Great essay by Anu Atluru on the concept of “Franchise Thinking.” 

Atulru writes: “Franchise thinking is the tendency to fit everything into ideas that already have names, audiences, and tribal alignment rather than to look for new ones.”

The big bold point in this essay: “Too many people are making something already known more known instead of making something new.”

“Franchise ideas are not falsifiable claims but narrative containers that can hold anything you put in them. This is why they persist long past their usefulness.

“The original requires looking at the world. The sequel is catechism.”

This is probably the point that I most directly identified with: “The alternative to franchise thinking is not contrarianism. That’s just another kind of sequel, the reboot that inverts the original. It’s Joker as protagonist in the Batman universe. The alternative is earnest investment in new ideas. This yields less confident conclusions. You can’t write a viral essay that says “it’s complicated and I’m not sure.” But this is the only path to truly novel insight.”

And I’ve been a contrarian for years and, apparently, that is the wrong approach. 

Anu continues: “Originals don’t have audiences yet. That’s what makes them originals. The alternative to franchise thinking is patience and looking stupid for a while.”

Definitely something I needed to read today.