💎 On the danger of poorly set targets

Metrics have even shaped literature. When Alexandre Dumas first wrote The Three Musketeers in serialised form, his publisher paid him by the line. Dumas therefore added the servant character Grimaud, who spoke in short sentences, to stretch out the text (then killed him off when the publisher said that short lines didn’t count).

Relying on measurements like clicks or likes can give a misleading impression of how people are truly behaving. During 2007–8, over 1.1 million people joined the “Save Darfur’ cause on Facebook, which aimed to raise money and attention in response to the conflict in Sudan. A few of the new members donated and recruited others, but most did nothing. Of the people who joined, only 28 per cent recruited someone else, and a mere 0.2 per cent donated.

Excerpt from: The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread — And Why They Stop by Adam Kucharski