Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

by Derek Thompson

scientists gradually realized that common illnesses like cholera were probably at the root of many vampire outbreaks. Epidemiology was advancing into the shadows of superstition and, like a beam of sunlight in so many movies, killing the undead for good. It’s tempting to say that the belief in vampires was downright silly. But the truth is that vampires were a perfectly coherent story. Vampirism accounted for every observable detail surrounding death. It explained why families got sick at the same time, why friends died after friends, and why the buried dead looked the way they looked. It’s not coincidence that, for many centuries, these myths stalked villages separated by tens of thousands of miles. The walking-dead theory of disease answered a mystery with a narrative that had meaning, suspense, and agency. It explained the chaos of life with a spectacular tale. It empowered villagers by telling them that everybody had the capacity to fight evil—with potions, garlic, prayers, chastity, stakes, swords, and fire (and, if all else failed, sanguinary brandy). Vampires were the perfect story. A great narrative catches listeners in its slipstream. Every chapter in this book has started the same way—with a story. I’m daydreaming about Monet’s water lilies in an impressionist exhibit . . . Raymond Loewy designs the 1950s . . . George Lucas writes the most commercially successful metamyth of all time. It is the convention of this book’s genre to build chapters like narrative Troj...