Want to stress-test your marriage? Get an IKEA bookshelf.
I wonder if Ingvar Kamprad knew the effect his furniture had on people.
Not just the relationship body count, but the shift in value perception.
Scientists coined "The IKEA Effect" to describe how labor alone can jack up a person's valuation of a product.
It's like that man you share a roof with: kinda broken, occasionally drunk, and a tad defensive. But priceless.
Why? Because you've sunk so much goddamn work into that human that your labor-love goggles only see a Greek God in Crocs, wielding an electric drill dangerously close to his flabby bits.
Even when he sees your competence with the IKEA manual as a direct assault on his manliness, the perceived value of that walking dumpster fire goes up like NVIDIA stock.
You patiently wait as he screws the bookshelf base backward, pretending it's all part of some grand plan. And, somehow, your affection grows.
Ingvar Kamprad, were you playing some kind of 4D social chess?
Or was this just a happy accident that lives in every wonky bookshelf and every relationship that survived its assembly?
You didn't just sell furniture; you sold a twisted form of couples therapy with an Allen key and extra screws included.
Well played.
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Matias.