There is Too Much Cheese

My manager recently gave me a book to read titled Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson. It was a quick read that succinctly explains how we humans tend to become complacent because of our aversion to change. Many of us would rather avoid a loss than pursue a gain. Once we become comfortable, the unknown becomes less appealing. However, change is inevitable, and our attachment to comfort can keep us in unfavorable conditions long after they have stopped serving us.

The story itself wasn’t as interesting to me as the metaphor used to communicate its message: rats and little people navigating a maze in search of cheese. I say this because, for the last couple of months, I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that modern society has turned the average person into a lab rat in a maze.

I think about it daily. I think about it when I see the ridiculously long lines at the Dunkin drive-thru for sugar with some coffee. I think about it when I see people lining up at Target to secure the latest bundle of Pokémon cards. I think about it when I open TikTok and see people gifting content creators during livestreams to help them win fabricated battles, essentially throwing away their money just to be acknowledged. I see it in myself when I drive to work Monday through Friday with a consistency I’ve never shown toward anything else in my life, all so I can get paid and return home to the more favorable cheese of the Dungeon Crawler Carl universe.

We are all searching for our cheese, whatever that may be. I suppose what unsettles me is that the world feels so terribly chaotic, yet I have never felt more controlled by calculated forces. As I type this, I hear notifications emanating from my phone, and you can bet I’m going to check them. There could be good cheese waiting for me.

Update: There was no good cheese, but there could have been!

What feels strangest to me is that there are intertwining, hierarchical levels of mazes surrounding our search for cheese. Yes, the viewers of a TikTok livestream who wait for their parasocial crush to be gifted a galaxy so they can watch her perform a 360-degree presentation of her body are participating in something sad. But I find it equally sad that the algorithm has programmed the creator to engage in those methods to obtain her cheese.

The creators may appear to be the smarter lab rats because they are profiting handsomely, but they are still rats in the maze. The same goes for Pokémon. Consumers who overspend on cards because society has told them the cards are valuable and may turn a profit are surely trapped in the maze. But so is Pokémon as a brand, coerced by the market into operating in such a nefarious way.

The bigger question for me is: Where is all this coming from? If the TikTok algorithm creates mazes for its users, what conditions caused that algorithm to be created? To what end is all of this happening? It cannot simply be about cheese.

Perhaps this is God’s will. Perhaps it is merely a late stage in our being controlled by our DNA. All I know is that I feel far too lactose intolerant, and yet I know I will continue searching for my cheese.

Update: I just got a text from my friend that the famous raccoon Jimothy has a rookie card being auctioned and has eclipsed $12,000.