In the 1990s, three popular topics of conversation went along the lines of,
“Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player ever,”
“Tiger Woods is the greatest golfer ever,” and
“Bill Gates is the richest guy ever.”
I recall a sort of collective happiness that would occur when Jordan acheived another “three-peat,” or when Woods won another tournament, or when people would calculate how much money Gates was making every second. It was like we were all rooting for them to win and set new records. Just a thrill that they would put themselves in “can you top this?” settings and continue to succeed.
Of course this was not new (various other “mostest ever” pop phenomena in recent decades include Secretariat, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, and Steven Spielberg) but the 90s seem to my memory to have had more of it.
How to think of all this? Is there something to what I’m saying and, if so, is it important? Is there some way to measure it?
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolut…
Chris,
Interesting link but it doesn't address the question of how to understand the particular popularity of "bestest, mostest" people in the 90s.
True enough. It's interesting that Bill Gates seems like a much bigger celebrity in China than in this country (a rumour there that he was murdered at a Los Angeles charity event sparked a panic). You could argue that people in the US are more fascinated by Steve Jobs than Bill Gates.
Personally, I don't see much to distinguish fame from "bestest, mostest".
Chris,
The difference between celebrity and "bestest" is that everyone knows who Julia Roberts is, but there's not a national concern with whether she's the most beautiful actress ever. Chris Rock is famous, but people are not obsessing over the question of whether he's the funniest guy ever.
Some of your memory regarding the 90s and this "collective happiness" may relate more to your age at the time of these events than to the anything in particular about the 90s. As for how to measure this phenomenon, I am conducting an online study of how "age at year of event" and "rentention interval" relate to memory and confidence for widely-reported, but temporally-isolated, events. If you'd like to participate, visit
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~gran0147/study/
Jeff,
I see what you're saying. But I really think there was something different going on in the 90s. Anyway, I went over to your site and started the survey. But 80 questions are really a lot! I did about 15 and then got a little bit tired. I suggest you use a split-sample design so that any given subject only has to do 10 or 20 questions or so.
Also, I didn't enjoy having to do so much moving of the mouse. I knew the answers to just about all the questions, and it was tiring to have to click in so many places to advance through the survey.
Anyway, good luck with it. I hope my feedback is helpful as you pilot-test this instrument.