Business News – Nov 11, 2024

Would You Let Strangers Decide How You Spend Your Money?

These people do. Inside the community where people get help making small choices of all kinds.

By Elle Hunt. Nov 02, 2024.

In a world of limitless options and limited resources, it’s a familiar bind: whether to spend your hard-earned cash on the fun thing that promises instant gratification, or the sensible one that may pay off in the future.

For 38-year-old Crystal, who is living in Los Angeles, the choice came down to taking a certification course, which would level her up in her career, versus finally finishing her sleeve of tattoos, “which would make me happy now,” she says.

She could only afford one, but turning over the pros and cons wasn’t getting her anywhere—so Crystal put it to a Facebook vote.

A Group That Makes Small Decisions For You brings together nearly 185,000 people from around the world to resolve the sorts of low-stakes questions and choices we all dither over, multiple times a day—from what to eat to what to watch to how to spend a few bucks. Members vote on each other’s quandaries from a handful of given options, and give their reasoning in the comments.

The group stands out within the increasingly desolate Facebook newsfeed, not just for the volume of its posts but also the intensity of engagement, warranting a 30-person-strong moderation team. Cindy Baker, 49, an admin based in Canada, says the group averages around 1,000 posts a week; some members post daily. “In some people’s lives, I know it plays a huge role.”

Most dilemmas are minor, true to the group’s name, such as picking between potential outfits, professional headshots, or shades of nail polish. Others seek help with navigating social etiquette, such as how to interpret dress codes or respond to a difficult colleague. On a regular (at least monthly) basis, someone will ask the group if they should get bangs—or, alternatively, grow their bangs out.

When Crystal sought help early last year, the response was “overwhelmingly” in favor of taking the six-to-12-month course over getting the tattoo. “I did initially want to ignore it,” she admits. But the vote, and the group’s given reasons, helped sway her.

“Some of the advice went beyond picking A or B,” Crystal says. One member pointed out that while the tattoo might get less exciting, the course would continue paying off.

Another suggested that Crystal ask her employer to help with the cost.

Crystal set aside her “strong bias towards instant gratification” and signed up for the course.

“It was absolutely the right choice,” she says. Not only did her employer agree to contribute, Crystal got her certification, got a raise, and used the extra money to finish her sleeve.

“Having a neutral outsider’s perspective helped a lot,” Crystal says. She’s also used the group to choose what to order at a new restaurant, what book to read next, and what to wear. “It’s really nice getting input from a lot of unbiased people when my brain is feeling like mush.”

The group and its constant stream of posts reflect not only the endless options we all must navigate daily, but the fatigue many people feel at doing so alone. The American adult is estimated to make an average of 35,000 decisions every day; in 2007, researchers at Cornell University found more than 221 pertaining just to food.

Not all of these decisions are significant or consequential, or even made consciously—but an emerging body of science supports the suggestion, widely known as “decision fatigue,” that the more we make, the harder we find it to control our behavior or even know our own minds.

In 2004, psychologist Barry Schwartz published The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, arguing that the explosion in consumer choice had made it harder to make satisfying decisions of any kind. That bind has only been exacerbated by the rise of e-commerce and digital services, Schwartz says, prompting him to begin work on a “substantial” revision of his book: “The problem as I