About This Book
Before social media made the mechanics of viral content visible to everyone, Aaron Lynch was trying to explain how ideas spread through populations using the same framework biologists use to explain how genes spread through species. Lynch's central argument is that beliefs and ideologies spread not necessarily because they are true or good, but because they are effective at replicating themselves. Reading this now, in an era when we have watched conspiracy theories spread across social networks with terrifying speed, feels like reading a prophecy. His ideas were ahead of their time, and this book deserves far more attention than it received.
Readers interested in how ideas shape civilizations on a grander scale should explore Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, which argues that humanity's greatest power is the ability to create and spread shared fictions—the ultimate thought contagions.