Invisible Influence by Jonah Berger Page B

Monkey’s lilting, offbeat sound was a badge of distinction. People might have thought you were talking about The Wizard of Oz , or a weird primate infestation, but liking Asian Spider Monkey made you stand out. It might have been an infestation, but it was your infestation, and yours alone.
    But if Asian Spider Monkey gets popular, all bets are off.
    When they hit the cover of Rolling Stone , lots of people start listening. Everyone from indie music heads to fair weather fans. And now a band that was yours and yours alone is everyone’s. What once was a sign of uniqueness is now generic and widespread.
    What’s a true Asian Spider Monkey fan to do?
    One option is to drop the band completely. To throw out your concert T-shirt and delete their songs from your playlist.
    But that’s a bit drastic. After all, you still like their music. And you were there first!
    So, rather than dropping the band, many people find a way tomaintain their allegiance while finding a new source of distinction: saying they prefer the older stuff.
    By saying they like the Spider Monkey’s early music, people can maintain their fandom and still be different. And they can one-up all the Johnny-come-lately listeners with an additional source of social currency. Not only do they like the popular band’s stuff, just like everyone else, but they are so in the know that they knew about the band before everyone else.
    In some instances, a backlash starts even before the thing gets popular. The mere hint that something is gaining steam is enough to make some people dislike it. Might as well get there first before everyone else does. II
WHY DIFFERENCE?
    When America sits down to turkey and stuffing every Thanksgiving, most people give little thought to where this holiday came from. If encouraged to think about it, we conjure up what we learned in kindergarten: Pilgrims and Indians, or Plymouth Rock and the Mayflower . But beyond the cranberry sauce and prim white bonnets, these early settlers actually had a surprisingly strong impact on American values today.
    In September 1620, some one hundred people set sail from England to the New World seeking religious freedom. Manywere part of the English Separatist church, a radical Puritan faction that was unhappy with the limited extent of the Reformation and what they saw as the Roman Catholic practices of the Church of England. After a stint in the Netherlands, these Protestants were looking for a new place to settle. Somewhere with better economic prospects and where they would not lose the English language.
    At the time, the clergy mediated almost all relationships between individuals and God. Priests were the only people who had a direct line to the holy. They gave out penance and absolution, interpreted and supplemented scripture, and generally acted as intermediaries. Ritual and ceremony ruled the day.
    These early Americans, and the ones that arrived soon after, had a different view. They wanted to empower the common person to take control over his or her destiny, both in the next world, and this one as well.
    Rather than simply take the word of priests, they called for men and women to study the Bible and interpret it for themselves. Every person could communicate directly with God through his or her faith, and every person could be his or her own priest. Instead of mindlessly following authority, people were encouraged to think and feel for themselves. To be independent. 16
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    This notion of independence, or individualism, proved impactful. It shaped not only the settlers’ religious beliefs, but how they interacted with their peers. It influenced not only the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Harbor whom we celebrate today) but also the broader roots of American culture that grew from this early seed.
    People were free to pursue their own ends, independently of others. To make their own path and go their own way.
    Years later, when