Natural Selection Favors the Wrong Chips

You can learn a lot about evolution from a plate of nachos.

The best chip never survives.

The one loaded with steak, perfectly melted cheese, a balanced jalapeño slice? Extinct in seconds. It doesn’t stand a chance. Excellence attracts attention. Attention leads to elimination.

The flashy chips go first. The dramatic ones. The ones people point at and say, “Oh that’s a good one.” That’s not praise. That’s a death sentence.

Meanwhile, the plain chips sit quietly at the edge. Structurally sound. Lightly involved. No one lunges for them. They persist.

The overloaded center chips collapse under pressure. The bold ones break mid-air. The cheese-heavy elite sink into the middle and disappear in a slow, avoidable tragedy.

By the end of the plate, what remains isn’t greatness. It’s the survivors. The dry ones. The ones that never drew attention. The chips that mastered the art of not being the best.

Natural selection on a nacho plate doesn’t reward superiority. It rewards mediocrity and perimeter placement.

And just like that, the mediocre inherit the earth. Briefly.