Contagious media spreads fastest when stripped of all inessential content

Evidence

Peretti may not have been able to create anything while at Eyebeam on the scale of his Nike experience, but he would author a twenty-three-point manifesto that he called “Notes on Contagious Media,” expounding just what distinguished that variety from others. Some of it was obvious: “Contagious media is the kind of media you immediately want to share with all your friends. This requires that you take pleasure in consuming the media but also pleasure in the social process of passing it on.” Some more theoretical: “Contagious media is a form of pop conceptual art” in which “the idea is the machine that makes the art (LeWitt, 1967) and the idea is interesting to ordinary people.” For that reason, “a contagious media project should represent the simplest form of an idea. Fancy design or extraneous content made media less contagious. Anything inessential constituted a ‘payload’ that the contagion must drag along as it spreads. The bigger the payload, the more slowly the entire project spreads.” — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 949

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader attention-economics thread of this book and to modern viral content design; also to memetics literature. — connects to: Viral attention mobilized by the internet evaporates as quickly as it arises; Generalized media transmit selections across chains beyond everyday language — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 207; Emotionally charged content spreads better, so platforms optimize for outrage — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 487 (+2 more)
• SEED: The ‘payload’ principle could ground an essay on why minimalist viral formats (text posts vs. polished video) win attention.

Broader Connections

• Viral attention mobilized by the internet evaporates as quickly as it arises #complicates (0.78)
• Emotionally charged content spreads better, so platforms optimize for outrage #qualifies (0.75) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 487
• Mass media exploit receiver attention through a stark production-to-reception asymmetry. #expands (0.73) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 192
• Generalized media transmit selections across chains beyond everyday language #qualifies (0.72) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 207
• Internet virality can reward despised content as strongly as admired content #qualifies (0.72) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 294