Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading (Nadia Asparouhova, Writer & Researcher)

Speaker A: If you think about an idea spreading through a network, there's lots of different nodes. People are nodes, so each of us is a node in our network. And so you might receive an idea and you are currently infected with the idea, but you're not expressing it or showing symptoms to other people. So that's the sweet spot where anti-memetic ideas can live. When someone has become really infected by an idea, they need to express it by all means necessary, right? I think that's kind of a beautiful thing. I want to step aside and just let that person go to town with whatever is in their heads.

Speaker B: I loved also the notion of the super meme as something you should actually be quite wary of because it is something so absorbing that it will suck so much of your attention if you let it. Speaker A: I see it in my group chats and stuff. I'm sure you do too, where it's like some new seed of a thing is starting to work its way in and then suddenly it's taking over and then that's like all people are talking about. And so I think it's worth at least recognizing the shape of the thing to say, do I actually care about this thing or is it just shaped in a way that is very alluring to me?

Speaker C: Hey, I'm Mario, and this is The Generalist Podcast. You might have heard the saying, the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed. I created this show to bring you conversations with founders, investors, and thinkers who see unusual pockets of the future before the rest of the world. Today I'm speaking with Nadia Asparova, a writer and researcher, about her new book, Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading. It's an excellent, thoughtful analysis of how new ideas are born, why some go viral and others fade into obscurity. And as you'll hear, Nadia possesses a rare gift for translating the dynamics underpinning our digital world.