Jennifer Horgan: From infidelity to conflicts of interests, our infinite choice culture has us all in a heap

I know I’m not the only one who exhausts themselves scrolling through films and series, feeling so depleted that I end up watching 'Schitt’s Creek' again

DJ Mark Ronson recently reminisced about the time he had to select the physical records to bring with him to the club. File Picture: Jordan Strauss/AP

First things first — if you’re the parent of a primary school child, please fill out the Department of Education's survey on school choice. This is a huge moment for the country, and it’s something I’ve been writing about for years. All children should have the choice to attend their local school without experiencing exclusion and separation from their peers during school hours.

Hurray for choice! I eagerly await the survey’s results and the Government’s response.

In this context, choice is purely positive. There can be nothing wrong with State schools welcoming and celebrating, indeed “cherishing”, all children equally — children of all faiths and none.

In other contexts, having too much choice can feel a lot like having no choice at all.

It’s that experience of standing in the cereal aisle, in a sea of colourful boxes all promising health and happiness. Instead of feeling excited, the metal mouth of your trolley seems impossible to fill. Your hand moves towards one box, just as your gaze finds another.

The freezing effect of having too much choice is a very real phenomenon. A University of Minnesota study, published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, finds that having more shopping choices interferes with our ability to pay attention and complete simple arithmetic problems.

One could also describe it as the Netflix effect — this bombardment of choice that makes us part with agency. I'm told there’s a feature on Spotify that chooses new music for you based on your previous listening. There’s so much choice now, we cannot possibly be expected to choose. 

So much choice becomes no choice. It becomes someone else or something else choosing — an algorithm, an app

The examples go on and on, I hear and see them everywhere. It’s a phenomenon affecting even our most impressive and eclectic creatives.

I enjoyed listening to DJ Mark Ronson on one of my favourite podcasts, This Cultural Life, over the weekend. He’s the London-born/ New York-living music man who produced Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black album.

In his interview with John Wilson, he reminisces about the days he worked with physical records on the decks. He explained how he set them out in order of play, all along his apartment floor, like a poet putting together a collection.

Knowing exactly what he was about to create for his clubbers the following night, he set off. Admittedly, he struggled under the weight of his bags. He can now transport “thousands of songs” on a tiny USB, and he finds himself “drowning in a sea of indecision”.

Constraint, rather than choice, so often fuels creativity because too many choices make us feel like we have none.

Take recent conversations about the introduction of fines for dodgy boxes. Following anti-piracy measures in Italy, up to 400,000 Irish households may face fines from TV rights holders such as Sky. I’ve heard all sorts of arguments against the fines, many fuelled by a desire to get one over on big companies.

Choose a platform

Sure, commentators say, investigate the use of dodgy boxes, but also investigate the outrageous cost of streaming. Few seem to acknowledge that people with dodgy boxes push up the prices for everyone else, or that piracy affects low-paid creatives too — not just the corporates on top. 

There’s also an option nobody’s willing to consider when it comes to dodgy boxes. As a consumer, make a choice. Choose one streaming platform or choose none. It shouldn’t be assumed that we all get unfettered access to all the films and all the shows.

If we can’t join in a conversation about a particular show, that’s ok. We’ve chosen a different streamer, or not to stream, based on our means.

The outrage over a potential fine for a blatantly illegal action highlights a fact of modern living.

We assume our right to infinite choice, feel entitled to it, even when it makes us unhappy

I know I’m not the only one who exhausts themselves scrolling through films and series, feeling so depleted that I end up watching Schitt’s Creek.

Excessive choice, often guaranteed by wealth, can also have far darker consequences. In her remarkable memoir Are You Somebody, Irish writer Nuala O’Faolain retells a story shared by film director John Huston about Marilyn Monroe when she was filming The Misfits in 1961.

Monroe reportedly believed that she had to sleep to look as beautiful as possible, but she also had to learn her lines for the next day’s shooting. She was an actor at the peak of her powers, with seemingly every choice available to her, and yet felt cornered into doing what would eventually kill her.

She’d take sleeping tablets at night so she could sleep and stay beautiful, asking her assistant to read her lines over and over as she slept. Then she’d take barbiturates to get herself going. She knew her lines through some miraculous form of osmosis, but she could never get the grammar right — often using the wrong tense. She died a year later of a barbiturate overdose at the age of 36.

It's also the case that one person’s desire for endless choice can leave another person with none.

There’s another story about choice hitting headlines at the moment — the spoiled marriage of Lily Allen and David Harbour over his apparent decision to ask for an open marriage.

West End Girl is a compelling album and well worth a listen.

Described as a breakthrough cultural moment, it goes from Allen’s fairytale arrival at a new family brownstone in New York, to the phone call when Harbour asks for the new arrangement, to the discovery of text messages from his lover Madeline.

We’re carried along from romance to rumination (the title of one of the tracks) to utter despair.

Harbour wanted more choice; Allen ended up with no choice but to leave.

Dating apps now have tick boxes to show you’re looking for an ENM relationship — ethical non-monogamous — leading sex writer Dan Savage to say we’re becoming more “monogamish”.

It will be interesting to see how the choice culture impacts marriage in the coming decades.

Closer to home, a similar tale ended a media union last weekend.

Ivan Yates clearly wanted to be both a player and a commentator during the recent presidential election. Acting as a media trainer for Jim Gavin, he placed himself inside the ring, seemingly seeing no conflict of interest in commentating from the front row seats with pal Matt Cooper on their podcast Path to Power.

Cooper had no choice but to end their media marriage. From infidelity to conflicts of interests, our infinite choice culture has us all in a heap. It makes me think of the first card my husband (then boyfriend) made me. It had a little drawing of a train with bubble writing that said: “I choo choo choose you.”

Cheesy? Absolutely. I loved it.