Epic Lap
What curiosity research trends suggest about Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl Halftime Show
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In this issue: A recent study on curiosity identifies humans as informavores, or information foragers, categorizing the information-seeking behaviors of individuals into different styles: busybody (loose pattern association), hunter (specific evidentiary support), and dancer (interdisciplinary logic flow). Under this framework, what differentiates a massive attention-grabbing event, such as Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Show, from a generic Wikipedia scroll? Much of curiosity research suggests that the key distinction is in cultural practice.
Grand National
Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance accrued approximately 131.2 million viewers.1 Wikipedia attracts 1.5 billion unique devices monthly.2
Here’s what curiosity research trends suggest about both:
An Emphasis on The Collective - As Dave Zirin writes for The Nation, Lamar collaborated with a collective of artists — dancers, choreographers, costume and lighting designers, recording artists, and public figures, to realize his vision and invite the audience to participate. As detailed in recent findings in Science Advances, Wikipedia publishes approximately 60 million free articles in upwards of 300 languages. Whether in performance or pursuit of knowledge, what drives audience attention is an emphasis on the collective.
An Application of Familiar Symbols - A 1987 Buick Grand National. An American flag. Dancers wearing red, white, and blue. As
writes, Kendrick Lamar sourced the familiar to simultaneously celebrate Black culture and Americana and push back against attempts at erasure. Wikipedia similarly sources the familiar by adapting its content to meet geographical and linguistic specificity. Whether through design elements or local language, an application of familiar symbols grabs attention.A Curiosity Practice Driven By Cultural Identity - Kendrick Lamar’s curiosity practice looks to the past to inform the present. One example: Samuel L. Jackson as Uncle Sam reaffirmed that Black history and American history are an intertwined tapestry. Search history on Wikipedia operates similarly, as browsing habits are influenced by cultural identifiers, such as ethnic background, geographic proximity, and current events. In each use case, cultural identity directs attention and informs curiosity practice. Still, it’s worth noting that existing curiosity research is centered on western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic population samples and could benefit from more diverse representation.
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