Comments on: Mythbusting: Ideas Do Not Spread Because they are Good

By: Interesting reading… – The Blogs at HowStuffWorks

Interesting reading… – The Blogs at HowStuffWorks — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:53:40 +0000

[...] Ideas do not spread because they are good – “I’d like to debunk a myth that has gone on, rampant and unchallenged in marketing circles, especially viral and social marketing, for some time now, but first I feel a few caveats are in order…” [...]

By: Anton Olsen.com » Blog Archive » Bookmarks for October 22nd through October 23rd

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:30:07 +0000

[...] Mythbusting: Ideas Do Not Spread Because they are Good | Dan Zarrella – Perhaps finally we can rid ourselves of the admittedly quaint and comforting notion that we only adopt ideas, content and products because of how good and useful they are and start to understand that we adopt them because they are good at getting adopted. [...]

By: Carl Ingalls

Carl Ingalls — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:33:25 +0000

Thank you for writing an article that stirred people up so well. You made them think. That is so much more important than trying to make them believe. Mission accomplished!

I’ve been doing amateur research on how “memes” propagate through Twitter via the retweet mechanism. Very simple measurements. Initial results are fascinating. Something very unusual going on there. Does not follow the standard model. Might be fun to discuss on Twitter. I just started following you. I’m Carl_Ingalls there.

By: Site O Rific

Site O Rific — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:32:23 +0000

Anyone fascinated by the idea of a Meme or propagation of ideas may want to check out Spiral Dynamics and Don Becks research and implementation of memetic deep structures. Also Ken Wilber’s AQAL model of human development.

By: Stuart Foster

Stuart Foster — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:13:27 +0000

Excellent points Dan. I often come up against ideas and content that is not necessarily the best…but is promoted by the best. It is an interesting juxtaposition within social media and one that will continue to grow as more and more marketers (who aren’t necessarily great writers/content producers) enter the content arena.

By: Friedbeef.com

Friedbeef.com — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 10:03:11 +0000

Excellent – very well put indeed

By: David G.

David G. — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 15:00:26 +0000

This article was not very well written in my opinion. It makes too many leaps for the reader. Assumptions on memes and their meanings, leaves some readers wondering “what you are talking about.”
However, you didn’t add Communism to your list of bad ideas that keep going and going and going…like the energizer bunny.

By: nanreh

nanreh — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 21:59:18 +0000

nice post. i disagree with the idea that drug abuse/addiction happens because it’s a successful meme. there’s a physiological component to that one that’s absent from all of your other examples.
thnx..
nanreh

By: sam

sam — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:26:27 +0000

If anyone has jumped straight to the comments, congratulations, you win! Protip: skip the entire pretentious and annoying article and read this one useful paraphrased sentence:

we should rid ourselves of the notion that we only adopt ideas, content and products because of how good and useful they are. we instead adopt them because they are good at getting adopted.

By: John Savage

John Savage — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:35:45 +0000

Wow, I truly love the MythBusters. Especialyl that cute red head!

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:08:50 +0000

Very interesting book about this is : “the purple cow” , by Seth Godin.

By: Stephan

Stephan — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 08:40:33 +0000

in support of Douglas Walker’s comment,
I would expand your argument against the naive use of the term ‘good’ in this article. There is no such thing as good in an objective sense (whatever that may mean). By using and presupposing the notion of ‘good’ in your article you are unintentionally creating the myth you are trying to ‘bust’.

Just refrain from applying this concept of ‘good’. Using it mearly creates a sentence that *looks* like a meaningfull statement, e.g. compare: “Mythbusting: Ideas Do Not Spread Because they are Blue”.

For further reading e.g.:
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse
Note: do not read the translated version, just learn another language you might actually learn something in the process

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 06:52:50 +0000

That’s just what the memes want you to think!

By: cyb

cyb — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 05:30:36 +0000

The only purpose of the word “anti-semitism” is that it is a smear word.

Most socalled jews aren’t even descended from Shem (Shemites/Semites), the second of Noah’s three sons so the word anti-semite doesn’t even make sense.

By: tonyd

tonyd — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 01:24:43 +0000

As good as Ted is I really hate that they have a pre-roll commercial for themselves. we get it. ted is good, except when they are telling us so.

By: Phil Baumann

Phil Baumann — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:58:35 +0000

This is spot on with respect to the success of meme via the stepwise process of selective pressures.

I don’t know how far enough memetics has gone toward explaining everything about consciousness, but the analogy of ideas to memes works sufficiently well in understanding the transmission, or infectivity, of ideas from host to host.

Memes, like any replicator, need media to grow in and be transmitted through. It’s very easy for the wrong ideas to spread through the right kind of media and into all sorts of brains.

How this specifically relates to ‘viral marketing’ depends on the marketer and the marketed.

So to whom is this thesis, which I believe is correct, worth more? The viral marketer or the target market?

By: Wes

Wes — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:27:53 +0000

I’ll go ahead and stand up for Oran there. Memes, in the end, cannot survive without the human actors who perpetuate them. While it is an interesting idea, and can be useful to explain some specific situations, not all cultural practices can be considered ‘memetic’. As well, a simple test for these memes would be to say, ‘if they are so good at replicating themselves, why are they not embraced by every person on earth?’ Obviously, blood feuds and terrorism will hit a brick wall sooner or later as the meme will perpetuate itself into oblivion, but where is the check on something like anti-semitism? or religion? both of these have been posited as self-replicating memes, but if they are so powerful, why am both an atheist and a lover of the semitic races? The reason is because human beings, as sometimes logical actors, are not slaves to their actions or to their culture. They, to quote a phrase, live in webs of significance that they themselves, create.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:02:50 +0000

So I think whoever believes the myth that this article debunks needs to go pray for a better mind. Any amount of exposure to popular media should clue you in that an idea does not have to be good in order to spread.
This whole article is one big fallacy. It is begging the question from the start. His premise is that ideas don’t have to be good to be accepted. SO, these ideas are bad, they are accepted, so they are bad. You did nothing to prove your point beyond the common sense of your premise. Maybe next time find something original to say and then try to support it. Stop attempting to rip off other people’s ideas (and failing miserably I might add).

By: jdonnovan

jdonnovan — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:59:46 +0000

I have been saying this all along, but everyone, especially these days, thinks that their ideas being great is all that matters when in reality the greatness could be in the form of promotion. Oh and I love the mythbusters!

By: Dan Zarrella

Dan Zarrella — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:45:52 +0000

“Here’s another myth for you to bust: memes. There’s no such thing.”

Really? And intellectually lazy? Memes are certainly not some “mythical entity” but a unit that has been studied by many intellectually rigorous scientists, Richard Dawkins, Susan Blackmore and Daniel Dennett to name a few.