Dataclysm: Love, Sex, Race, and Identity--What Our Online Lives Tell Us about Our Offline Selves

by Christian Rudder

I know there are a lot of people making big claims about data, and I’m not here to say it will change the course of history—certainly not like internal combustion did, or steel—but it will, I believe, change what history is. With data, history can become deeper. It can become more. Unlike clay tablets, unlike papyrus, unlike paper, newsprint, celluloid, or photo stock, disk space is cheap and nearly inexhaustible. On a hard drive, there’s room for more than just the heroes.

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But the idea that variance is a positive thing is fairly well established in other arenas. Social psychologists call it the “pratfall effect”—as long as you’re generally competent, making a small, occasional mistake makes people think you’re more competent. Flaws call out the good stuff all the more.

everyone on Earth has some kind of flaw, the real moral here is: be yourself and be brave about it. Certainly trying to fit in, just for its own sake, is counterproductive.

There will be more words written on Twitter in the next two years than contained in all books ever printed. It’s