What You're Not Being Shown

Why discovery requires stepping off the path.

Want to listen to this post? That’s easy. Just click below.

When you listen to a radio station, chances are you’re going to hear a relatively small number of songs. There are estimates that as many as 100 million songs have been recorded in history, but your average pop music station might play, at most, 200 of them. If it’s a classic rock station, you might be gifted with 500.

Out of millions.

Walk into a bookstore and you’ll see tables set up to display the books they think you’re most likely to purchase. It’s a tiny—and I mean TINY—fraction of the books published each year. Again, there are millions upon millions of available titles, but the store can’t possibly stock them all. Instead, they make an educated guess on what will move the sales needle.

Out of millions.

In a grocery store, we’re practically overwhelmed by what we think is a staggering number of choices. But for every item you see on a shelf, there are scads of other options not stocked by the grocery store chain. You get ‘served’ the ones the store’s data has decided you’re most likely to buy.

Out of millions.

Where surprise lives

This is not a condemnation of radio stations, bookstores, or grocery stores. It’s not an indictment of any business that must compete in a tough market and must do anything to eke out a profit. Hey, they have to put food on the table, too.

Rather, it’s a subtle reminder that there are countless gems out there that go undiscovered. I love it when I come across a band that slipped through the cracks. They may have had everything it took to be successful, but for whatever reason they just never got traction.

A couple of years ago, for example, I stumbled onto a band from the early 1970s called Fanny. Their song “Blind Alley” blew me away, as did several of their other songs. And I’d never heard of them. I’m not saying they’re never played on traditional radio, but I’ve never heard it happen. I worked in radio, for Christ’s sake, and they were new to me—more than 50 years later.

I love it when a friend recommends a book that’s nowhere to be found in a traditional bookstore. Or when a chance encounter at a Saturday morning farmers market reveals a delight I’d never find in a grocery store.

These examples quietly dismantle the illusion of abundance. Yes, our eyeballs are assaulted with choices. Hell, just sit on your couch and scroll through a streaming service on your TV. There are more choices available than you could ever watch in a lifetime.

And yet those options are still but a fraction of the content produced. We’re fed a diet of books and shows and songs that either (a) the algorithms think we’ll buy, or (b) people have paid extra for you to see.

Hey, one of my brothers was in the grocery industry for decades and he told me stories about how much vendors would pay for end caps to display their soda or chips or detergent. You wouldn’t believe how much money changes hands in order to shove a product in your face.

And man, it works. When I first published my Galahad series of books in 2005, a friend of mine was a manager at a Borders bookstore—may they rest. Simply as a favor, she stuck my books on an end cap for a few days, until some big shots like Random House or Simon & Schuster wrote a check. My sales spike for those few days was real.

The point is, we’re basically shown only a tiny highlight reel of all the available options. Some people are comfortable with that. Some want more but don’t know where to find it.

Naturally, there are some who relish discovering new artists before they hit the mainstream—and boy, do they like to remind us.

But the real divide isn’t between people who like popular things and people who crave obscure things. It’s between people who are happy to accept what’s put in front of them and people who occasionally step off the path.

Because discovery doesn’t happen on an end cap. It doesn’t happen on a store’s front table, or show up in a “Because You Watched . . .” row. Those are purely convenience.

Discovery lives one click deeper, one aisle over, one recommendation from a human being who isn’t selling you anything.

Go wandering

The best songs I’ve ever fallen in love with weren’t fed to me. I found them.

The most memorable books I’ve enjoyed through the years weren’t promoted to me. They were recommended by someone who said, “Trust me.”

Some of my favorite foods never saw the inside of a national chain. They came from a folding table at a market, usually in front of a handwritten sign.

That’s not nostalgia. It’s participation.

Let’s face it: Algorithms are terrific at reinforcing the things we already like. But they’re terrible at surprising us. And surprise, my friend, is where the magic lives.

So yes, the world is happy to show you a highlight reel. Honestly, there’s just far too much content for anything else. But if you rely on that reel exclusively, you’re letting someone else decide the boundaries of your taste.

To me, that’s a shame.

Out there—beyond the radio rotation, beyond the bookstore tables, beyond the grocery store end caps—are songs that will move you, books that will stay with you for years, and ideas that just might stretch you.

You have to be willing to go looking.

Among the millions.

---

Dom Testa writes fiction and nonfiction, and he’s convinced the magic lives one click deeper.
His books are on a hidden shelf at DomTestaBooks.com.