I like what you like

The New York Times has a very interesting article about herd instinct. The main point it makes is that people tend to like things that they think other people like (or will like). In other words, Himesh Reshammiya is popular because he is popular. Of course, people do have intrinsic likes and dislikes which are independent of what other people think – but equally, if not more more important role is played by the “social” aspect.

And of course, there is research to prove this point.

They created 9 different websites of music by unknown artists. Users of these websites could download and listen to the music. On 8 of those websites, the users could see how often a song had been downloaded by others in the past (from that website only). And on the last one, they had no idea of the popularity of the song. And a bunch of interesting results emerge:

First, if people know what they like regardless of what they think other people like, the most successful songs should draw about the same amount of the total market share in both the independent and social-influence conditions — that is, hits shouldn’t be any bigger just because the people downloading them know what other people downloaded. And second, the very same songs — the “best” ones — should become hits in all social-influence worlds.

What we found, however, was exactly the opposite. In all the social-influence worlds, the most popular songs were much more popular (and the least popular songs were less popular) than in the independent condition. At the same time, however, the particular songs that became hits were different in different worlds, just as cumulative-advantage theory would predict. Introducing social influence into human decision making, in other words, didn’t just make the hits bigger; it also made them more unpredictable.

On an average, they found that a song that was was a top-5 song in terms of intrinsic quality (the 9th website), had only a 50%
chance of making it into the top-5 list by popularity.

So that should explain why shakalakalakalakalakalakalakalaka shakalaka boom boom is assaulting my ears everywhere. And why Aap ka Suroor is even happening.