In a follow-up experiment, Watts and his fellow scientists got a little cheeky: They inverted the rankings. Some visitors went to music sites where the least popular song was falsely listed as number one. You can probably guess what happened. Previously ignored songs initially soared in popularity. Previously popular songs were ignored. Simply believing, even wrongly, that a song was popular made many participants more likely to download it. Rankings created superstars, even when they lied.
