And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture

An entertaining and eye-opening look into the new frontier of idea making.

Breaking news, fresh gossip, tiny scandals, trumped up crises — every day we are distracted by a culture that rings our doorbell and then runs away. Stories spread wildly and die out in mere days, quickly replaced by more stories with ever shorter shelflives. How we participate in these stories has changed, too. No longer do we sit on the sidelines waiting for monolithic media giants to tell us what's happening. Anyone on a computer in his or her local Starbucks can spread a story almost as easily as The New York Times, CNN, or People — in fact, blogs are now often the source for journalists working in big media.

And Then There's This is Bill Wasik's journey along the unexplored frontier of our churning and rambunctious viral culture. Covering this world — watching new bands promote themselves at South by Southwest; reporting on a Web site contest while secretly entering it; and creating a site that aggregates all blog smears against the presidential primary candidates — he ends up conducting six experiments himself. He doesn't always get the results he expected, but along the way he meets a cast of characters who are capable of getting their information into our brains — and they're not who you think.

And Then There's This reveals how our culture is now created from the ground up. Wasik proves that any one of us can cause a small ripple that can turn into a tsunami. Anyone involved in journalism, business, or information technology — and those who want to be — must read this book. And for the rest, Wasik's tour is great, eye-opening fun.

"Focusing on the phenomenon of viral culture, Wasik, senior editor at Harper's magazine, reflects on his own Internet experiments, beginning with the creation of 'flash mobs,' a pop phenomena of 2003. Wasik asked hundreds of people to gather in public for no apparent reason, and news of these gatherings that mysteriously coalesced and disbanded spread rabidly through blogs and e-mails. The groups were created by Wasik to explore the growing world of 'memes,' ideas that spread through culture, 'colonizing all as widely and ruthlessly as [they] can.' He examines other Internet sensations — the meteoric rise and fall of pop bands, guerrilla marketing and political blogs — relating how such 'nanostories' contribute to growing cynicism in a media-saturated and consumer-savvy public. He draws on the work of Steven Levitt and Malcolm Gladwell to demonstrate that the desire to interpret the analysis of culture has outstripped the desire to understand the culture itself. Wasik's examples are culled from the trivial — e.g., ephemeral indie bands and forgettable ad campaigns — but his deft style and provocative insights keep the book significant. (June)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Wasik is fascinated by how the Internet and handheld wireless devices are changing basic social relationships....Wasik is well-informed and sharply addresses his slippery subject..." Kirkus Reviews

Wasik journeys along the unexplored frontier of how stories live and die in viral culture to reveal how anyone on a computer can spread a story almost as easily as The New York Times, CNN, or People. 26 diagrams throughout.

Bill Wasik is a senior editor at Harper's Magazine and the author of My Crowd: Experiments in Viral Culture. He lives in New York.

Roger D. Hodge is the editor of Harper's Magazine. He lives in New York.