Trevor

Yet Cheesecake Factory thrives.

Paul_SD

Choice is deadly if you are trying to make money up on high volume.
CF is higher priced casual dining so they can get away with it to a point. I would also think that up-selling on stuff like appetizers might be one reason for a large menu
"I can't decided honey, there's so many choices...let's order an appetizer while I make my mind up"

Alan Smithee

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Alan Smithee

mndtrp

I misinterpreted the point of the OP. As far as having so many choices that I end up not making one at all: no, I don't have that problem. If I have the time, there are so many things lined up that I want to watch/read/play that I always have something at the ready.

Maxflier

Yes, this is a huge problem for me.
Sometimes during the day I will even get in the mood for a specific movie, yet when I get home and reach for it on the shelf I am like "I'm not sure I'm in the mood for this one anymore" and scan for something else to watch for 30 minutes before giving up and watching nothing.

davidh777

The "too many choices" thing was tested in a food show I was watching the other day (The Hungry Games, I think). Not only were the diners paralyzed by choice, but they tended to be disappointed by their meal because they regret not picking one of so many things that they might have enjoyed more.

BambooLounge

That definitely happens to my g/f and I when it comes to deciding where to eat/order from. Too many options and usually, we just default to the same restaurant or two.

For a period of time, I'd do something similar with my movie collection. I'd get to the shelving unit, scan...scan...scan...then eventually just settle on Gone Baby Gone. I'm not entirely sure why, either. It's not like that's one of my favorite movies of all-time or anything. It just some how became my, "Eh, fine, I guess Gone Baby Gone will do."

morriscroy

On a similar parallel, I feel the same way whenever I get home after buying some dvds/blurays.

For me, it seems like the excitement and anticipation is in the act of searching and buying of the actual dvd/bluray sets. Though by the time I get home with my purchases, that previous feeling of excitement and anticipation completely "evaporates", where it now feels very "anti-climactic".

(From stories I've heard over the years about shopaholics, it seems to be almost a similar pattern).

For lack of a better description, it is like "the chase is better than the catch".

Maxflier

TOTALLY agree!
I always assumed I was weird because of these things, but it sounds like it isn't all that uncommon.

morriscroy

(Long rant).

I have also noticed that most of my recent dvd/bluray buying binges since the summer, have almost always coincided to the days I was drinking coffee. For reasons I don't understand, my ocd compulsive impulse buying/hoarding seems to go into overdrive whenever I drink coffee in the morning.

For example, against my better judgement I picked up various tv shows which I said to myself previously that I wouldn't bother buying, such as: Boston Legal, Reba, White Collar, The Blacklist, Nip/Tuck, etc ... (I previously watched these shows in reruns, or in their original first-run broadcasts).


Since the summer, I've been making efforts to avoid drinking coffee every day. (The longest I went without drinking any coffee, was almost a month). Typically I wound go for a week or two (or three) abstaining from coffee, and then suddenly one day I would drink coffee again for 2 or 4 days. (The cycle repeating itself repeatedly).

I also found that whenever I was drinking coffee, I could actually focus more easily and watch through some tv dvd season sets over several evenings. For example, recently I watched through seasons 1 and 2 of Nip/Tuck (over different weeks) during when I was drinking coffee for 3 or 4 days. But after I stopped drinking coffee, I had no desire nor the focus anymore to watch through any further dvds/blurays.

Also when I wasn't drinking any coffee, I had no desire at all to go shopping for anything. Not even shopping online.


In effect, coffee is almost like a double-edge sword for me. When I'm abstaining from coffee, my ocd compulsive buying/hoarding behavior is significantly squelched, but I have very little desire to watch any of my dvds/blurays. On the other side of the coin while drinking coffee, I could focus more easily and binge watch through my tv season sets, but at the same time my ocd compulsive impulse buying/hoarding behavior goes into total overdrive.

stvn1974

My problem is that I had a huge movie library and an even bigger one for music. I would decide to watch a flick and stand in front of the shelves and end up picking a favorite that I had already seen a million times or go put on an album instead. I have remedied both by getting rid of all the non-essentials. Feels a lot better too. Now I just need to do the same with my books.

PhantomStranger

An easy solution for the people with large collections is to automatically narrow the field of choices down before you make the selection. It's far easier to make a pick when you decide on one genre first.

Paul_SD

This is basically the philosophy behind programing or scheduling. You narrow the field of options based on (usually) the day of the week. Every Monday night is the same genre, same star, same director...whatever.
You also end up conditioning yourself to anticipate and appreciate certain material because of this sense of regularity.

If you have a huge backlog, it works. Some kind of structure always helps.

stvn1974

Sounds like work.

Shagrath

Which is why my DVDProfiler randomization works wonderfully for me. Very little work involved.

rw2516

If she can't pick from the home library, how does she pick from Netflix?

There's usually 5 or 6 films bouncing around in my head that I feel like watching at any given time and I decide on one of those. The only thing I would consider a problem, and I mean problem in the slightest meaning of the word, is I seldom feel like watching my favorites because I know them by heart. I usually feel like something I can't remember as well. Haven't seen FACE OFF since it first came out and really looking forward to it. Some of my all-time favorite movies have been released by Twilight Time at $30 a pop. So far haven't felt like watching them yet. To me, the idea of not owning these is unacceptable. But the day will come, maybe 5 years from now, maybe 10, when I stick in that TT Blu-ray of BLUE MAX and it'll be worth every penny.
Quit fretting people, takes all the fun out of it. Let the executors of your estate worry about what to do with your shit.

Shagrath

She usually just puts on an episode of American Dad.

LiquidSky

That happens to me too. I have media overload.

morriscroy

In the past, I would have also used the excuse of "media overload".

Today I know now that it has everything to do with apathy, inertia, boredom, burnout, etc ... on my part.

Paul_SD

Well, you do have to know what day of the week it is on any given day. But I'm sure there's an app for that somewhere.

I haven't done it in a while, other than Saturday nights are almost always a horror movie of some kind. That goes back to when I was a kid and a local TV station had it's Shock Theater at 12 am Sunday. I'm conditioned to think that's the optimal time to watch that kind of stuff.

I have a bunch of silent movies that I haven't watched any of yet. After the holidays, I'd like to start spinning one of these a week. I have enough to carry me through five months like that. Probably the only way I'm ever going to get through them is if I make it a regular weekly event. Certain things you just aren't inclined to want to watch spontaneously, no matter how good they might be.

morriscroy

(This may sound really silly in hindsight).

Back in the day when I use to take great pride in being almost a complete ignoramus about then-current pop culture, tv, movies, etc ... (mostly during the 1990's and early-2000's), my then-wife was the one that was into watching a lot of tv and movies.

When she couldn't decide what to watch (from the local video rental store), I ended up mostly watching Star Trek TOS reruns recorded earlier during the day or overnight. (For a short period of time when I briefly had cable in 1999, I was watching semi-daily Silk Stalkings reruns and some weekly revived Outer Limits and Total Recall 2070 episodes).

bluetoast

Yeah, I was acquiring way too much. For about the first 8 or 9 months that Criterion released BDs, I bought all of them. That was nuts. My signature is all of my unviewed shit. I quit buying movies 2 years ago with Dredd 3D, but I'll probably get Guardians if I get a good price. Other than that I need to work on this back catalogue.

Disc-Flipper

One problem I have is my collection is two-deep on the shelf, so I normally end up only picking things to watch which are visible on the front - which results in ignoring half my collection.

J. Philip

Yes. I have a huge backlog. Primarily coming from an October buying binge. So anyway, I stare at the backlog blankly for several minutes. Then I usually select something from my library that I've already seen several times. Not sure why. Just happens that way.