The days between Black Friday and Cyber Monday are filled with a never-ending cycle of sales happening “today only!” and “limited time!” offers. Amidst this chaos, people commonly become plagued with the dreaded “Netflix effect.”
The Netflix effect: the inability to make a decision because there are too many options. Often, a person will spend large quantities of time scrolling through endless pages of choices only to choose the first item they looked at, or worse, nothing at all.
The Netflix effect is named after those nights we have all spent scrolling through Netflix pages searching for the perfect movie, wasting so much time the movie could be halfway over by the time we finally click “play.” However, this effect applies to many other circumstances in life. Most recently, holiday sales have spread the Netflix effect to shoppers worldwide.
It begins innocently enough. Before the turkey has been carved on Thanksgiving, Black Friday catalogs and sales incentives start dripping into our mailboxes, our TV commercials and our emails.
At first, we find this influx exciting. But by the end of Black Friday, the number of sale ads and promotions has spiraled out of control. Every store has a sale — every item can be found discounted somewhere, and browsing through all of the potential Christmas presents would take hours of devoted searching.
If everything is on sale, is anything really on sale at all?
Cyber Monday prolongs the madness, until you become tempted to buy things you never actually wanted just because of the discount. As an Amazon Prime junkie, I get emails hourly with new “flash sales” on products like printers and X-box games — things I have no need for and no intention of buying. But the prospect of buying them for such low prices is enticing.
Eventually, you begin to tune out the ads. They become so common you delete emails without reading them, and ignore giant “SALE” signs in the windows of stores. By this point, the Netflix effect has taken over.
You have spent too much time scouring through online websites shopping for the perfect gift, and now you are numb to the flood of options and choices flashed in front of you every day.
Maybe, after glancing over the many options, you will end up purchasing the first gift you had in mind. Or, you may wait until Christmas Eve and dart to the mall with thousands of other last minute shoppers who simply put off making a decision until the final hour.
Regardless, don’t let the immense amount of flashy ads and bargain products get you down. As students, we receive endless emails, have relatively empty bank accounts and already feel the strain of finals and end of semester stress. Online shopping may seem like a good way to procrastinate homework in the library, but don’t let yourself get caught up in the glitter and glam of advertisement.
Remember what the holiday season is really about — not the presents and the sales and the catalogues, but the people you’re buying these gifts for. When we return home after finals, our families most likely won’t care if we found the best Christmas presents and got the best deals. They’ll be happy to see us even if we gift them with socks for the fifth year in a row.
Christmas should be about friends and family, not 50 percent off your next X-Box game.
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