Tuesday, September 1, 2009
We Fear Change
People like to complain when something is altered, even when it’s an arguably trivial makeover. I saw an article this week about how Ikea changed the font of the lettering in their catalog, and thousands of people wrote to complain about it. One group even started a petition against the change! I don’t really understand why anyone would care all that much about something seemingly insignificant like that. When Facebook changed the look of their homepage about 6 months ago, there was a giant uproar from a lot of people who were opposed to the change. Why does it matter? Can you remember now what it looked like prior to the update? Why are we so afraid to try new things? Changes like that stir up our comfortable routine, but we need to prioritize which changes are scary and significant and which ones are really not a big deal. If people give themselves time to adjust to something different, they will be able to accept it or even grow to like it after a while. It’s too bad we waste so much energy fighting the small changes.
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I understood the uproar over the FB change only in that, when it happened, I'd JUST joined and was REALLY confused!! The day before, I thought I'd had it figured out...the next day, I was mystified all over again :).
Anyway, your point is well taken. I've seen people get outraged over weird things, too. I suspect the fear comes from feeling that so many things we can't control are changing and, maybe, if we exert our opinions on something small (like, um, font ;), we'll feel slightly more in control then. A theory...
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