The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 17 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Thompson: In an age of abundance, every hit is a cult hit
“Trump is a cult hit, and perhaps every single hit in an age of abundance is a cult hit, adored by a minority, but from a majoritarian perspective, broadly unpopular.”
Thompson: Owning distribution controls audience media consumption
“If you own the channels of distribution, then you own the means of exposure. You get to determine what people see, what people listen to, what people watch.”
Thompson: People are drawn to new ideas reminiscent of old ones
“People are most reliably drawn to new ideas that remind them of old ideas.”
Thompson: Political advertising only works on low-information voters
“An example of this in politics would be that political advertisements don't work at all when people have decided that they like Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, but local elections will where the viewers don't know either of the candidates involved, right? Tha…”
Thompson: Extreme user defenses signal extraordinary product design success
“And if a product is designed such that the consumer has to employ meticulous, complicated strategies to stop using it, that's an extraordinary sign that something was done right to a certain extent.”
Thompson: Selling novel products requires making them familiar
“To sell something familiar, the key is to make it surprising, but to sell something surprising, the key is to make it familiar.”
Thompson: 90% of music listening is repeat consumption
“90% of the time that we're listening to music, We're listening to a piece of a song that we've already heard before.”
Thompson: Half of top 21st-century movies are sequels or adaptations
“Half of the top 10 movies in America every single year this century are sequels, adaptations, and reboots.”
Thompson: Social media feeds never accurately reflect broader public opinion
“It's the illusion that your social network is accurately reflective of the world. And we should just try to build the instinct to think that it never is. That just because something seems ubiquitous to our local communities almost never means that it's necessa…”
Thompson: In a fragmented culture, most media products are not for you
“Just remember that in a world where popularity is cultish, most products are not for you.”
Thompson: A formula for success cannot exist because norms yield average outcomes
“There's a very, like, simple, like, syllogism for why there could never, ever be a formula for success. That means that someone's discovered it, right? And if one person's discovered it, then probably several people have discovered this formula for success. Th…”
Thompson: Distribution path is often more decisive than product design
“What's the story of this product's distribution? How did it find its market? Because that story is ultimately, or at least often, more descriptive of its ultimate success.”
Thompson: Repetition drives consumer preference among low-information audiences
“When you're dealing with a consumer demographic that doesn't know a whole lot about a certain subject, that at that point, lots of repetition and lots of familiarity can really bake in liking.”
Thompson: People mistake familiarity and reputation for actual liking
“Certainly one thing that's happening when people consider a famous artwork to be good without, you know, deeply thinking about it is that they're conflating familiarity and reputation with liking.”
Thompson: Discover Weekly engagement dropped when Spotify removed familiar songs
“Spotify, when they were initially designing their incredible program, Discover Weekly, they initially wanted it to be entirely new songs. But a bug in the algorithm accidentally let through some familiar songs as they were testing internally. So they fixed the…”