Contact Tracing On Old Town Road

September 29, 2021 12:03 PM

How scientists say a hit song is like an infectious disease "The most important finding of the study is that we have shown that it makes sense to use a mathematical model of disease spread to study song popularity and that opens the door for all kinds of things that we might be able to learn about song popularity,"
posted by gusottertrout (27 comments total)

You can cure yourself of earworms with ivermectin!

[no you can't. really you can't. that's for horses, come on get real.]
posted by chavenet at 12:26 PM on September 29, 2021 [8 favorites]

mmmm Bop.





I'll show myself out now. Enjoy your ear herpes.
posted by Nanukthedog at 12:28 PM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

This is why I get at least three shots of cowbell per year.
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:01 PM on September 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

cf. Rivers, J. 1972
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:05 PM on September 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

(sorry, messed up the citation--try Smith, H."P." 1957.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:10 PM on September 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

You can cure yourself of earworms with ivermectin!
[no you can't. really you can't. that's for horses, come on get real.]

Well, if the horses are on the Old Town Road . . .
posted by dlugoczaj at 1:21 PM on September 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

(sorry, messed up the citation--try Smith, H."P." 1957 yt .)

Dang, that means I messed up my tag.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:53 PM on September 29, 2021

It's all memetics; only the medium changes. Words, music, virii, bacteria, plants, animals, humanity: an instance of an idea, a means for it to propagate, plus (optionally) a fitness test. It's all the same shit.
posted by seanmpuckett at 2:11 PM on September 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: an instance of an idea, a means for it to propagate, plus (optionally) a fitness test
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:15 PM on September 29, 2021 [7 favorites]

Original Article

Full text is available to me.
posted by bonehead at 2:15 PM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter: It's all the same shit.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:45 PM on September 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

The plural of virus is viruses.
posted by y2karl at 3:03 PM on September 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

The memetic code for "virii" as a plural of virus hasn't been removed from the ecosystem.
And the more it gets used, the more chances there are for it to reproduce further.
It's all the same shit.
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:24 PM on September 29, 2021 [7 favorites]

Only to doofi ;
posted by y2karl at 3:51 PM on September 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

doofim
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 4:37 PM on September 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

What's the infectious disease equivalent of a YouTube recommendation?
posted by straight at 6:33 PM on September 29, 2021

(Answer: a YouTube recommendation)
posted by straight at 6:35 PM on September 29, 2021

doofopodes [passim]
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 6:52 PM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

How scientists say a hit song is like

it's art, assholes. Stay in your lane. Oh my, look at all those ducks swimming in the water
posted by philip-random at 8:14 PM on September 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

This is interesting bc I feel like I don't get exposed to music at all anymore even though I'm compulsively connected to the hive mind for so much of every day. When I was growing up there was music around me constantly & I was always learning about new music on tv, all kinds of music, old & new, stuff I liked & didn't like. Now it's like music is only on certain apps (Spotify, tiktok, Instagram) & I don't like those apps so no music for me (except my own mp3 collection I started with soulseek & how you used to be able to browse your neighbors' libraries in iTunes). I miss music!
posted by bleep at 9:28 PM on September 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

It's all memetics; only the medium changes. Words, music, virii, bacteria, plants, animals, humanity: an instance of an idea, a means for it to propagate, plus (optionally) a fitness test. It's all the same shit.

As you say these things flourish in very different (growth?) media. From the perspective of, say, musicology the medium is not really secondary - it's the full extent of what the thing is and, as someone else once said, not separable from the 'message'.
posted by GeorgeBickham at 3:45 AM on September 30, 2021

I've had one of the minor numbers from Little Shop of Horrors running through my head on repeat for two weeks now and my god I would take a pill to make it stop if I could.
posted by kyrademon at 4:04 AM on September 30, 2021

In my ukulele group one night several of us were complaining about different earworms, and one guy said 'I have a cure for that', and he named a song. We all sang it, and our earworms were cleared, but this song wasn't just a new earworm, it was self-erasing. Amazing!
The next day I asked around- what was that song? Turns out no one could remember what it was, even the guy we thought came up with it.
Still a mystery, but somewhere out there is the cure.
posted by MtDewd at 7:27 AM on September 30, 2021 [6 favorites]

Low Rider is the cure for earworms.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 9:32 AM on September 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

Earworm procedure: Abba exorcises anything, and the Imperial March from Star Wars exorcises Abba.
posted by Pallas Athena at 11:22 AM on September 30, 2021

My midlife crises includes being vaccinated against enjoying new bands. I’m on a Radiohead kick, again. It’s kind of like Herpes ( the gift that keeps on giving and there ain’t no cure).
posted by waving at 4:37 PM on September 30, 2021

I've had this stuck in my head since watching Devs, but I don't mind a bit because the drumming is just immaculate.
posted by flabdablet at 11:51 PM on September 30, 2021 [1 favorite]