When you’re meeting a man from Craigslist in a dark empty parking lot at 9pm and he asks you to get in his car, what do you say? I noticed he had a car seat, so I figured he at least has a kid and is therefore (probably) harmless. But then I also thought he could be someone extremely clever like some of the psychopaths who used to pretend to have a broken arm or leg to lure women into their car. I decided to roll the dice because I’m tough and/or desperate to sell an iPhone before it completely depreciates in value. It was also extremely cold outside and I shiver easily. I handed him the iPhone to review before we made a deal. He glanced it over, took me on the honor system that there was nothing wrong with the phone (there wasn’t, but never blindly trust someone on Craigslist), and we had a deal. He handed over the cash and I didn’t get murdered and left in a shallow grave in the woods. It’s too cold to dig this time of year anyway.
Selling an iPhone on Craigslist is an interesting experience because you’re dealing with people and people are endlessly fascinating. Some people would email or text me, asking if the phone was still available. After I said it was, they wouldn’t respond. I’m not sure what the point of emailing me was, possibly to starve off feelings of loneliness or bait me into some scheme I wasn’t hip to (which some people did attempt). And then someone emailed me, confirming something I had been thinking about for the last few days.
David sends an email saying:
I’m interested in your iPhone 4S 16 GB for $300 when I can get one in the same condition except 32 GB for $250. Sound good?
Confused, I write back:
What are you asking?
He writes:
Why you think you can get $300 for a 16 GB 4S when people offer me $100-$150 for my 32 GB 4S
Like an adult, I continue the conversation:
Because my 16gb white iPhone 4S is superior.
And he writes back:
I bet no one has replied.
Obviously I lied and told him that I already sold the phone. I couldn’t seem like a coconut head for asking a ridiculous price and then getting called out on it, but having nothing to back it up. I did eventually sell my iPhone for more than he sold his, but this whole exchange left me wondering…
Why did he invest time initiating a pointless conversation with me? And why did I continue the pointless conversation?
Lately I’ve been keeping a log of reasons for “core motivations” that cause people to act upon something. One of those ten or so core motivations is the increasingly needless tendency to need to feel superior to others. It explains why he’d write to me and why I’d pick up the turd and throw it back to him. He couldn’t live with the thought of someone living high on the hog, selling an iPhone that was worth less than his for more than he sold his iPhone for so he went for the ego takedown.
The superiority theory is a well known humor theory as well. I had been reading reviews of a humor book and noticed a few criticized the author for speaking highly of herself. While I was reading the book, I took her self-praise as feigned sarcasm, but this reconfirmed the superiority theory–we can’t find something funny if we get the impression that the person feels they are superior to us. The old lizard brain we all have blocks the message before our neocortex can pump out any mirth from it.
Apple knows superiority theory better than any company. There is a reason why their design is simple. They’re well aware that people have an innate desire to feel superior to things. As their brilliant designer said:
Why do we assume that simple is good? Because with physical products, we have to feel we can dominate them. As you bring order to complexity, you find a way to make the product defer to you. Simplicity isn’t just a visual style. It’s not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of the complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. For example, to have no screws on something, you can end up having a product that is so convoluted and so complex. The better way is to go deeper with the simplicity, to understand everything about it and how it’s manufactured. You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential.
– Jonathan Ive
The superiority complex isn’t completely negative, though it often leads people toward self-destructive behavior. I’m sure it works as a healthy motivator as well as it is likely a part of a survival instinct.
The lesson here for anyone who creates anything is: make your product/idea/service as easy as possible for people to understand. People don’t like feeling confused or inferior. Like everything, this concept can be taken too far with making things too minimalistic, but it’s a lesson most people don’t naturally understand.
Spenser Baldwin says
Our decisions, especially bad, are 90% related to fear or pride. The second you live life without those, it becomes crystal how simple life actually can be. To understand it so completely that you’re now able to get rid of what is not essential…
Ben Nesvig says
I agree with that. Pride could even be tied back to being a fear of what other people will think.
Ben Nesvig says
I agree with that. Pride could even be tied back to being a fear of what other people will think.