a shopaholic. I delighted not only in the shopping, but in the browsing and discovering, and in immersing myself in a sea of other shoppers.

Recently this delight seems to have evaporated into thin air – heading out to a store is a chore, and more often than not i just do a quick browse before i’m ready to leave. I didn’t even contemplate heading out on Black Friday.

Why? Don’t i like to shop anymore? Have i outgrown it? Is my budget taking the fun out of it?

For months i couldn’t figure it out. Then, last month I read Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail (a book, though that link is for the author’s website). I realized that it wasn’t that i stopped liking shopping, but that the Long Tail ruined shopping for me, and maybe for you too.

Let me try to explain.

Think back five or ten years ago. A shopping trip wasn’t necessarily a buying trip – it was a voyage of discovery. Especially on Black Friday. You might know about a few tentpole items from television commercials or word of mouth, but you needed to walk the aisles to learn about everything that had been unveiled for the season. And, you needed to hit multiple stores before you could find the best deals on items from your wishlist(s). Shopping was a necessity to achieve your buying goals goals.

If you’re the least bit internet savvy, today much of that discovery process can be conducted virtually. In-store deals aren’t all that attractive… getting to Walmart at 5am on Black Friday might score you a few door-buster deals on their loss-leaders, but any price that they can afford to slash in a physical store is sure to be equally slashed somewhere on the infinite internet since websites don’t have to pay for employees and shelf space.

Stores are disappointing to me not only because i do a lot of discovery and deal-finding ahead of time, but because I find myself distrustful in physical stores – i see an interesting new widget, but without at least 10 user reviews i can’t possibly know if it’s worth buying.

As a result I’m just not excited by a brick and mortar shopping trip anymore. Now that you are thinking about it you might agree.

Furthermore, as our tastes splinter into ever-more distinct niches (as abetted by vast info on the internet) a physical store is less and less likely to even have what we want. Guitar stores hardly ever have the brand, model, or color that i’m looking for. I’m sure knitters feel the same way – after knitting for years will a Yarn Emporium have all of the special brands, blends, and colors that you want for your project? If not, while not just order all of it on the internet for a bulk discount?

There are still reasons to shop physically. Two primary reasons are expertise and hands-on experience. That’s why it’s so hard to eliminate clothing stores from our physical routine – we need help finding our size and we need to try things on to find out what looks good.

Groceries are another excellent example – when you have an indeterminate goal the physical act of browsing often yields the best results. Unless you have a specific meal in mind, grocery shopping is about options and ideas. Shopping for home decor falls into the same category. Since i don’t travel much, preparing for a vacation also fits – I spent hours shopping for Bonnaroo, looking for little items that might increase my chances of survival.

Yet, even these experience are being intruded on by the internet, with similarity-searches and tagging making the virtual experience more and more like scanning a shelf.

The Long Tail is not just a matter of quantity of choices, but of quality of information. As I become more and more accustomed to both I find that I am unsatisfied by a trip through a big box store that carries only the most popular (not necessarily best) items. Every trip is a disappointment – i can never find exactly what i need for the price that i want.

Reading The Long Tail changed my perspective on a lot more than just shopping through the utter obviousness of its conclusions. I have some more to say about that – hopefully before NaBloPoMo has ended.

Trio: Season Five, Suite #6!

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Trio: Season Five, Suite #6:
Influences (Pt. 2 of 3) – Teenage
Dilate (Ani DiFranco)
Superhero (Garrison Starr)
Spark (Tori Amos)

Trio – the original singer-songwriter web session – typically features original songs, but for the second in a special trio of trios I am covering some of the songs that have influenced me and my songwriting. The first influences trio featured songs of my childhood.

You can download the entire Trio, or start from a past suite of original songs:

See the rest of this post for chords to all three songs. [Read more…] about Trio: Season Five, Suite #6!

NaBloPoMo Round-Up #7: I, J, & K Keep Me Company

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We awoke and departed from NJ at 4:15am so that Elise would have ample time to catch her flight to San Francisco, leaving me here, cold and alone for a week. The upshot is that my Thanksgiving lasted until seven this morning, and that I slept for the better part of the day,

What better activity to kick off a week of being cold and alone than working on my NaBloPoMo reviews? Grab your leftover sandwich, kids, (or, if you’re me, your favorite bottomless pail of cookie dough) cause it’s time for I, J, and K. [Read more…] about NaBloPoMo Round-Up #7: I, J, & K Keep Me Company

Taking Back Giving Thanks

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I don’t enjoy celebrating most holidays. They aren’t really holidays anymore – just treacly Hallmark imitations of the celebrations they once were.

Part of my resistance is societal – a rebellion against Hallmark and Christmas radio stations – but part of it is familial. As children we are subjected to the whims of our family’s traditions with little room for our own opinions. When i hit college i decided i’d start having things my way – i rebuilt my holiday schedule from scratch.

I usually deign to observe a standard July 4th, since it holds historical significance, and Cinco de Mayo, since it kicks off my Corona-drinking season, but everything else is fair game; one particularly defiant year I celebrated Passover instead of Easter.

However, I haven’t fucked with any holiday as much as today’s – Thanksgiving – because i didn’t really feel as though i had been giving very much thanks. It had turned into Turkeyhaving and Footballwatching or, worse, LaststopbeforeChristmasing.

Rather than touch any of that, i co-opted it for my own, never doing the same thing twice. Once i carried a balloon in the parade. Another year i dined with Gina and her family and friends. Two years ago i spent Thanksgiving alone, drinking martinis and watching old movies. Each iteration was superior to the alternative of a dead bird and getting stuffed just to get stuffed.

Over the last nearly-five years i have been gradually assimilated into Elise’s family, which dichotomizes every holiday between a split set of parents (a phenomenon with which i am all-too familiar). I am now an expected guest at their holiday celebrations and, as a result, here i am in NJ celebrating a second Thanksgiving in a row for the first time since the nineties.

At first i was reticent – this was exactly what i had been trying to escape! Yet, the view, the culture, the traditions, the food, and the thanks are all different here than what i gew up with. Admittedly, I don’t like them all – i was especially upset to realize that not every family in America accompanies every holiday turkey or ham with lasagna or baked ziti – but in total they have definitely refreshed my thanks… thanks for who i am, and where i am, and that i am free to choose both and everything in between.

I think holidays should be what you need them to be, especially a holiday about thanks. And sometimes the best way to realize why (if at all) you are thankful is change your perspective.

Don’t Play That Song (A Trio of Links)

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You were supposed to receive the second Influences Trio tonight, but it took six hours last night to get one song right, and we are leaving on our T-Day expedition to NJ in a few hours.

This exemplifies why Trio did not typically include cover songs back when it was a weekly feature (and why it started taking so damned long when it did start including cover songs): i’m a huge music fan, and in almost every case i have an obsessive fascination with the original, which leads me to go through this horrific Sophie’s Choice drama about every little flaw and if i can really give them up to the oppressive, fascist listening public.

So, rather than my still-incubating Trio, here’s a trio of quick-hit weblinks for you:

#1 Yeti Ornament from HungerSite. Dude, if we get a tree i am buying this in a hot second.

Plus, it totally jives with the holiday competition i have with my mother about buying farm animals for each other.

#2 PhotoJunkie’s “One Million Giveaway”. No, not a million dollars. PhotoJunkie is a fantastic blogger who was on the forefront of Photoblogging a few scant years ago. I think i know him from Blogathon (?). In any event, to celebrate his upcoming 1,000,000th website hit he’s giving away all sorts of stuff to anyone who comments on or links to his blog.

I should be seeing my millionth hit sometime before i turn 40, thanks for asking.

#3 Want a seasonal job in Philly? Be a newspaper scab! Our two big (collectively owned) papers are heading for strike, and they’re already fishing for temporary staff. $17-$20 an hour, 60hrs a week, minimal experience required. I say, go for it.

In closing, i feel that you should know that i am eating raw cookie-dough for dinner, and that after a content-lite day for T-Give i’ll be closing out NaBloPoMo with several more Trios and more NaBloPoMo site reviews.

Oh, right, and more blogging.

Edit: Every time i see the title of this post i hear the same thing in my head. In the interests of you hearing it too, here it is: Kelly Clarkson singing “Don’t Play That Song” from Season 1 of American Idol.