I wish I had coined the phrase ’tyranny of choice ’ but someone beat me to it. The counterintuitive truth is that have an abundance of options does not make you feel privileged and indulged too many options make you feel like all of them are wrong, and that you are wrong if you choose any of them.

Orlean is reflecting on a modern psychological and cultural phenomenon: when choices proliferate, they can stop feeling like freedom and start feeling like pressure. The “tyranny” lies in the way abundance shifts responsibility onto the chooser—if there are countless options, any selection can feel arbitrary, and the fear of missing a better alternative grows. Her phrasing emphasizes the emotional consequence: instead of feeling “privileged and indulged,” people may feel anxious, second-guess themselves, and interpret dissatisfaction as personal failure (“you are wrong if you choose any of them”). The quote aligns with research on choice overload and critiques consumer culture’s promise that more options automatically produce happiness.