Unexpectedness

It’s a surprising fact, a fact that warns of overpopulation and a world teetering on the edge of exhaustion: The number of people alive today outnumber all those who have ever lived.

And it’s dead wrong. Ciara Curtin in the Scientific American does a nice dismantling of this urban legend.

Why did this falsehood spread? It has the snap of unexpectedness that you find in a lot of scientific-ish urban legends. (You only use 10% of your brain!) It balances that surprise factor by tapping into our sense of concern and anxiety for the world. (Have we pushed the planet too far?)

The surprise value and emotional resonance are garden-variety strengths of urban legends. This legend has another tricky feature, though. It appeals to our intuition about exponential numbers — for instance, if you take a sequence like 3^2, 3^3, 3^4, …, each successive number is greater than the sum of all the numbers before it in the sequence. If we have the (mistaken) sense that the earth’s population works like this sequence, the urban legend would seem quite reasonable. (It might even, perversely, make us feel smarter to believe it than not to believe it, since in tracing the exponential logic in our heads, we might flatter ourselves to believe we had solved the logic puzzle that explained a surprising “finding.”)

In our Fast Company column this month, called “Polarize Me,” [which isn’t avail online to non-subscribers but is referenced by Brady Whalen here] Chip and I poke fun at people whose online dating profiles are terminally abstract and bland. Go ahead, do a quick search — you’ll see an infinite number of headlines like these: “Hey there!” “I’m unique!” “Looking for the right person.” That kind of thing. So in the column, we urge people in the dating world (and by extension, advertisers in the business world) to take a stand and say something wonderfully concrete, like this headline we found on Match: “Athletic math nerd looking for someone to hum Seinfeld intro music with.”

Well, it turns out that there are people who actually make a living giving advice like this! Check out this Time magazine piece called “It’s a Brand-You World,” which discusses consultants who help people spruce up their self-descriptions for job- and mate-hunting purposes. From the piece:

Fran Hartman, a bubbly New Hampshire widow, had posted a Yahoo! Personals ad touting her fondness for seafood and back rubs, and herself as “a young looking 66 year old grandmother. I still work as a courier for a lab company. I love to feel wanted and needed.” But when she didn’t meet a suitable man, Hartman, now 67, paid New York City–based PersonalsTrainer $159.95 to polish her narrative. Her new entry begins “Whether listening to Merle Haggard while driving in my courier vehicle or settling in for some fried clams and a good conversation at Bob’s Clam Hut, you will always find me with a smile on my face and a ready-hug for new friends and old.” The new story generated more responses from prospective mates and “made me feel like I walked on water,” Hartman says. “And it was very much me.”

Chip and I are in the wrong line of work. This sounds fun.

If you’ve read our book, the high-concept pitch for this story is: A Connection Plot meets Unexpectedness… (If you haven’t, ignore that line and just read this cool elephant story.)

From an email that’s making the rounds. (If you wrote this story, please contact us.)

I swore I would never pass along something like this, but this did touch my heart:

In 1986, Mkele Mbembe was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University. On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Mbembe approached it very carefully. He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant’s foot, and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Mbembe worked the wood out with his hunting knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments. Mbembe stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away.

Mbembe never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.

Twenty years later, Mbembe was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teen aged son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Mbembe and his son Tapu were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Mbembe, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man. Remembering the encounter in 1986, Mbembe couldn’t help wondering if this was the same elephant.

Mbembe summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder.The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Mbembe’s legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly.

Probably wasn’t the same elephant.

Today’s post on Powell’s asks the question that’s been on the lips of so many people, for so long: What do you do when your giant inflatable rat just doesn’t inspire the same feelings of revulsion that it used to?

Our guest-blog post over at Powell’s books today asks the question: Can a billboard be too scary?

We also discuss sticky & non-sticky terror-preparation tips. Hope you enjoy.