The Tragedy of the Long Tail

The Long Tail.

The Long Tail says that the principle benefit of online shopping comes not from lowered prices or through avoiding of location specific tariffs and taxes but through the greater options available to the consumer thanks to a nearly unlimited selection of the available goods. Because the costs of storage and distribution are markedly lower than with a traditional “brick and mortar” establishment, online retailers are able to open up their deep catalog – those many items they tend to sell a little of – rather than focusing on their short catalog – those few items they sell many of – and can draw their profits from trading a high volume of only marginally successful individual items. This means that online retailers are particularly well suited for niche marketing.

The Progress Paradox

At a certain point too many options becomes just as harmful as too few. Because people freeze when confronted with too many choices with no clear cut answers as to which one is best. The effort to determine which of any dozens of marginal benefits is seen as not worth the time it would take to compare and contrast – so the natural impulse is to remain with what’s already been working even if there is another option which can be proven to be better. More options is not always the best, the answer is better or more efficient options.

The Long Tail and the retail policies it represents are not isolated events but symptoms of a clear trend in society. As it grows larger it tends to split apart into smaller and smaller groups which are easier to manage – empires rise but empires also fall and break into tribes. These niches continually look inwards instead of outwards as they become more and more self-sufficient even as they become more insulated from the effects of their isolation. In the present day, technological advances that have opened new lines of communications the paradoxical trend has been for culture to slip away from consensus and towards numerous mutually exclusive groups. Because these groups can more easily talk to one another, find one another, and have their needs met through the equivalents of niche marketing, they can withdraw from the greater society and spiral into their own, private worlds. And, since an individual within one of those worlds is surrounded by like-minded persons - who speak and act and behave in similar manners - it’s very difficult for such an individual to notice that they’ve moved out of the mainstream and into a subsidiary branch. A vicious cycle develops that – absent any moderating influences - should result in the loss of anything resembling the normality of the mainstream. Which, itself, results in the collapse of those interconnected niches who can no longer support themselves.