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Look beyond your popcorn

The Supreme Court judgement that allows movie customers in Maharashtra to take their own food in theatres is having two completely differently ended reactions. One lauds it because now paying for food that's a hop, skip and jump away doesn't cost you more than your movie ticket (which is expensive enough nowadays). The other bemoans it because it takes away from a legitimate business model and employability, by allowing food in.

From the wider view, both action and response are overstretched. The complaint was because of the high rates of food sold inside the multiplex and ban on taking food inside, which is a simplistic reduction (but it makes sense). The decision to disallow outside food is defendable from a business point of view but it is just plain stupid to madly overprice it. The other more important observation is that this budiness model banked on the hooked consumer, and it had worked brilliantly till now.

All it would have taken to be stopped is for the consumer to play the best card of non-engagement to get their, fairly reasonable, cheaper price of popcorn (without going to court). Eat enough right before the movie—a full meal or a snack so you won't need to eat in between the movie. If everyone does that, prices will have to come down if they still want a happy customer. If they figure it's not worth it keeping them happy like that, food goes out and we don't get our affordable doorstep popcorn. We'll have someone else outside the theatre filling in the demand. If they allow that in, we can just keep out the eating outside the theatre. But that won't happen because we're A.D.D.I.C.T.E.D. We think we deserve our doorstep popcorn (literally and metaphorically). 

The truth of the matter is that we, the consumer, have fallen into a trap, so well-designed that a clear luxury (in this case, popcorn right outside the theatre door) is now a hard-and-fast right to happiness. It speaks a lot for how we've unrealistically evolved our ideas of happiness, out of our control, to be defined by corporate sales targets. Do we know we spoonfeed their every paisa, and how frantically they scramble to change route at the slightest change of consumer behavior? Behavior that comes to us as easy as breathing.

This isn't just the case with popcorn during movies. This is with everything that spells C.O.M.F.O.R.T for us. It's become something we expect without an objective highest standard. The only standard we keep is, literally, not lifting a finger. Any service or product has to let us move the least fingers possible and gives us the comfort we want for it to buy our loyalty. The thought is noble. I mean, how will ideas be pushed to their bigger designs? This is, practically, their biggest incentive to innovate. But when, and if, we reach there, and we're faced with a situation like the cheaper popcorn fix were in, the fall is hard. And the recourse we ended up taking to get our affordable popcorn is harder.

But like, whatever will we do without affordable popcorn at closest reach? Both the literal meaning and the metaphor. We really need to rethink how much consumer-like we are getting, so much that it's our entire persona when we interact with anything outside of ourselves. There is nothing wrong with picking things off a shelf to the point so often. Neither is there anything wrong in expecting these things to be within reach (especially with price), when they become an integral part of your daily ecosystem. But there is something wrong with the amount of dependence our entire life and world has on something that doesn't even factor it in.

The companies don't care. They're in it for the money and you're a market. When there's a wide enough need to make profit, you're king and queen. When there isn't, you're a victim of a capitalism mindset. But don't worry, the market will still about your biggest needs being made accessible. Without it, the companies can't keep their profit-their reason to be. They're suckers for their own cause.

Remember, you always hold the key. You can only give it away, and grab it right back without asking. Just distinguish between that popcorn you die for and something else you really will die because you lack it.

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