Friday, June 5, 2009

Why Things Become Unpopular

A recent study has found that the fall of an item’s popularity mirrors its rise to popularity, so that items that become popular faster also die out faster, which is demonstrated by name trends. Image caption: Berger and Le Mens. ©2009 PNAS
"Why is everybody suddenly wearing those new sandals and listening to that new band? It's so trendy!" A recent study has investigated this sentiment in order to understand why some cultural products and styles die out faster than others. According to the results, the quicker a cultural item rockets to popularity, the quicker it dies. This pattern occurs because people believe that items that are adopted quickly will become fads, leading them to avoid these items, thus causing these items to die out.


LINK

Via: PhysOrg.com

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