Panic buying

A shopping cart full of toilet paper
(Photo: Alexas_Fotos/Pixabay | Text: David/ArtisanEnglish.jp)

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WotD: Panic buying

Fear is one of our primal reactions to a perceived threat, and it causes us to do strange things, such as panic buying.

Often, when we feel fear, we are unable to think clearly, which results in our actions not making sense.

Most recently, we saw people all around the world panic buying, of all things, toilet paper.


Panic buying results out of fear. It is a natural way for people to react to a perceived threat.


Why?

You can’t eat it, you can’t use it to make a surgical mask, and you sure can’t use it for much else than its intended purpose.

OK, COVID-19 may cause some people to experience diarrhea, but it’s not one of the major symptoms.

Well, when we panic buy, we try to assert some measure of control over a situation we see as out of our hands.

People like to think they have power over everything.

Through panic buying, we create an illusion of control for ourselves.

To me, that makes sense and is easy to understand.

Toilet paper may seem to be a strange thing to panic buy, but if you think about it, buying toilet paper in bulk makes sense.

Toilet paper does not go bad.

As long as you are alive, you will have a use for it, and it is cheap.

There, you have the perfect combination of price, usage and durability.

Combine these with the fact nobody wants to talk or even think about being caught short with nothing to clean their jiggly bits with, and you have the makings of a toilet paper manufacturer’s nightmare.

Prepare for the next panic buying spree by building up your reserves now – an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

A natural disaster could hit any area of Japan at any moment.

When it does, it will be too late to panic buy.


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This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).

On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 74.

The higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100, the easier the passage is to read.