Newsletter 015.
Raygun, and the phenomenon of Negativity Bias.
Dr. Rachael Gunn just set an Olympic Record that will almost certainly never be touched…
probably not the impression she set out to leave, but she essentially won The Olympics in a lot of ways.
There’s a thing called Negativity Bias:
”Negativity Bias is a cognitive bias that results in adverse events having a more significant impact on our psychological state than positive events. Negativity Bias occurs even when adverse events and positive events are of the same magnitude, meaning we feel negative events more intensely.”
it’s the reason Starbucks purposely spells your name wrong on your order, to prompt you posting the fumble on social media.
why Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi ad will forever be talked about, for how immensely catastrophic it was…
why American Apparel employees were instructed to treat customers terribly.
Supreme too, now that I’m thinking about it.
I’m not at all suggesting it was premeditated…
although thinking of Raygun as an Industry Plant is pretty hilarious.
there’s no way Australia could have done this on purpose
intentionally send her to The Olympics, knowing full-well she wasn’t fit to compete.
to bomb on purpose, go viral instantly…
I’m not the target demographic for The Olympics, at all.
and I don’t want offend any other athletes or spectators.
hear me out though, Raygun is the name I’ve heard most, by far if I’m being honest, when 2024 Olympics are brought up.
I think it’s pretty safe to say, that without her “performance” hitting the internet exactly like it did…
a huge set of people who were’t paying attention to The Olympics prior to the Breaking Events, now are.
if it was planned, it might be the most genius and well orchestrated examples of Negativity Bias used to market a thing in recent time, possibly ever.
Most people, couldn’t tell you 3 movies that won Oscars the year that Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, I absolutely could not.
But the slap itself is sadly a moment that might go down in some forms of “history”, they might actually teach kids about that in school eventually.
I constantly talk about how I hope for the worst weather imaginable on my hypothetical Wedding Day, *still trying to convince Sara of this*
I think people would remember that for way longer than they will a normal, kinda warm, uneventful (weather wise) day.
I’m not saying I want a full-blown disaster, at all.
but imagine the story: torrential downpour, winds howling, maybe even a lightning strike in the distance.
The kind of weather that makes everyone hide under tents, hair messy, makeup running.
That’s the kind of wedding people talk about for years.
It’s like the universe gifting you a story that’ll outlast any perfectly sunny day.
And it’s the same with Raygun...
Dr. Rachael Gunn.
If she’d just gone and performed decently, maybe finished somewhere in the middle, would anyone outside of her immediate circle remember her name (as an Olympian) a year from now?
I really doubt it…
But now, she’s a legend.
An absolute legend actually.
just not in the way she, or anyone else, expected her to be.
She’s the human embodiment of that disastrous wedding day I’m half-jokingly rooting for.
thanks for reading!
enjoy the rest of your week.