How to make choices
This week’s question comes to us from Betsy Streeter:
Sometimes my family has a terrible time selecting a movie to watch. Everyone seems to want something different. How can we shorten the process so we don’t just scroll menus all night?
This situation is both familiar and exhausting. Thankfully for you, and the rest of our readers who’d like to keep their chosen families from descending into havoc, tears, family therapy, and eventual dissolution—this is a problem we have solved in our own home.
TV was easy when I was a kid. You watched whatever was on. Dallas. Wonder Woman. Welcome Back Kotter. A golden age of easy choices. My parents would come home with a new TV Guide every Friday night, and my brothers and I would lay on the living room floor, going through the holy book of TV, circling the shows that we’d watch that week. We were all follow-fashion idiots so we just watched the shows the other kids would be talking about at school the next day.
Going to the movies was just as easy. Back then, if you were lucky, you lived near a movie theater with two screens, and one of the screens would be playing something my young self thought was sappy or corny, and the other one would be showing Star Wars.
Video stores would fuck all this up. Not only did you have to pick a movie from what felt like an unlimited amount of choices, but also get judged on your choice by whichever Tarantino-aspiring film studies major was behind the counter that night. As a teen being judged by a slightly older teen, pushing a movie box across the counter and having it met by an eyeroll was fucking devastating.
Streaming made it all so much worse. While it decreased the judgement aspect, it substantially increased the available choices.
I was never good at making choices. As a kid, the cereal aisle at the supermarket was a fucking ring of hell.
Adding other people to the mix only made it worse.
As an adult, I can still recall way too many instances of four or five people sitting around trying to decide where to go for dinner until it got too late to go anywhere. (In our defense, drugs were usually involved. Thankfully.) The conversation would then turn to “what if we watched a movie instead” and Jesus fucking wept.
Hell isn’t other people. Hell is people trying to make a group decision. And decisions are fucking exhausting.
But like I said, we have solved this.
The way we do this in our house is that a strong choice wins. We call this The Strong Choice Doctrine™. For example: if I say that I want to watch a movie, and Erika says “Let’s watch Invasion of the Bee Girls” she wins. I made a vague suggestion. She made a clear and specific one. The conversation is closed and Invasion of the Bee Girls is queued up. No argument. But what if that’s not the type of movie I had in mind? That’s on me. I should’ve made a stronger suggestion.
If someone starts the conversation with a strong choice like “Let’s watch Manos: The Hands of Fate” and the other person doesn’t want to they can either opt out or offer another strong choice instead such as “How about Blood and Black Lace instead?” You’re now deciding between two things, which is narrower than deciding between everything in the history of Cinema.
The Strong Choice Doctrine™ can also be a narrowing path. For example: “Let’s watch a Nic Cage movie tonight.” It’s not a terribly specific choice, but it does narrow things down considerably. The other person can then take the next step along the path, which would be suggesting Mandy.
And of course, there’s always opting out. “Let’s watch Suspiria tonight” could be met with a response of “I think I’ll just read.” Fine answer. Strong choice. Go enjoy Suspiria.
Under The Strong Choice Doctrine™ statements like this are forbidden:
• What are you in the mood for?
• I might could maybe be in the mood for x.
• What do you think about watching x tonight?
They’re exhausting and they’re more likely to start an argument than a movie.
Optimally, this all happens before you actually sit down in front of the TV. Try it tonight at dinner. “Who wants to watch God Told Me To after dinner with me?” They’re either in or out. And this is important—if they’re out that’s fine. Don’t make people feel bad for making a different choice than you. Plus, they’re probably triggered by all the time you’ve spent in front of the TV scrolling through menus. Finish dinner, go to the couch, start your movie. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those people that opted out end up joining you. Even if they’re pouting in that special teenage way. They’re also seeing a new way to do things and learning it doesn’t suck.
This goes beyond picking what movie to watch, too. “I’m going for a walk. Want to come?” is a stronger choice than “What do you want to do today?” or even “Do you want to go for a walk?” To me, those questions only put me back at the video store, staring at a million video cases, paralyzed by an inability to choose between too many options. But being asked if I want to go for a walk that’s happening with or without me? Well, that’s a call for adventure.
And only a fool passes up a call for adventure.
❓ Got a question? Ask it. I’ll certainly try to answer it.
📚 Wanna buy Design Is a Job in glorious zine form? Yes you do. Comes with stickers and soap!
📖 Speaking of books, Letterform Archive put together a stunning monograph of my friend Amos Kennedy’s work. It’s worth having. And if you’re in The Bay Area his show is very much worth your time.
🎵 Buy this record. Don’t read about it, don’t even stream it. Just buy it.
🔎 Since Erika was mentioned this week, you should sign up for her next research workshop. You will learn things. Make the strong choice.
🎥 Also, this newsletter contains six fantastic movies you should watch. October-themed too! Don’t say I never give you anything.