Things described as ‘gamechangers’ actually only provide minor improvements
- ChrisF
- 6 days ago
- 2 min read
Innovations described excitedly by a man as ‘gamechangers’ actually offer just minor - if any - improvements on the previous ways of doing things, it has been confirmed.
Mike McBride routinely refers to new techniques for undertaking dull tasks and minor modifications to products and services as game changing, with little thought as to whether they are really revolutionary in any way at all.
‘Ordered in advance on the app for my Starbucks today - total gamechanger’, announced McBride on Facebook. ‘Saved me a couple of minutes in the queue today = maybe 4 hours over a year!’
‘Did a steak in the air fryer last night’, said McBride to his mates down the local club. ‘It’s honestly an absolute game changer for me - and I would think for anyone who wants a consistent medium rare cook throughout the whole piece of a sirloin’.
‘Local tip now open till 5pm instead of 4pm on a Sunday! #summerhours #waste #refuse #gamechanger ‘, posted McBride on his family WhatsApp group.
‘There’s a tendency for people to overstate how revolutionary quite small innovations actually are’ noted Richard da Costa, Professor of Behavioural Psychology at the University of Lunn (formerly Lunn Poly). ‘You see it being used in a whole host of situations, and it gives the person who is reporting the improvement - the ‘game changee’, if you like - a small feeling of importance and superiority in their discovery’.
‘I’ve just reported my findings of a small scale study on this exact phenomenon in a journal that will be read by probably 5 or 6 people at least - fair to say that in the field of social psychology it’s a total gamechanger’.