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Comment by PeterStuer | Hacker News Reader

I think a significant contributer to franchize style commoditized homogenization is modern anxiety. Millenials especially seem near exclusively drawn to the 'predictable' and curated 'peer approved' nature of recognizable 'safe' brand signals.

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You are seeing the effect for the cause. Humans (life in general) are effort minimizer machines, it doesn’t mean that maximum optimization is the ideal environment for a human to thrive.

Any caveman would have loved to have to choose between favourite junk food franchises instead of risking his life chasing woolly mammoths not to starve.

From what I see, there are many people that don't want to be "bored" more than the people that don't want to be "tired". Of course there are many that want to be neither (so we get social media that gives you "not bored" and "not tired"), but I don't think we can generalize for 100% for neither category.

It helps to view it under a neurological perspective.

Not being bored = likely scrolling social media = dopamine release = the exact mechanism that reinforces patterns and behaviours in our brain, which under some conditions can reach stages of compulsion. I loath to blame the individual when these systems are designed to exploit flaws in human behaviour.

I recently read a self-help book by B.J. Fogg, a professor at Stanford Behavior Design Lab (formerly known as the Persuasive Technology Lab) that was boasting how he mentored the Instagram founders and helped them optimize their app for maximum engagement. The book itself was pretty good, but I couldn't help but think I'm reading the words of a complete sociopath that has indirectly caused untold psychological damage, and was pretty proud about it.

Is it Jane Doe's fault that she's now hopelessly addicted to Instagram?

We’re tired and bored. We're tired and bored. We're tired and bored. We're tired and bored.[0]

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBngZh8H2FU

> Humans (life in general) are effort minimizer machines, it doesn’t mean that maximum optimization is the ideal environment for a human to thrive.

My 5-and-a-half-year-old son would recommend this book to you:

https://www.booksfortopics.com/book/the-couch-potato/

It covers this quite succinctly.

It was at this supposed peak of Dopamine Fracking that intellectual conversation found a renaissance. Anthropology in particular reached its pinnacle in a unifying theory of everything: it’s just human nature.

By this logic travel and tourism would not exist.

well, we are also a bit of pleasure machines also. And most of vacations are relaxing. So again optimisation.

"Travel outside a person's local area for leisure was largely confined to wealthy classes, who at times travelled to distant parts of the world, to see great buildings and works of art, learn new languages, experience new cultures, enjoy pristine nature and to taste different cuisines."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism

When housing, healthcare, work, social life all feel unstable, the predictable option starts looking less like boring conformity and more like one less decision that can go wrong

What's being discussed is not at all limited to people experiencing instability

That's definitely the case for my wife.

She lives in terror of being grossed out or impatient, or our children complaining. Her favorite places are ones where she didn't have to wait, never wondered whether we'd been forgotten, where parking was easy, where our son ate the food, where the food didn't gross her out, where the finishes look new/spotless, and something about the atmosphere of the place set her mind at ease about no one paying attention to our children's behavior.

Chains are very good at ticking these boxes. Independent places always seem to have slow service, or a dirty bathroom, or a dingy finish, or poorly-separated seating so that she feels like our son is bothering other patrons, or no kids' menu, or no parking lot, or just manage to put her off in some way. "Feel dirty". "Feel sketchy".

I really don't know if it's the chicken or the egg. Is it because chains are familiar? Or is it because it takes a corporate arm to understand the existential necessity of "not putting off high-achieving white women" and to do the market research it takes to actually achieve that aim? IDK

I don't think that's a millennial thing. If you think back to the whole 'hipster' era, yes peer approval was a big part of it but so was local/artisan/unique stuff. Franchises were the things that were completely avoided. That predictability is much more of a modern requirement.

Not sure it's a millenial thing, but yes

And to be honest choice fatigue also plays a part.

(Also millenials seem to sell some places as "gritty and authentic" when in reality a lot of them just suck)

I'm all for trying new things, but in the end you realize that a lot of those are just not for you and you go for the bland and tested thing

For me (considerably older than millenials) it's not choice fatigue or "default to bland and tested", it's "if I'm paying a small fortune for coffee / food[0], I do not want a crappy serving just because the barista/cook stubbed their toe / broke up / got bad news / etc. this morning and they're wildly off their game."

Starbucks, McDonalds, Papa Johns, etc. do not make "great" refreshments but they make them of a consistently sufficient level of quality that you can be sure you're not wasting your small fortune when you buy from them wherever you are.

[0] As, sadly, we are all forced to these days.

Agree

But then, once I got to certain McD locations, and got a (very) disappointing experience, then it's hard to come back to the brand.

(it might have changed, I think this was over 10 yrs ago) but still

At least in Australia pretty much all the chain places like McDonalds/subway etc suck so bad it’s incredible they are still in business. They aren’t even winning on price.

In the US I have noticed a huge quality gap between chain locations in the suburbs (pretty good) and in the city (abominable).

I don't think this is true in "glamor" cities, but in Baltimore where I live every Chipotle location is known to be terrible. Hostile employees, menu items constantly out of stock, orders wrong. People who patronize and love suburban locations are shocked.

I'm not sure if the independent restaurants are siphoning off all the decent employees (especially the managers who you'd think would try and make sure there's enough product to meet demand), or if it's just that much more difficult to get delivery trucks to city locations, or if corporate just wants to close the city locations and doesn't mind setting them up to fail, or what.

But it's stark.

That's not even getting into McDonald's or KFC which are legitimately ratchet in the city and pretty wholesome out in the burbs.

Is this a US thing? Coffee in Starbucks is so mediocre that it is hard to imagine a proper coffee place ever "matching" it, even on a bad day.

> Is this a US thing?

I'm in the UK. Some local coffee shops can turn out exceptionally terrible coffee.

It's more a side effect of decision fatigue. Millennials are at a stage of life where they face a very high cognitive burden. They're not thinking deeply about it. which is great for advertisers.

Perhaps but I also think this is just personal preferences across age groups.

For instance contrarians who avoid those attributes

I do not believe the majority of millennials are like this.

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