The One Reason So Many Brand Pranks On April Fools Day Failed This Year
Why do some branded April Fools Day jokes work while others fall flat?
Behavioural Economics
How The Non-Obvious Trend Of “RetroTrust” Started Taking Off
One of the most popular trends from this year’s edition of Non-Obvious was a trend I called RetroTrust – the idea that we trust in brands and experiences from our past. Since I wrote the chapter, I am discovering new examples of the trend in real life all the time. Last week I told the … Read more
Why We Should Stop Trusting Viral Videos
Last week one of the inescapable stories in the United States was a controversial video showing a group of Catholic students appearing to clash with Native Americans. They were widely condemned and the video was endlessly dissected in opinion stories shared online and one of the students even went on television to defend himself. Over the course of … Read more
The Dangerous Side Effects Of Marie Kondo’s Tidying Movement
Japanese organizational guru Marie Kondo recently launched a show on Netflix and has inspired millions of people to get rid of the clutter in their lives. Perhaps predictably, now some people are extending that advice to their digital lives too, as the WIRED UK article linked here points out. In this quest to rid ourselves … Read more
Why Do Critics Hate Movies That Real People Love?
The Queen-inspired film Bohemian Rhapsody film was poorly rated by critics, yet became a big box office hit. Earlier this year, the same thing happened to Hugh Jackman’s The Greatest Show musical film about the life of PT Barnum. Why are critics so out of touch with what real people like? And why do we love the … Read more
How To Cure Your Social Media Addiction
This was a week filled with more social media stupidity than usual. In a single day I read two disturbing stories that got me thinking about the dangers of our social media addiction. In one, an excited baseball fan posted a picture of his World Series ticket (with the bar code visible) only to an observant thief … Read more
Do Fantasy Sports Dehumanize Athletes And Make Us Worse People?
As Washington Redskin’s running back Chris Thompson shares, “Fantasy football, it makes us not human. It’s almost like people think we’re just robots out there, performing for you.” In a sport sometimes described as our modern day gladiator ring due to how often the sport causes long term inury and even death among its participants, Thompson has a … Read more
How To Tell If You’re An Asshole (And Why It’s So Hard)
Last week a small army of cruise ship passengers disrupted a funeral in the tiny Norwegian city of Honningsvåg and took pictures of the mourners. According to The Guardian, Barcelona is crowded with careless tourists who overrun destinations and fail to respect the culture. A political story of a Supreme Court nominee seeming to ignore a handshake and walk away this … Read more
New Study Finds Robots Can Emotionally Manipulate Humans Easily
A team of German researchers from the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany studied how humans interact with robots. In a paper published in PLOS ONE – they offered the finding that people who were asked to turn a robot off were more likely to leave it on if the robot pleaded with them to “live.” The conclusion … Read more
Why Does The Internet Make Stupidity So Viral?
Earlier this week the US government had to officially ask people to stop jumping out of moving cars to dance in the streets in response to a viral dance challenge for one of Drake’s songs. About the same time I first read this story, for some reason another story and video about how you can … Read more
