Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook to be a HotOrNot ripoff, YouTube was launched to be a video version of it—that’s a trillion dollars’ worth of market cap right there. That’s because they’d stumbled across a world-changing concept: applying a numerical value to human behavior that had never before been quantifiable. Up until then, for all human history, any individual could lie to themselves, could secretly believe they were more attractive than they are, or smarter, or more creative, or nicer, or richer. Or, and this is the big one, that their beliefs were popular.
