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- Aug 19, 2012
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A few years ago in college, I had a friend named M. He was hardworking, intelligent, and all around a great guy. But he was one of the stupidest smart people I know. He'd be the one who's always doing stupid things and would always make you laugh because of his actions. For all intents and purposes, he was the "fool" of the group. But the thing about M is that he's a lot more intelligent than he seems. People that don't know him would laugh, but he's probably one of the smartest people I know.
One day, he started to give people points. There were no tangible tokens he'd hand out. He'd just provide verbal statements.
If you did something good, he'd say "Oh, you just earned 100 points" or "1,000 points for you".
If you did something bad, he'd say "I'm taking 500 points" or "You just lost 1,000,000 points".
At first, no one cared and laughed it off. He would throw in random comments like "Hey B, A has more points than you now". And we'd laugh and tease B about it, but it wasn't meant to be taken seriously.
After about 1 week, something interesting happened. The points started to actually have some sort of psychological effect on the group. You'd see people trying to please M to gain more points, or rat out others to gain an edge in points. It would actually shape the behaviors of some people (in a competitive way).
What makes it really crazy is that the points had no real-world value. They were just made up numbers given by a random person to random people. He would hand out millions of points to a person one day, while he'd hand out no more than 10 the next. It was VERY subjective.
So, you saw college students trying to please M over literally nothing.
All the while this was going on, M would laugh. Everyone playing knew it didn't exist, but they couldn't help themselves as they wanted to be #1.
What made it even better was that people outside of the game wanted in. They'd ask him to let them into the exclusive game. Sometimes he'd let more people in for free, while other times he'd give them a task like "Buy me food and I'll let you in with a starting point total of 5,000,000".
This started within a group of 5 people, but after a month had grown to about 40-50 people.
What can you take away from this? Well, if you want to rule the world, figure out how to scale this. And if you succeed, congratulations and remember who gave you the idea in the first place when you're handing out arbitrary points and titles.
One day, he started to give people points. There were no tangible tokens he'd hand out. He'd just provide verbal statements.
If you did something good, he'd say "Oh, you just earned 100 points" or "1,000 points for you".
If you did something bad, he'd say "I'm taking 500 points" or "You just lost 1,000,000 points".
At first, no one cared and laughed it off. He would throw in random comments like "Hey B, A has more points than you now". And we'd laugh and tease B about it, but it wasn't meant to be taken seriously.
After about 1 week, something interesting happened. The points started to actually have some sort of psychological effect on the group. You'd see people trying to please M to gain more points, or rat out others to gain an edge in points. It would actually shape the behaviors of some people (in a competitive way).
What makes it really crazy is that the points had no real-world value. They were just made up numbers given by a random person to random people. He would hand out millions of points to a person one day, while he'd hand out no more than 10 the next. It was VERY subjective.
So, you saw college students trying to please M over literally nothing.
All the while this was going on, M would laugh. Everyone playing knew it didn't exist, but they couldn't help themselves as they wanted to be #1.
What made it even better was that people outside of the game wanted in. They'd ask him to let them into the exclusive game. Sometimes he'd let more people in for free, while other times he'd give them a task like "Buy me food and I'll let you in with a starting point total of 5,000,000".
This started within a group of 5 people, but after a month had grown to about 40-50 people.
What can you take away from this? Well, if you want to rule the world, figure out how to scale this. And if you succeed, congratulations and remember who gave you the idea in the first place when you're handing out arbitrary points and titles.
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