Social Desire

Written on December 30, 2007 – 2:29 pm | by Shana Albert |

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A big Thanks to Dan Zarrella for this wonderful guest post.

If we are going to talk about how to create desire with and in social media, we must first understand what it is we mean when we say “desire”. In memetics the closest term is probably attention, but that concept is not completely analogous, desire stimulates and is borne from attention. In Fruedian terms, desire is what drives a person to seek pleasure and avoid pain, and to Kant things that purported to make a person’s future better are desireable.

For us to desire something, it must be attention-getting, pleasure-inducing and promise a better tomorrow (or at least a better next few moments), but it must also be compatible with existing mental and social frameworks. We will not view a meme with an open mind if it contradicts an idea or belief we’ve invested attention into, nevermind desire it. This also works at the social level, most people won’t give an idea the time of day if it disagrees with something my social group accepts. Apple fans will not be convinced that windows is better, so its pointless to try, instead try re-framing your meme to prevent resistance. You’ll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

The creation of desire, or the process by which a person is induced to desire something come in two models, in one desire itself is a meme capable of transmission and assimilation from person to person and in the other desire is an emotion caused by memes.

In the latter model it can be assumed that if you create a pleasure-inducing and future-enhancing meme, you will stimulate desire. In social media pleasure induction generally comes in the form of entertainment (a funny video) or social proof (being the first in your clique to know about a new rumor), and future enhancing typically takes the form of empowering things, like hassle-reducing gadgets (think iPhone) or HOWTOs.

In the former model, the “desire meme” must be engineered by encouraging the outward expression of desire, both at the individual and the cultural level. Human empathy and a desire to “fit in” and “belong” to a social group with similar motivations will stir desire in people exposed to other people who are already infected with the “desire meme”. Apple has done a great job of stimulating an “us vs them” mentality which leads to strong expressions of group and individual desire, which in turn brings more fans into the fold. The entire Ron Paul meme is about evangelism also. I allowed people to leave comments on the USB Absinthe Spoon site, proclaiming why they wanted one and many of the reactions to the site focused on how much people wanted one rather than the product itself.

In a review of Sade’s Reason, the philosopher Maurice Blanchot said

“For passion to become energy, it is necessary that it be constricted, that it be mediated by passing through a necessary moment of insensibility, then it will be the greatest passion possible.”

In social media it is a challenge, some sort of friction that turns simple want into powerful desire. Things like scarcity and exclusivity, as well as Veblen-based price structures can turn a lukewarm following into a frothing mass of lunatics. Invite-only web services like gmail have taken advantage of this phenomenon to spread widely with very low distribution or advertising costs. My USB Absinthe Spoon campaign was able to drive desire in a specific following by emphasizing the scarcity of the product.

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Dan Zarrella is a viral marketing consultant and if you liked this post you can read his blog and vote for it at the SEJ search blog awards for Best Social Media Marketing Blog.

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