Oh look, shiny!

Fickle. People are fickle the world over. And God bless them. There's nothing more lovable to a marketing department than people who one minute are talking about their friend's shoes and the next minute saying something like, "ooooh, shiny." They are the kind of people that keep a consumer economy from tanking. It's that "Oh, gotta have it" mentality that allows shoddy, second-rate fashion designers to stay in business. It is the gift of the fickle to keep strange organic goat cheeses and hybrid curd bread on the shelves. But, it is a double-edged sword the fickle wield.  

Fickle people at times can make or break a journalist's career. They can cause market instability and all of a sudden everyone and their grandma is selling. And, it's just something we have to deal with. Over the past 50 years (or perhaps more), people have been rapidly losing their minds. I used to think that perhaps they were just adapting to the information age, and their attention spans were just shorter, but it's more than that. 

We live in an age where everyone wants immediate results. Our food must be done in 5 minutes or less, people must text us no less than thirty seconds later, and slow movies are the bane of people's existences. Many have become, for better or worse, adrenaline junkies. But it's not just the time. They want everything to be perfect. If things don't happen like they planned, they go haywire. "What, you put two teaspoons of chocolate fudge on my icecream?! Screw you!" It's whack. People are wound so tight it's easy to see why we are over-prescribing ourselves. We take medicines to sleep, to stay calm, to digest better, etc, etc. People cannot exist without modern conveniences. People cannot live with themselves as just themselves.  

The perfectionist mentality will only grow, as will the pharmacy's stock of legal heroine substitutes. You can't treat life with a white glove people. Sh*t happens. Deal with it. Try to maintain composure even when everything seems to suck. You have it good. Just look around, breathe, and put down the shiny thing.