Derek Thompson > Quotes

“People prefer paintings that they’ve seen before. Audiences like art that gives them the jolt of meaning that often comes from an inkling of recognition.”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“It is the simplest phrase you can imagine,” Favreau said, “three monosyllabic words that people say to each other every day.” But the speech etched itself in rhetorical lore. It inspired music videos and memes and the full range of reactions that any blockbuster receives online today, from praise to out-of-context humor to arch mockery. Obama’s “Yes, we can” refrain is an example of a rhetorical device known as epistrophe, or the repetition of words at the end of a sentence. It’s one of many famous rhetorical types, most with Greek names, based on some form of repetition. There is anaphora, which is repetition at the beginning of a sentence (Winston Churchill: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields”). There is tricolon, which is repetition in short triplicate (Abraham Lincoln: “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people”). There is epizeuxis, which is the same word repeated over and over (Nancy Pelosi: “Just remember these four words for what this legislation means: jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs”). There is diacope, which is the repetition of a word or phrase with a brief interruption (Franklin D. Roosevelt: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”) or, most simply, an A-B-A structure (Sarah Palin: “Drill baby drill!”). There is antithesis, which is repetition of clause structures to juxtapose contrasting ideas (Charles Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”). There is parallelism, which is repetition of sentence structure (the paragraph you just read). Finally, there is the king of all modern speech-making tricks, antimetabole, which is rhetorical inversion: “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” There are several reasons why antimetabole is so popular. First, it’s just complex enough to disguise the fact that it’s formulaic. Second, it’s useful for highlighting an argument by drawing a clear contrast. Third, it’s quite poppy, in the Swedish songwriting sense, building a hook around two elements—A and B—and inverting them to give listeners immediate gratification and meaning. The classic structure of antimetabole is AB;BA, which is easy to remember since it spells out the name of a certain Swedish band.18 Famous ABBA examples in politics include: “Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men.” —Benjamin Disraeli “East and West do not mistrust each other because we are armed; we are armed because we mistrust each other.” —Ronald Reagan “The world faces a very different Russia than it did in 1991. Like all countries, Russia also faces a very different world.” —Bill Clinton “Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.” —George W. Bush “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.” —Hillary Clinton In particular, President John F. Kennedy made ABBA famous (and ABBA made John F. Kennedy famous). “Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind,” he said, and “Each increase of tension has produced an increase of arms; each increase of arms has produced an increase of tension,” and most famously, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Antimetabole is like the C–G–Am–F chord progression in Western pop music: When you learn it somewhere, you hear it everywhere.19 Difficult and even controversial ideas are transformed, through ABBA, into something like musical hooks.”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” In”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“When something becomes hard to think about, people transfer the discomfort of the thought to the object of their thinking. Almost”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“In 2012, Spanish researchers released a study that looked at 464,411 popular recordings around the world between 1955 and 2010 and found the difference between new hits and old hits wasn’t more complicated chord structures. Instead, it was new instrumentation bringing a fresh sound to “common harmonic progressions.”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“Picking a few hits requires a tolerance for many bad ideas, mediocre ideas, and even good ideas cursed with bad timing. Above all, it requires a business model that supports the inevitability that most new things fail; the most promising ideas often attract a chorus of skeptics; and one big hit can pay for a thousand flops.”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“The rise of the aggregators diluted the power of websites and home pages, as readers learned to go to Google or Reddit for questions previously reserved for their local newspaper. The center of power in publishing was shifting from news brands to discovery platforms,”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“The most important element in a global cascade isn’t magically viral elements or mystical influencers. Rather it is about finding a group of people who are easily influenced. It turns the influencer question on its head. Don’t ask, “Who is powerful?” Instead ask, “Who is vulnerable?” In”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“Fifty Shades story is a paradox. How could a book go viral in a world where “nothing really goes viral”?”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“It would seem that the key to catchy writing is simple. Just write in pairs. Or, to honor Carnegie’s legacy: “To be remembered, be repetitive.”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“His lullaby was an instant success not because it was incomparably original, but because it offered a familiar melody in an original setting.”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“buying is entry into a popular conversation. Popularity is the product.”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“One third of the White House staff works in some aspect of public relations to promote the president and his policies, according to political scientists Matthew Baum and Samuel Kernell. The White House is a studio, and the president is its star.”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“The sentimental story says that culture is a meritocracy in which the creative spark is king, and originality conquers all. The sentimental story says that audiences are open-minded and eager to discover challenging new ideas, whether in music, movies, or politics. The sentimental story says that because there is a formula for virality, the best ideas need no marketing—they distribute themselves, like little contagions of wonder. One of my chief goals was to explode the sentimental story. There are certain rules governing cultural markets, I found. But they rarely guarantee that the most sophisticated or morally pristine ideas become the most popular. Instead, the history of cultural sensations shows that sneakily familiar ideas have far more immediate appeal than novel ones and that the battle for cultural power is principally a battle over distribution and discovery, precisely because there is no formula for virality or easy popularity.”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“When you share something online, you are giving up nothing. In fact, you are gaining something quite valuable: an audience.”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“Ideas spread most reliably when they piggyback off an existing network of closely connected and interested people.”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“The point of these games is neither to make players tear out their hair nor to give away the secret too easily, but rather to design what the neurologist Judy Willis calls an “achievable challenge.” Most advanced yet achievable—MAYA.”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“A mystery: Two rebellious painters hang their art in the same impressionist exhibit in 1876. They are considered of similar talent and promise. But one painter’s water lilies become a global cultural hit—enshrined in picture books, studied by art historians, gawked at by high school students, and highlighted in every tour of the National Gallery of Art—and the other painter is little known among casual art fans. Why?”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular