The McDonald’s of Love
Moderation. Taste the word as you say it. Moderation. To moderate something. I find it fairly safe to say that we agree that moderating extremes usually is a good thing. But sometimes moderation leads to entropy – everything gets brown and lukewarm.
This post is a follow-up on a comment I wrote on Brian’s brilliant post on Market-smarts, Focus Groups and Originality…
Allthough the I-Pod-loving, P2P-savvy netizen digirati of today usually come across the term ‘moderation’ in relation to discussion groups, fora and blog comments, the moderation phenomenon extends to all areas of what we tend to call life.
By moderating something you take away the nasty pointy bits. You censor racsist comments and you try to prevent abuse. Maybe you choose to tone down your appearence in a job interview, or on the first encounter with the in-laws. That’s probably all good…
But there is a far more dark side of moderation that lead into entropy.
Imagine having a girlfriend (or a boyfriend) that have invested a large sum of feelings in you. That’s nice. But then imagine that she/he automatically expects the right to ‘tone you down a bit’ or to moderate your statements before they ‘air’.
Imagine a great meal prepared by a marvelous chef. You’ll be met with amazing plates of gastronomic grandure and find yourself parishing in oral pleasure. Mmmh nice! Or maybe; Yuck!! The very avant-garde chef will present you with a plate of Cola-steamed Oysters on a bed of whipped cream!!??
Enter the owner of the restaurant; ‘Could you maybe tone it down a bit?’. A couple of years and 117 moderations later, McDonalds was invented.
And so on…
When watching, or eating, or listening to stuff made by people who really put their soul and personality in what they do, you are always at the risk of getting the whipped cream oysters. But you might just as well get a plate of sheer genious. You might experience music so weird, that if the CD did come out on a label it would never be ripped or you might disover the next genious.
When you try to moderate your loved one, you end up living with love’s answer to McDonald’s every day. And one of those days you’ll wake up wondering how the fuck she got to be that boring?