Whenever I travel to a new city, I always look for a Starbucks. Do you know why? It’s not because their coffee is great. Though, it’s nice to get a nitro cold brew or just a plain old drip coffee after only having a Ca Phe Da (iced espresso in Vietnam) or Verlangerter (espresso with 4 spoonfuls of hot water in Vienna) for a week. But alas, it’s for the bathroom.

I know that no matter where I am in the world, Starbucks will have a decent bathroom for me to use. I know it’ll be a bathroom where I don’t have to pay a Euro, donate some Koruna to an old man guarding a stall, or get swindled some Dong to pee in a public washroom by an old lady who’ll scream after me. 

That bathroom consistency is what I expect at a Starbucks. That’s the consistent mediocrity I expect out of every global franchise. It’s why I might go to McDonald’s when I’m in a rush in…….yeah never mind. I wouldn’t ever go to a McDonald’s anywhere but North America if I was in a rush. But that’s not to say that I don’t find myself craving some garbage to shove down my throat. I have the cravings of nostalgia and I’ll binge on some trusted McDonalds once in a while. 

So, why am I telling you all this? Because of this video here:

It’s a wonderful video that shows the growing conformity in the option of consumer services and living spaces growing in North America (the video centers around the U.S. but I see the same effect in Canada). It’s not that having consistency is poor. Consistency is efficient and convenient. Of course it’ll be mediocre, what else would it be? Nothing that is applied en masse can be exceptional. They’re mutually exclusive. Exceptional is scarce and race. It’s an exception. 

But like the Starbucks example I noted, this kind of consistency has its utility. The danger I see with the growing conformity through consumer services and real estate isn’t that big corporations will fuck us. We’re always engaged in a give and take with the businesses we interact with. That’s just commerce. 

What bothers me is that growing conformity in commerce will create conformity of the mind. It will inevitably breed a society that will refuse to think, maybe even unable to think, because everyone is wrapped in the world of convenience. A convenient world is one designed to be so easy for everyone that they don’t have to think, to make hard decisions, or any decisions for that matter. 

This will only lead to more of a world where people are hired by the boxes they fit into based on what they studied, what their title says or the years of work experience they have (none of these traits alone or even all three put together show the actual competence of someone). That’s just in the world of careers. But, like in Albert Camus’s The Stranger, it could lead back to a world where a man who doesn’t cry at his mother’s funeral will be viewed as a psychopath who is only capable of murder.