Viral-Content

In 2003, photographer Kenneth Adelman was documenting coastal erosion in California. He took 12,000 aerial photographs of the coastline for the California Coastal Records Project. One of those photos happened to capture Barbra Streisand’s Malibu mansion. The photo had been downloaded exactly six times. Two of those downloads were by Streisand’s lawyers. Then Streisand sued Adelman for $50 million, demanding the photo be removed from the public website. The Backfire The lawsuit made headlines. Suddenly, everyone wanted to see the photo that Barbra Streisand was trying to hide. ...

Two headlines compete for your attention: A: “Multifaceted approaches to ameliorating socioeconomic disparities” B: “Why poor people stay poor” Both convey similar ideas. But you clicked on B, didn’t you? Or at least your brain wanted to. This isn’t about intelligence or laziness. It’s about cognitive fluency-one of the most powerful forces determining which stories spread and which die in obscurity. What Is Cognitive Fluency? Cognitive fluency is the subjective ease with which our brains process information. ...