Word: effective
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First there was the fax machine-smashing scene in Office Space. Then some guy called MC Frontalot. Weird Al. Ben Folds. Andy Samberg. Natalie Portman. Andy Samberg again. Now comedian Andy Milonakis has cashed in on the "geeky white boy raps about his cushy, middle class lifestyle for humorous effect" trend with his song "Let Me Twitter...
...Steven Stack, professor of psychiatry and criminal justice at Wayne State University, offers another explanation: the copycat effect. The copycat theory was first conceived by a criminologist in 1912, after the London newspapers' wall-to-wall coverage of the brutal crimes of Jack the Ripper in the late 1800s led to a wave of copycat rapes and murders throughout England. Since then, there has been much research into copycat events - mostly copycat suicides, which appear to be most common - but, taken together, the findings are inconclusive...
...review of 105 previously published studies, Stack found that about 40% of the studies suggested an association between media coverage of suicide, particularly celebrity suicide, and suicide rates in the general public. He also found a dose-response effect: The more coverage of a suicide, the greater the number of copycat deaths. (See pictures of an exhibit of Columbine evidence...
...those that tended to involve celebrity death or heavy media coverage - factors that, unsurprisingly, tend to co-occur. "The stories that are most likely to have an impact are ones that concern entertainment and political celebrities. Coverage of these suicides is 5.2 times more likely to produce a copycat effect than coverage of ordinary people's suicides," Stack says. In the month after Marilyn Monroe's death, for example, the suicide rate in the U.S. rose...
...favorite Star Trek episode is called "Cause and Effect." Here's the setup: the crew members of the Enterprise (the Enterprise-D, since we're in Next Generation here) are trapped in a time loop. They repeat the same sequence of events over and over again. At the end of each loop, the Enterprise is destroyed in a catastrophic collision with another ship, and they go back to the beginning. But with a subtle difference: each time they go through the loop, it leaves behind dark trace memories, so the next time around, the crew is haunted by a sense...