When Deviance is an Advantage - Breathing Space Blog

Here are some notes and observations I've made based on the book "Deviance Advantage: How Fringe Ideas Create Mass Markets," by Mathews, Wenty, and Wacker (Crown Books, 2002)
* Over the past 3 decades deviance, not reasoning, began to drive the social and commercial agenda. The result? Things that we found putrid only yesterday we lionize today.
* Deviance migrates from the fringe to the social convention, rapidly creating markets, and changing the rules of the social and commercial game.
* The pace of change has picked up to the point where the functional distance between the fringe and social convention is all but disappeared.
* Markets form and dissolve in unanticipated places and in record rates. Yesterday's pariah is tomorrow's market darling, and what was once beyond the social pale is suddenly a hot commodity, ie. NY executives marketing gangsta rap and convicted criminals for huge profits
* The pace of deviant change is so intense and so relentless that we are beginning to witness compound deviance. The rules of the game keep changing before we have a chance to write them down.