Games IRL: Supermarket Stars
I have this fantasy about what a good grocery shopper that I am. As I’m wheeling through the produce section, smugly checking items of my list, cabbage, celery, kale, oranges for juicing… check, check, check, I imagine that there’s a roving TV camera crew that will seize upon me and declare my cart the healthiest and most beautiful in all the store. I blame Gordon Elliot’s Doorknock Dinners where he knocked at random houses and made dinner from whatever they had in their pantry.
The brainstorm is this: what if grocery checkout clerks could give you a gold star if you had only good, real food in your cart. If they see too many boxes of Little Debbie cakes, no star for you. What would happen? Would you be more likely to leave that box of ChocoPoofs on the shelf?
I don’t ACTUALLY think a supermarket of any size would do this. I’m sure the giant mega super food corp™ would never let it happen. I’m more interested in the thought experiment.
Would it irritate more than the good it might do? If not, how long do you think you could run it before it got boring and stopped influencing behavior. What if you could step on a scale that did your BMI?