49
Is there a word, phrase, or trope for an idea that gets more popular the more it fails?
(self.nostupidquestions)
That's the "sunk cost fallacy"
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2024
49 points (96.2% liked)
No Stupid Questions
36159 readers
846 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Sunk cost fallacy is definitely a subtype, but I'm going for I guess the more general concept of an idea that becomes more popular the worse it does
I don't think it is a subcategory I think it's the term you're looking for.
The actual phrase has its origins in a financial sense but the way it's used nowadays is much more broad. You can invest time, money, emotion, identity etc and it's still the "sunk cost fallacy" if it keeps failing and you keep going.
Sunk cost fallacy is when you use previous expenditures to justify new expenditures so as not to "waste" the previous expenditure. It doesn't imply the idea gets more popular like op is looking for.
*waste
Sorry for being pedantic. Could've just been your autocorrect or not your first language lol no offense meant.
Fair
Conservativism.
That's more of a mental disability
"Streisand effect" comes to mind, but like "sunk cost fallacy" it's just an example of something "becoming more popular the more it fails."
"Its Morbin Time" comes to mind
There's a certain amount of Gambler's Fallacy in this, too: I'll keep going, because it's going to turn around.
Yeah, I think it's the really the Gambler's Fallacy, even if OP doesn't describe gambling. It's the idea of "It's my turn for success to come soon -- I'm due for my turn!"
Feels like there ought to be a term... it's kind of a mix between "vicious circle", "feedback loop", and "echo chamber".
There is the sunk-cost fallacy, but that is more about investments. I don't know if it's refers to popularity like OP wants.
Springtime for Hitler. Somewhat fits. It's an intentional failure that succeeded.
Popular boondoggle is a term we used to use at work. I've never herd it used outside that job though.
Sunk cost fallacy is probably the most obvious one that springs to mind. Not unlike gambling in a sense, people feel they just need one big payout to win it all back and then some, so they keep betting, hoping that this time things will go in their favour.
Sounds about right. This keeps happening at my job, executives throwing good money after bad in an attempt to get some return on their investment. If we had just cut our losses years ago we'd be in a much better place now.
Ponzi scheme? Multi-Level Marketing? Pyramid scheme?
I world call that "failing upward" which is fucking up your job such that you get a promotion.
It can be a thing for more skilled labor jobs. You csn be just okay at say.... running machine shop equipment. You break more stuff and make more blem parts than most of the people in the shop. But it seems like you have a grasp on the overall processes and can type well.
Boom now you're not working on machines but managing machinists. Ordering what they need, stat tracking, scheduling, product contracts etc.
Sunk cost fallacy?
The term isn't quite as specific as you want, but it sounds like a positive feedback loop? (the linked article even gives ponzi schemes as an example)
Quicksand.
Perhaps the closest term is "cognitive dissonance." I don't think current usage best fits your description, although the original event that inspired the term certainly does.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html
Cognitive dissonance was first investigated by Leon Festinger, arising out of a participant observation study of a cult that believed that the earth was going to be destroyed by a flood, and what happened to its members — particularly the really committed ones who had given up their homes and jobs to work for the cult — when the flood did not happen.
While fringe members were more inclined to recognize that they had made fools of themselves and to “put it down to experience,” committed members were more likely to re-interpret the evidence to show that they were right all along (the earth was not destroyed because of the faithfulness of the cult members).
I would usually refer to such a thing as a "Producers" (like the play) but that is specifically for bad ideas that suck for a majority of people but benefit a few; like the plot of the play where they make a flop to get more money than they would with a hit.