Matt Johnson, PhD

@marctothec would call this cultural invention at its finest (For The Culture). Every engagement ring proves culture can be manufactured. Traditions can be created. Meaning is whatever we agree. The most powerful products don't fulfill needs. They create them.

The scam: Diamonds aren't rare (De Beers controlled supply). "Forever" because resale value is awful. Yet proposals went from 0% to 80% in US, 5% to 60% in Japan. They didn't sell jewelry. They sold a ritual. Made diamonds = love. Invented tradition from thin air.

"Diamonds are intrinsically worthless, except for the deep psychological need they fill." - Former De Beers chairman. Before 1948, nobody proposed with diamonds. Now 80% do. De Beers created a global tradition younger than your grandparents. The greatest marketing heist ever. 🧵

That's a really interesting perspective.

Lots of talk about Slot, Salah too old, formations etc., but those discussions are missing the bigger picture, perhaps

This flips everything. Stop chasing potential customers/voters/donors. Find people who already believe what you believe. Give them a way to connect. You don't create communities. You reveal them. The congregation already exists. They just don't know each other yet.

Our brains seek worldview alignment before products. The Beyhive wasn't about Beyoncé the artist but the beliefs in her music. "Independent Women" to "Who Runs the World" weren't songs. They were cultural artifacts people used to signal identity & find their tribe.

Marcus Collins, who ran Beyoncé's digital strategy, drops this truth in "For The Culture": "We were looking for fans when we should have been looking for believers." The Beyhive wasn't built. It was revealed. They already shared a worldview. The music just connected them. 🧵

Features tell. Stories sell. But worldviews transcend price. The car still had broken cup holders. But it became a middle finger to conventional luxury. Sometimes the worst product makes the best identity statement.

C.C. Chapman says "start with the soul, end with the sale." @marctothec shows this in "For The Culture" - appeal to identity (limbic system) before logic (neocortex). The buyer didn't buy transportation. They bought a $150K statement about rejecting consumer culture.

1996 Honda Accord. 140K miles. Broken cup holders. Listed for $500. Sold for $150,000. How? Max Lanman made a video: "You don't need things... This is not a car. This is you. Luxury is a state of mind." The buyer paid 150K to say "I'm above materialism." Peak paradox.

@marctothec explains in "For The Culture": REI found their congregation - people who already shared their beliefs - and gave them permission to act. True differentiation isn't what you sell. It's what you'll sacrifice for what you believe. That's culture.

REI's belief: "a life outdoors is a life well spent." Keeping stores open when everyone has the day off violated this. So they acted on conviction. 170 companies followed. State parks opened free. People weren't buying gear. They were voting for a worldview.

REI closed all 142 stores on Black Friday 2015. Paid employees to go outside. Suspended online sales. Chose conviction over the biggest shopping day of the year. Result? 1.4M people joined #OptOutside. And REI had its highest Black Friday sales weekend ever. How? 🧵

Brands evolved from ownership marks (livestock) to identity markers (lifestyle). The winning ones don't just sell products. They provide artifacts for identity construction. Ways to say who we are without words. That's not marketing. That's meaning.

Your brain processes aligned brands as part of your extended self. The medial prefrontal cortex activates the same way for your favorite brand as for your own name. When someone attacks your brand, they're attacking you. When they celebrate it, they're celebrating you.

@marctothec in "For The Culture": Brands like Nike aren't companies we buy from. They're "totems" of identity. Having worked with Nike, I saw this. People don't wear the swoosh for the polyester. They wear it to signal who they are & what they believe about potential. 🧵

We're all interpellated into something. Family values, company culture, national myths. These aren't ideas you have. They're ideas that have you. The question isn't IF you're in a cult. It's which ones, and whether you chose them consciously.

Your brain can't tell the difference between beliefs you chose & beliefs that chose you. Via repetition, ideas reshape your neural pathways until they feel like YOUR thoughts. The same mechanism that creates NXIVM members creates Apple fanatics. Intensity differs. Process doesnt

Marcus Collins in "For The Culture" asks the uncomfortable question: What's the difference between a cult and a culture? Neurologically speaking... not much. We watch cult docs asking "how could they?" while sitting in our own invisible belief systems we never chose. 🧵

Kodak changed this by repositioning photos from "serious art" to "capture joy." Smiles appeared in the 1920s. Not because teeth improved. Because meaning shifted. This is the lesson: Want behavior change? Don't change the logic. Change the social meaning.

Your brain's social networks are SO powerful they can suppress automatic expressions. Smiling is universal (babies do it everywhere) but cultural context wins. The thought "this might make me look poor" kept faces frozen for decades. Status threat > biological impulse.

Reading Marcus Collins' "For The Culture" & this blew my mind: People refused to smile in photos for 100+ years. Not because of bad teeth or slow cameras. Smiling meant you were lower class. "Peasants, dimwits, drunks, or children." Social meaning overrides everything.

It all comes down to contrast

Some quick fire science on human attention: what stands out, what doesn't, and why

Serendipity is when our brain's meaning-seeking orientation turns to chance encounters, and we feel a coincidental occurrence “must have happened for a reason”.

And often that is not the end of it, writes @neuroscienceof.bsky.social—it influences our decisions:

buff.ly/5hkrVwv

A true embarrassment of riches upfront! Gonna be quite the sight when both he and Ekitike play together

It all comes down to contrast

Some quick fire science on human attention: what stands out, what doesn't, and why

The forces shaping collective memory are so complicated that any system based purely on "merit" misses the point entirely.

It's like arguing that McDonald's success reflects how delicious their food is. Sometimes cultural dominance ≠ objective superiority.

The brutal truth, as Klosterman distills it: "To matter forever, you need to matter to those who don't care."

Shakespeare endures not just because scholars study him, but because people who never think about literature still know his name.

You'll actually be enforcing a tautology: As Chuck Klosterman describes, "Shakespeare is better than Marlowe and Jonson because Shakespeare is more like Shakespeare, which is how we define greatness in playwriting."

Back to Shakespeare: If you want to "prove" he's better than Marlowe or Jonson, just compare their texts. You'll easily find passages that validate what the world already believes about Shakespeare's superiority.

But here's the thing..