Memetic Lifecycles

[jducoeur]

Hypothesis: the faster a cultural phenomenon takes off and the bigger it gets, the faster it will peak and then fade into being a niche thing. Fifteen minutes of fame can, sometimes, be fifteen seconds.

I've had this theory in the back of my mind for a long time, but Pokemon Go looks like it'll make a *lovely* data point to examine...

Comments

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it counts as more data points, but I had a friend who worked in a record store (what's the current term?) who was scarily good at predicting when movie soundtracks would hit the discount bin. :)

What impresses me most is the 'cottage industries' that are developing around the game. Stores with signs 'Pokemon inside for customers only', mental health therapists are seeing improvements, animal shelters are getting more dog walkers, neighborhood watches have more people on the street, people are losing weight, people are learning metric, odd job folk are now offering Pokemon rides, e.g. "I'll drive, you catch 'em all."

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

I just got a text from Verizon that I was near my data cap for the month. I figure lots of people are going to more expensive plans now.

Also, I predict a spike in portable battery sales.

[cigfran-cg.livejournal.com]

Word I've been hearing is that PoGo is actually fairly easy on data consumption, but hellish on batteries

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Further investigation shows that something is wrong with my phone, causing some other app to coincidentally eat all my data :-( PoGo does use more data than I normally do, but shouldn't force me to upgrade my plan.

Battery usage is quite heavy, a full phone charge lasts less than 3 hours. Luckily, most days my errands are shorter than that :-)