Democracy Is a Mistake: I Handed My Life's Decisions to a Group Chat and They Chose Violence

There's a statistic floating around that the average adult makes roughly 35,000 decisions a day. I don't know if that's true, but I do know that by 8:47 a.m. last Tuesday, I had already burned through most of mine deciding whether to wear the navy shirt or the other navy shirt.

So I did what any rational person with a smartphone and poor impulse control would do: I outsourced my entire life to a group chat.

The rules were simple. Every decision — outfits, meals, texts to my boss, whether to attend my neighbor's housewarming party — would be put to a vote in a chat with nine friends, two of whom I've met in person exactly once. Majority rules. No vetoes. No takebacks.

I call it "The Experiment." My friends call it "the best content we've ever had."

Day One: The Honeymoon Phase

Monday started innocently. The chat voted 7-2 that I should wear the gray sweater. Fine. Reasonable. Democracy working as intended.

Lunch was a 5-4 squeaker for the salad place near my office. I felt heard. I felt represented. I briefly understood why people cry when they vote.

Then came the first test of my loyalty to the process. My boss asked if I could "circle back on the Q3 deck EOD." The chat deliberated for 11 minutes — an eternity in workplace communication — before landing on my reply:

"You got it, boss man. 🫡"

I have never used the phrase "boss man" in my life. I have never used the saluting emoji in a professional context. I sent it anyway, because I am a man of my word, and my word belongs to nine people who named the group chat "Decision Domination Zone."

My boss replied "Ha, love the energy!" I have never been more frightened by workplace enthusiasm.

The Socks and Sandals Incident

Tuesday morning, I woke to 12 unread messages and a poll already in progress. The question: footwear for a day that included two client meetings.

The options were:

• A.) Normal shoes (boring, apparently)
• B.) Sneakers (the safe choice)
• C.) Socks with sandals

Socks with sandals won 6-3. It wasn't even close. There was a campaign. Someone posted a mood board. Someone else argued in the replies that "socks with sandals is a look, and cowardice is also a look, so pick one."

I want to be clear: I own socks with sandals specifically because I never intended to wear them in public. They were a laundry-day configuration, an accident of convenience. On Tuesday, they walked into a client meeting.

The client, a lovely woman named Diane from a company that makes industrial fasteners, looked down, looked up, and said, "Comfortable?"

"It's a whole thing," I said. Diane nodded like she understood. Maybe she did. Maybe Diane is also living under chat rule. We live in a society.

The Erosion of Free Will (Days 3-5)

Here's what nobody tells you about surrendering your autonomy: it gets easier. That's the horrifying part.

By Wednesday, I stopped forming opinions entirely. The chat asked what I wanted for dinner and I genuinely had no answer. I was a vessel. A polling station with a body attached. When the vote came back 8-1 for the gas station hot dog — the lone dissenting vote was mine, cast out of pure spite — I ate the gas station hot dog. It was fine. That's the worst part. It was completely fine.

Thursday's decision was whether I should attend my neighbor's housewarming party. The chat voted no, 5-4, citing "vibes" and "the fact that he has a karaoke machine." I sent a polite decline. I then spent Friday night at home watching three hours of videos about the Deepwater Horizon incident, which is what my life had become without anyone to vote on it for me.

Somewhere around Day 5, I noticed I was no longer reading the options before voting on my own replies. Someone in the chat had started submitting response options written in a light Old English dialect. My boss received an email containing the phrase "hark, the deck is complete." The boss man responded with "😂😂 love it." I have concerns about my entire workplace.

The Final Tally

By the end of the week, the experiment had produced:

• 47 separate polls
• 1 landslide (socks with sandals, and we don't talk about the runner-up, which was "no socks")
• 2 meals consisting entirely of snacks purchased at a Wawa
• 1 email to my boss containing the word "perchance," used correctly, somehow
• 0 remaining shreds of independent thought

The chat, flush with power, began floating weekend expansion plans. They wanted to vote on my dating profile. They wanted to vote on my haircut. One friend proposed a constitutional amendment to make all votes final within 60 seconds "to increase throughput."

I dissolved the government on Sunday at 9:14 p.m. I did it unilaterally, which felt like the first real decision I'd made in a week, and honestly, it felt incredible.

A Survival Guide for Anyone Tempted to Try This

Should you, reader, decide to hand your life to a group chat — and you will, because decision fatigue is real and democracy is seductive — follow these rules:

1. Cap the electorate at five people. Nine voters means nine agendas, and at least two of them want you to suffer.
2. Never outsource your boss emails. Nothing sent under chat rule is recoverable. HR does not accept "the people spoke" as a defense.
3. Ban write-in candidates. The moment someone can propose "socks with sandals," they will propose socks with sandals.
4. Keep one decision sacred. Mine was dinner on Sunday, which I made alone, in silence, weeping gently over a grilled cheese. It was the best meal of my life.
5. Know when to dissolve the government. If the chat starts holding votes about you rather than for you, that's not a poll. That's a coup.

The experiment is over. The chat is now just called "the fellas" again and mostly talks about fantasy football. But every so often, someone will text me a poll — "lunch?" — and I'll feel that old pull, the sweet relief of not having to choose.

I ignore it. Usually.

The hot dog was fine, though. I think about the hot dog.