Decoding Popularity: What Best Sellers and Box Office Hits Tell Us about Success | Derek Thompson
Senior Editor of The Atlantic, Derek Thompson, boils down the science of popularity. He suggests that the best way to reach as many people as possible is to ...
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I think that we have a terrible misconception about popularity. I think that often we define popularity in a majoritarian way. We say that in order for something to be popular most people have to like it. A majority of the population has to like it. But think about this, if a book sells one million copies in a year it is a runaway best seller that by definition 99.5 percent of Americans did not buy. The biggest movie of 2016, Rogue One, the Star Wars film, made enough money for about 35 to 40 percent of American adults to have bought a ticket and seen it. That means the vast majority of Americans did not see the most popular movie. You could say the same for television. You could say the same for music that lots of things that we consider popular are not majoritarily popular at all they ...
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I think that we have a terrible misconception about popularity. I think that often we define popularity in a majoritarian way. We say that in order for something to be popular most people have to like it. A majority of the population has to like it. But think about this, if a book sells one million copies in a year it is a runaway best seller that by definition 99.5 percent of Americans did not buy. The biggest movie of 2016, Rogue One, the Star Wars film, made enough money for about 35 to 40 percent of American adults to have bought a ticket and seen it. That means the vast majority of Americans did not see the most popular movie. You could say the same for television. You could say the same for music that lots of things that we consider popular are not majoritarily popular at all they ...
