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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
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
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
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
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
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
Last week Netflix announced that they would be stopping their long standing policy of asking customers to vote on early pilots for programs to see if they have enough critical mass and audience to continue. In the same week, at a television industry event a Netflix executive shared that Netflix finds demographics to be useless … Read more
British supermarkets are quickly becoming the unexpected pioneers in adding more empathy into retail. In January, Tesco introduced a “slow checkout line” for customers who have dementia or otherwise need more time to check out. This week, Morrisons, another British supermarket chain, announced it would have “quiet hours” to help autistic shoppers to have a … Read more
A little over two years ago, Pokemon Go was everywhere. People walked down the street glued to their phones. And then one day it all seemed to stop. Yet as this article from WIRED explores, the game is still dominating. Who is still playing? As writer Brian Barrett notes: “The game attracts proportionally more older … Read more
What do men think it means to be a man today in the era of #metoo? This is a question that has been receiving a lot of attention recently. Data analytics site FiveThirtyEight.com commissioned a study that found plenty of fascinating conclusions, including that more than 75% of men don’t believe there are any advantages today to being … Read more
Non-Obvious Thinking is my latest book about the 4 secrets of becoming a non-obvious thinker - relesaed 10/01/2024.
Rohit Bhargava is a trend curator, founder of the Non-Obvious Company and the 3-time Wall Street Journal bestselling author of ten books.
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In addition to Non-Obvious Thinking, Rohit is the author of 10 books on trends, the future of business, building a more human brand with storytelling and how to create a more diverse and inclusive world.
