There’s an interesting look at webcomics and popularity over at Talk About Comics.
There’s mention of a Columbia University study that just fascinates me. Apparently there’s this experiment…
…using different groups of students who were asked to rate pop and rock music by unknown bands.
Some groups of students were unable to see the popularity (among other participants in the study) of the songs they were being asked to rate.
Other groups of students were able to see the popularity and rankings that the other students within their own groups had given each song — though each group was in a hermetically sealed “world,†with no information about the rankings in the other groups.
If all things were equal, if popularity was solely a function of the quality and likeability of the songs themselves, then the results in each group would have looked similar — maybe not exactly the same, but very similar.
But they weren’t. Not even close.
Ugh. So sad.