The information supermarket
A break from our regularly scheduled programming
There used to be one supermarket in town, the Mainstream Market.
Everyone went there to buy groceries. It had a decent selection of moderate, bland, safe food. It wasn’t particularly cheap or expensive, a functional store serving basic needs. We went to Mainstream Market because it was the only place to get food.
But then another grocer came to town: Red Market.
Red Market was interesting and different. When it arrived in our small town, it told us that Mainstream Market was corrupt. Mainstream Market’s buyers - according to Red Market’s advertising - intentionally selected a bland product assortment that kept out the best foods.
Why would they do such a thing? Because Mainstream Market’s buyers believed they knew what was best for us. They listened to the doctors, after all.
Red Market knew better. Red Market knew that deep down we all wanted sugary cereals, sugary drinks, hot dogs, and bacon-fried-bacon.
And Red Market knew that deeper down we all distrusted Mainstream Market’s buyers in their shiny suits and their doctors pulling the strings behind the scenes.
Red Market was for the real food-lovers. The ones who knew that taste was all that mattered.
So our town split into Red Market and Mainstream Market, with Red Market drawing new converts every day.
Our town got a little fatter and a little angrier, and Mainstream Market got a little desperate.
So what did Mainstream Market do?
Fortunately, their buyers had Ivy League degrees.
So, like all good Ivy League graduates, Mainstream Market’s buyers decided to bring in consultants who identified - using, of course, flawed survey techniques and no less than seven word clouds - that “health” was a common word their customers used when talking about Mainstream Market.
And so Mainstream Market went vegetarian. For good measure, they expelled all doctors who weren’t inflicting plant-based diets on their patients. And their marketing reflected the change with self-important slogans like, “Vegetables die in darkness.”
Almost overnight, the town was split into two camps: Those with diabetes from excess sugar and those with iron deficiencies from lack of red meat.
Naturally, everyone in our small town became insufferable.
Then came the delivery apps, and shit got real.
“Why go to the grocery store at all? Why not just order and have food delivered to you?”
This was the promise of a ton of delivery apps that suddenly emerged alongside the smartphone.
A few delivery apps emerged as the dominant ones, but something funny happened - they let anyone sign up to be a food supplier.
This meant you could order from Red Market or Mainstream Market, or you could order from Jeanine down the street who makes really good homemade cookies.
Suddenly the supply of food options on the delivery apps exploded. Everyone was selling their homemade goods through a few delivery apps.
The delivery apps were overwhelmed and couldn’t manually manage all the suppliers themselves. They needed to write algorithms to filter the wheat from the chaff (literally) - to show you things you might actually want, instead of the thousands of options you’d have no interest in.
I got overwhelmed, said “f*ck it”, and ordered a lifetime supply of Soylent.
And then our town started getting really weird.
Strange diets started emerging: The Beef Jerky Purists and the Kale-Only Communists squared off in the town center. (The “Gluten-Free-For-Fun Fanatics” RSVP’d to the brawl but didn’t show.)
Tainted food started killing people. Tainted doctors recommended food they knew was unhealthy.
Mainstream Market and Red Market got increasingly desperate and doubled down on their reckless brand strategies. Mainstream Market went vegan; Red Market got rid of all vegetables.
The delivery apps tried to figure out how to get tainted food off their platforms. It was hard and complicated, not made easier by the fact that many of their employees and influential suppliers were passionate supporters of fringe food science.
And so now everybody hates each other. Everybody has some sort of diet-based health condition. We’re all very good at pointing out everyone else’s totally obvious health problems but can’t see our own.
And we all claim to know EXACTLY what these damn delivery apps and supermarkets should do about the problem – it’s SO OBVIOUS, we shout in the privacy of our homes. All of our answers are incoherent, surface-level, and dumb. Giving the delivery apps more control? Getting rid of the delivery apps? Playing bongos and singing kumbaya in the town square? Putting the genie back in the bottle? Hoping some new delivery app will solve the problem? Changing the town culture? Adding food science to the school curriculum?
The story doesn’t end with a new mayor.
Today’s information supermarket wars will only become more pronounced as radical food suppliers pull devotees “off-platform”.
Reality is emergent, not planned – it is unclear how any intrusion into the competitive dynamics, how any regulation – will unfold. Second-order impacts of regulation in a complex reality often make everything worse.
And in a world where everybody considers themselves a doctor yet has massive health issues they ignore… I don’t know where to look to get our town on a cleanse diet that will work.