I went to the symphony tonight, and enjoyed myself. The performance was good.

(It was not great.)

And yet, the audience gave a standing ovation.

You know that bit when the rest of the audience is standing and you’re kind of peer pressured to stand up too? I hate that.

Standing ovations should (ugh I’m using that word) occur when a performance went above and beyond what is normal.

The problem is, many people these days don’t either 1. play an instrument to a level where they are no longer impressed that someone else can play that instrument too, and/or 2. don’t see very many live performances. So any performance is impressive.

That’s true–it’s pretty cool that we humans can cultivate our talents and show them off to each other in a meaningful way–and that’s why we invented applause.

When every show gets a Standing O, nobody gets a Standing O.