Norms and rules (E)

0:05During the actual bout, a rikishi may use any technique or maneuver except pulling his opponent's hair, hitting his opponent with a closed fist, boxing his opponent's ears, choking his opponent, although he may push at the throat, or grabbing his opponent's mwashi in the crotch area. Hey, it's Arav, and this is a special archived episode of Akimbo.

0:42Yes, those were the rules of sumo wrestling. Sumo wrestling is an ancient and simple sport. There's a circle drawn on the ground, two lines on the inside. Each sumo wrestler stands behind his or her line. They face off against each other, and one has to push the other out of the ring without violating any of the rules. But while there are very few rules, there are a lot of norms. Consider the fact that at the beginning of a sumo match, the two wrestlers, hands on the lines, look at each other, and then in a move reminiscent of football, launch at each other. Well, what would happen if one of the sumo wrestlers was quick enough, agile enough, to move out of the way?

1:34Well, then the other one, a lumbering three or four hundred pounds of mass, would go right past him and out of the ring. Match to the agile one. This move is called a henka. It's allowed. It's legal. It works. It is often used by smaller, lighter, and quicker wrestlers to give them an advantage over wrestlers with more bulk. But it is frowned upon. It is not often used at the highest levels. When a sumo wrestler wins a match after violating this norm, they aren't often lauded or applauded. It's considered bad form. Rules and norms. Consider the idea of the spoiler alert. The spoiler alert in which a critic or a reviewer tells you the ending of something without warning you first.

2:33That used to happen all the time, but now there's a norm, and the norm is you're supposed to say, spoiler alert, before you go ahead and talk about what the other person hasn't seen yet. I'm not sure if spoiler alerts are a norm for intellectual property that's more than 90 years old, but 90 years ago, Agatha Christie wrote a novel that cemented her reputation, that made her career, that is largely considered one of the most important mystery novels of the 20th century. It's called The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The idea behind the novel is this. The great detective Hercule Poirot is recruited by the narrator to come solve an incredibly complex murder mystery inside a mansion.

3:25And at the end of the novel, spoiler alert, we learned that the narrator of the novel actually did it. That twist, the idea that there's an unreliable narrator, has become common in modern fiction. But at the time, Christy was perhaps the second person in the UK to do it. She wasn't wholly original, but she was original enough that people gave her high fives for changing the norm, that a key element of what it means to be an artist, to change the culture, is to see the norms and then choose to change them. Compare that Roger Ackroyd to a different Roger, Roger Stone. Roger Stone has been violating norms since he was 17 years old.

4:17So everything in that email is public. My claim to boil that the material was good is based on a solid tip. So what I have done here is perfectly legal. Doing dirty tricks, carefully avoiding the letter of the law, but aggressively and eagerly tweaking norms on his own behalf. And society looks at that, and most of us say, please don't do that. In 2004, about 15 years ago, I wrote what I consider to be one of my first modern blog posts. I called it the Provincetown Helmet Insight. And the insight was this. Riding my bike on the bike path in Provincetown, Massachusetts, I noticed that everyone who was riding together, usually couples, either both people were wearing a helmet or neither person was wearing a helmet.

5:12And that made me think. I said to myself, is it that people who like wearing helmets are attracted to each other and that people who don't like helmets are attracted to each other? And that's why in 98 % of the cases, they were both wearing or not wearing helmets. Hmm. So I went to the rental counter hanging out and I noticed something. When people went to rent their bicycles, the person behind the counter would say to them, do you want helmets? and one person would look at the other and whoever spoke first, that's what the two of them would do. Obviously, there would be an easy way to change the norm if when the person took out the helmets, he turned to the two of them and said, and I'm going to give you helmets because almost everyone wears them.

6:05Do you want a pair? It's quite likely that people would accept his norm. But when it was asked as a neutral statement left to the couple, whoever spoke first determined how both of them would protect their heads. Now, rules are different than norms. Rules are enforced. And there are some rules that are enforced by nature. And there are some rules that are enforced by a governing body, an authority with power. So take, for example, the case of measles. In many years in the past, more than a million people a year have died from the measles worldwide. Thanks to the growth of the measles vaccine, it has dropped more than 80%.

6:54In a typical year, it's now under 200 ,000 deaths. But the norm of concerned good parents vaccinate their kids has changed in small pockets around the United States and in other places. Guess what? The rules enforced by measles don't care about your norm. That the norm, the cultural norm, could change, but measles are going to come back. Because measles don't care about the culture. They just care about spreading. Compare that to the dilemma faced by people who try to enforce drug laws. The norm among many people of a certain age in certain communities is to smoke pot. But pot in many communities is against the law.

7:47What to do there when the rules and the norm conflict? Well, you could have a war on drugs, which will cost billions and billions of dollars and incarcerate many productive people. Or you could change the law to reflect the norm. or you could not really enforce the law recognizing that the norm exists. These dilemmas show up in our culture all the time. Consider the simple example of the four-way stop sign. In some communities, rolling a four-way stop sign where no one else is around, showing up, slowing your car from 30 miles an hour to five, looking all three ways and going through it is not a big deal.

8:34That's the norm. Though the letter of the law is that that's worthy of a ticket. That's why, say, if you move from Boston to Palo Alto, you might discover that the first time you show up at a four-way stop sign, you're going to get a ticket because you weren't aware that the rules were enforced because the norms were different. This is one reason why speed traps and other forms of random or selective enforcement are so infuriating in a democratic culture. Because the authorities, the people with the rules, aren't doing the hard work to challenge and change the norms. What they're doing is catching random outliers in ways that don't change the norms at all.

9:27that if there were three or four or five signs in a row before you got to the speed trap, if they were doing the hard work of marketing cultural understanding and eager compliance with a norm, they wouldn't need a speed trap at all. And here we see what happened with the war on cigarettes because the data was really clear. Marketing, however, made it so that the norm was cool teenagers smoke cigarettes. And the physiology of humans made it so those cool teenagers became addicted adults. How to change this problem? Well, one method would be to make a rule that 21-year olds go to jail if they smoke cigarettes.

10:17But the norm was so deeply entrenched that the population would never go for that. The alternative, the one that actually worked, was raising the taxes on cigarettes. By making it ever more expensive to buy cigarettes, the norm began to change. And now, culturally, it's no longer nearly as cool in most communities in the United States to smoke cigarettes, because the authorities, the ones who were acting on behalf of those that they were elected to protect worked to change the norm by changing a rule that led to a cascade effect. As we grow up, we begin by being confronted with rules. Our parents have rules.

11:05School has rules. The norms aren't as clearly stated. There's a norm about how we're supposed to talk in class, how we're supposed to address a teacher, how we're supposed to address the other kids. And then when we move from elementary school to junior high school, the norms all seem to change and no one tells us how they change. And so it's not surprising that lots of people grow up confused about the difference between norms and rules, that there are some people who grow up thinking that norms are rules and they work super hard to never violate them. There are some people who grow up believing that rules are a little like cultural norms, and they violate them whenever they feel like it.

11:54The essence of the difference is this. Norms are about the simple sentence, people like us do things like this. You figure out who the people like us are. You look at what the things like this are. That's the norm. If you can generously break a norm, generous in the sense that it will help others, that it will turn on lights, that it will open doors, in some cultures, the norm is that's a good thing to do. In other cultures, cultures that are static, cultures that are stuck, even if you can make things better, you're not supposed to violate the norm. Rules, on the other hand, are often a reaction to what happens when the people in power aren't happy with the norms, when the people in power see that some folks are violating the norms at the expense of others.

12:51So if there's a rule, no spitting, that rule was probably put in place because they couldn't enforce the norm of, that's gross, that's going to spread disease, that's unattractive, that's going to make it hard for us to host the Olympics. So let's make a rule. And the people who make rules, I'm not talking about the people who make the rule of gravity or the rule of measles, but humans who make rules about how things are around here have to walk a fine line. Because if you make too many rules, then norm shifting is difficult to occur. I hope we can agree that we're all better off when the health department makes rules.

13:34When the health department says to a restaurant, you can't serve chicken sushi, that you can't leave raw meat sitting out for weeks at a time and then serve it. At the same time, I hope we can all agree that the health department shouldn't be establishing norms, that if you want to put ketchup on your sushi, you can put ketchup on your sushi. I think it's a horrible idea, but maybe someone's going to come up with a new innovation that way. Rules exist when we can't count on people to make good choices in evolving the norms around us. Rules also benefit us when it's too complicated or off-putting to keep the norms in sync.

14:27Consider the case of Wikipedia. Wikipedia has a problem, which is that normal citizens are afraid to edit Wikipedia. Afraid because there are so many norms and very few rules. And that if you violate what someone thinks is a norm, you get slapped on the wrist and that's no fun. Of course, it might not be the universal norm. It just might be the norm a small group of people are carrying around. So, for example, after the tragedy with the Boeing flights crashing, the article on the Boeing MAX, that's the name of the plane, had a talk page that went on for paragraph after paragraph after paragraph with people arguing about whether MAX is spelled capital M, capital A, capital X, or capital M, small a, small x.

15:21I'm going to guess 1 ,000 hours of time and effort were spent in a heated argument about the norm. Do we capitalize the first letter because that's the way many things are on Wikipedia? Or do we do it all caps because that's the way Boeing does it and the way the aviation media does it, which is better? Well, these arguments are at the heart of how we build a new culture. whether we're building it online or whether we're building it in real life. That norms get established often by powerful and productive members of the culture, but just as often by outliers. So the norms of punk rock, the norms of rap, the norms of edgy fashion and design are never established by the powerful people in the center.

16:14Ralph Lauren didn't establish the norm of polo wear. He was just repeating something that it came before. But when we look around the fringes, there we see the people who are pioneering new norms, who are saying, I'm going to break something that other people think is a rule because folks who are looking for something new, something better, something innovative, a way to make a statement, will see my transgression and embrace it. And suddenly people like us do things like this, will become the new norm for our pocket of the world. What we're seeing then is this endless repetition of cycles, little tiny pockets of the new norm, which as they spread either get slapped down because a new rule is enforced.

17:12Nope, you can't do that anymore. So the bird's scooters left all over town. That entrepreneur tried to establish a new norm. The new norm would be, you don't need to own your own transport. There's always a scooter on every corner. But the city father said, we don't want our sidewalks covered with half-broken scooters so you can make an extra dollar. We are going to reject this new norm you are selfishly seeking to establish. You're going to have to come up with a better way to be part of our community, and we're going to fine you until you do. That's a spot where Norm crashes into our culture.

17:52I'm back. Norm! Hey there, everybody. Norm! Norman? Afternoon, everybody. Norm! Norman? Evening, Sammy. Hey, Norm. Afternoon, everybody. Norm! And so we're left with a paradox. Our culture works because we have norms, because we can't possibly make a rule for everything. And our culture works because the norms change, because brave, generous outliers show up with something new, with a technology or an idea that makes it better, that turns the ratchet, that improves the lives of the people who adopt the new norm. So yeah, a henka is a good idea because it keeps sumo from calcifying. And yes, we're better off in a world that isn't just a three-network sitcom.

18:52And yes, we're better off when there isn't a rule for everything. We live in a culture where the norm is to change the norm, where we get to make things better. I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening. Hey Seth, it's Maria. Hey, Seth. My name's Kyle. Greetings, Seth. This is Stephen out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi, Seth. Alicia from Charleston here. Hi, Seth. This is Anupam. Hi, this is Caitlin. Hi, Seth. Warm greetings from Curacao. Hey, Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey, Seth. This is Rex. Hey, Seth. Hi, this is Vasilis from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is...

19:30And that completes my question. As always, we love to hear from you. To see our show notes or to submit a question about this episode or anything that's come before, visit akimbo.link, that's A-K-I-M-B-O dot L-I-N-K, and press the appropriate button. A really juicy question just came in, so here we go. Hi, Seth. My name is Courtney. I live in Sherman Oaks, California. I'm an independent filmmaker and I released my first movie on Amazon prime and Amazon only pays about six to 12 cents per stream. It offers a lot of exposure, but I would like to try something different with the release of my second movie.

20:15I'm considering using Patreon and I'm curious as to what you think about that site. And yeah, just want to hear your thoughts. Okay. Thanks so much. Bye. Yeah, Kickstarter has been around now for 10 years, and Patreon is following in its footsteps. So, in short, what both of them offer is the following. You, the creator, can bypass all the middlemen and deal directly with the people who want your work. But it's even better than that because you get to find the people before you make the work. In essence, something I've been saying for 20 years, the big win is not to find people for your stuff.

21:05It's to find stuff for your people. That if you can find people, people who support you, people who see your vision of the world, who trust you enough to put up some cash, and then you can go make stuff for them, That could be an artist's dream come true. Because the alternative is that you put your heart and soul into making the stuff, and then you have to spend most of your days trying to find your people. So I'm a big fan of find your people first. Here's where the mythology of Kickstarter and then Patreon falls apart. It falls apart because it shouldn't be called Kickstarter. It should be called Kickfinisher.

21:47Why? Why? Because with the exception of a few viral hits like the Pebble Watch, Kickstarters aren't the first step. The thought that you could just build a Patreon page, the word will spread, people will find you, and then they will commit to paying you? That's a myth. It doesn't work that way. So yes, Amanda Palmer is making more than a million dollars a year in revenue. not profit. She's hardly making profit, but she's making more than a million dollars a year in revenue from the people who support her, who say every time you come out with a new song, count me in for five bucks. That's a great arrangement.

22:31It helps the people who are her fans because they get to feel like patrons. They get to feel like insiders. They are waiting with the anticipation for the next piece of work that they enabled to happen. And it's great for the artist, because instead of pleasing some middleman who doesn't really like your work, instead of hustling all the time to find enough funds to do the work, you can work directly with the people who want to hear from you. But back to the kick finisher part. Amanda Palmer's story is well told, and it's true. When she was half of Dresden Dolls, she was on the cutting edge of a certain kind of American punk music, and then she got kicked off her label.

23:18And the reason she got kicked off her label is because her typical records were selling 20 ,000 copies. A record label can't survive with an artist who's selling 20 ,000 copies. But then Amanda put up a Kickstarter to sell her next album. It was the most successful music Kickstarter of all time when it went live, and she ended up earning a million dollars. What most people don't realize is that million dollars came from 20 ,000 people. The same 20 ,000 people who were buying each of her albums, suddenly, instead of being a failure at a record label, those 20 ,000 people made her a success on Kickstarter.

24:06She then moved on to Patreon, where she has tens of thousands of people who are supporting her. Kick finisher. It's a 15-year journey, a 20-year journey to get to where Amanda got on Patreon. It's not that she came up with some clever thing, hustled bloggers to talk about it, and then boom, she wins. Doesn't work that way. that the way Patreon will work for an artist is that you have earned enough fans that the fans already want you to succeed. That Patreon and Kickstarter, when used properly, are not marketing engines. They are simply accounting conveniences, methods for you to keep things straight with the people who already want to support you.

24:56So I get that there are people in the world who will tell you how to make your Patreon page better, and there are people in the world who will propose to you that this is the promised land. My argument, having been at this for 30 years with my blog, is it doesn't work that way. Every once in a while, someone breaks through, someone wins the internet, someone has a viral hit, but it's probably not going to be you, and it wasn't me. We get there drip by drip, day by day, fan by fan. So the work to be done here is to figure out how to build a permission base. Every time you engage with someone who likes your art or your music or your writing, invite them to subscribe to your newsletter.

25:43Invite them to keep track of what you're doing by updates. Could be text, could be email, could be a phone call. but once you have a thousand or ten thousand or fifty thousand people now you're on the road kevin kelly was prescient as always when he wrote about one thousand true fans one thousand true fans are enough for an independent artist to make a living ten thousand is enough to make her rich but one thousand one thousand works so that's the journey to begin and begin and begin and then toward the end, definitely consider signing up for the Patreons and the Kickstarters of the world. But let's be clear, it's KickFinisher.

26:27Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.