Digital Junk Food
Koan #49
The reason no one can eat just one Lay’s potato chip isn’t necessarily because they are so delicious (they are). It’s because a Lay’s potato chip has been engineered to make you want another, thinking that the next chip will be the one that fulfills your craving. But it never does.
Lay’s advertising campaign, that no one can eat just one, might just as well be reworded to you’ll never be satisfied. This makes me wonder what the one in the slogan is referencing. I had always assumed it meant that no one can eat just one chip. But perhaps this is tongue-in-cheek humor from the ad execs and really meant to say no one can eat just one bag.
Theoretically, an entire bag of Lay’s potato chips is unlikely to satisfy your hunger — at least not for very long. There are a lot foods like this where you can stuff yourself to ungodly proportions, still not feel satisfied and still want more. It’s food without substance, chemically engineered to make you want another bite — sort of the same way the cigarette was engineered to create a dependency in the smoker.
That’s how it started for me. But it wasn’t junk food or empty calories. It was the carnival show we now call the internet or World Wide Web. It was the empty promises from the Gods of Tech. It was over-hyped technologies I’ve spent the past 20 years of my career working on.
