Sliced bread, and the "best" measurement system

How many times have you heard, and probably used the phrase "Blah blah blah is the best thing since sliced bread"?

Ack! This is such a floored way of measuring how "best" something is.

It's a measurement that's now been in use for almost a century. Did you know that the sliced bread machine was invented back in 1928? Technically it was invented 16 years prior to that, only it got in a fire and nobody had the good sense to claim that they'd just invented the sliced toast maker instead. Pfft.

So I got beef with this measurement system.

Why?

Well. Here's the thing...

If it was such an incredible breakthrough that we've cheerfully used "sliced bread" as a measurement of innovation, why on Earth did it take 16 years to re-invent it!? Surely we'd be all over that thing!

Suspicious (-_-)

In the past 90 or so years, we've seen incredible inventions and innovations happen. Arguably better than sliced bread. Moreover, just one year before, in 1927, the TV made an appearance, way earlier than that in 1876, the telephone.

Sliced bread trumped the telephone and the TV.

Suspicious (-_-)

I am utterly convinced that I would not be able to email, text, WhatsApp, and whatnot, without the telephone and TV having been invented. And yet, I reckon, with just a little faffing, I could still have the occasional sandwich though - y'know, without sliced bread being a thing.

So I maintain my suspicious musing (-_-)

Other notable inventions since sliced bread that appear not to have made a mark include the programmable computer, 1936-38. In the 1960s the beginnings of the modern day Internet started being kicked about. Still not better than sliced bread.

Hella suspicious (-_-)

The first time we stuffed a human into space? 1961. Not. Even. Close.

Very suspicious indeed (-_-)

Lasers... 1960. MRI scanners... 1970s. The list of things that I, for one, would say have a "best" rating above sliced bread goes on and on longer than a 1980s Ariston advert.

It is all very suspicious (-_-)

Now, one might be inclined to say "Wait up... the saying, as you pointed out at the beginning is 'Blah blah blah is the best thing since sliced bread'". So by that very nature, should somebody incantate those magical words, in that very moment, the "blah blah blah" in context here, IS better than sliced bread!

Whoop!

So lasers, MRIs, all those other wonderful things that should surely be more "best" than sliced bread... they might just be better than sliced bread after all.

Really though?

It's just...

Well...

If they truly were better than sliced bread, why did we not stop saying it when lasers came along? I mean, "Space cat videos on YouTube are the best thing since lasers", is just not a phrase we hear.

At what point did "Sliced bread is the best thing since TV" become a thing?

Who rated the "best"ness of these things anyway?! Whoever made the unmeasured and opinionated observation is who.

So I propose we have an official new measurement of how "best" something is, and it will be a fuzzy, stringy, spaghettified, measurement system because it's going to be a social-driven measurement system and will have a purely relative scale - we could, if we really wanted, use sliced bread as our "absolute zero" from which all other things will have a continually adjusting negative or positive "bestness from sliced bread" scale. Social trends, fashions, and economics will drive the "blah blah blah" up and down the scale over time so it will be hard to really pin anything down.

To that point, given how much of an unhealthy allergy bomb sliced bread actually is... is it really all that?

So very, very, suspicious (-_-)