Blue State Blues: New Yorkers Increasingly Don’t Know What They’re Paying For. And That’s the Point.
20th March 2025
Marketing experts aren’t surprised. The surprise saturation, they say, has been building for years alongside another growing trend: the algorithm-based predictability of online shopping. And they say that New Yorkers are increasingly drawn to the unknown, and even paying more for it, because they’re exhausted by all the choices and control available to them in other areas of life, particularly online. Some predict that this trend is only beginning.
“?Surprise is an emotion intensifier. It’s a way to just kind of turn up the volume on the vibrancy of life,” said psychology researcher and “surprisologist” Tania Luna, who co-authored the 2015 book “Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected.”
“We’re living an increasingly algorithm-driven existence that really is catering to comfort, predictability, ease, convenience,” she said, noting that many of us experience a “numbness” from spending so much time scrolling and looking at screens. Surprise can function as a balm, she said.
Since, as Democrat voters, they have no idea what their tax dollars are paying for (or into whose pockets they’re landing), they ought to be used to it by now.
Q: Where is Bruce Wayne when you really need him?
A. He moved to Florida with the other billionaires to escape high taxes and ungrateful Underclass scumbags.