by I was looking for a new kettle last week. Nothing fancy — just something that boils water and doesn’t break in six months. What I found instead was a wall of choices so absurdly divided I almost laughed out loud.
On one side: the budget specials. Thirteen dollars, plastic, vaguely smelling of hot electronics before you even plug them in. The kind of purchase you know you’ll be replacing by Christmas. On the other: the prestige models. Minimalist chrome cylinders that cost more than my first laptop, promising precise temperature control to the degree, a slow pour spout for pour-over enthusiasts, and a Bluetooth connection. To a kettle. A kettle with Bluetooth.
And in between? Nothing. A void where the decent thirty-dollar kettle used to stand.
It’s happening everywhere. Clothes are either fast-fashion disposable or two-hundred-dollar-per-item investment pieces. Restaurants are either drive-through or forty-dollars-a-plate. Software is either free with ads and a surveillance-grade privacy policy or a premium subscription that costs more than a streaming service. The sensible middle ground — the product that costs a reasonable amount, works well, and doesn’t make a statement — has quietly vanished.
I think what bothers me isn’t the loss of the objects themselves. It’s what the absence says about how we think now. The middle was never glamorous. Nobody wrote a review raving about a perfectly adequate toaster. But it was where most of life happened. The average. The good-enough. The thing that worked without demanding your attention or your loyalty.
Now everything has to be positioned. Cheap enough to be an impulse purchase or expensive enough to signal taste. Nothing can just be. Our willingness to settle for decent has been replaced by a curated identity at every price point.
Which would be fine if it worked. But I notice more and more people — myself included — are spending more time researching kettles than they did five years ago, trying to find the hidden gem that’s neither garbage nor a status symbol. The one that just works. The one that used to be the default.
Maybe that’s the real loss. Not the products, but the freedom of not having to choose so hard.
— Teganna