Why Good Ideas Die Quietly and Bad Ideas Go Viral | The New Yorker

archive.today webpage capture Saved from history←priornext→ 28 May 2025 14:33:15 UTC All snapshots from host www.newyorker.com WebpageScreenshot sharedownload .zipreport bug or abuse Skip to main content Newsletter Sign In Search The Latest News Books & Culture Fiction & Poetry Humor & Cartoons Magazine Puzzles & Games Video Podcasts Goings On Shop 100th Anniversary Play/Pause Button Under Review Why Good Ideas Die Quietly and Bad Ideas Go Viral A new book, “Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading,” argues that notions get taken up not because of their virtue but because of their catchiness. By Gideon Lewis-Kraus May 28, 2025 Illustration by Timo Lenzen The internet—it seemed like such a good idea at the time. Under conditions of informational poverty, our ancestors had no choice but to operate on a need-to-know basis. The absence of pertinent, reliable, and commonly held facts was at first a matter of mere logistics—the stable storage and orderly transfer of knowledge was c

archive.today webpage capture Saved from history←priornext→ 28 May 2025 14:33:15 UTC All snapshots from host www.newyorker.com WebpageScreenshot sharedownload .zipreport bug or abuse Skip to main content Newsletter Sign In Search The Latest News Books & Culture Fiction & Poetry Humor & Cartoons Magazine Puzzles & Games Video Podcasts Goings On Shop 100th Anniversary Play/Pause Button Under Review Why Good Ideas Die Quietly and Bad Ideas Go Viral A new book, “Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading,” argues that notions get taken up not because of their virtue but because of their catchin