Proposition 6: Contagion of Economic Narratives Builds on
Opportunities for Repetition
Contagion depends on the frequency of opportunities to slip a narrative into a
conversation. It is usually impolite or rude to change the conversation subject,
unless justified by some extraordinary circumstance. Novel ideas and concepts
may increase opportunities for contagion. For example, the contagion rate of
narratives about the stock market probably increased when, in the 1920s and
1930s, the public began paying attention to stock price indexes. The same thing
happened with narrative epidemics about housing after the 1970s, when real
estate agents and homebuyers began to recognize home price indexes. In both
cases, news media writers, looking for new facts to justify writing an attention-
grabbing story, found themselves revisiting these indexes frequently.
Consider another example, familiar to almost all of us: the song “Happy
Birthday to You.” It is probably not an important economic narrative. Some
might say it is not even a real narrative because the words of the song do not tell
a story. But there is a story attached to the song in practically everyone’s
consciousness. The story is a sequence of events, repeated with variations on
birthdays. The story is this: Based on a long tradition that goes back generations,
people have assembled to celebrate the birthday of a loved one. After someone
announces that the ceremony is about to begin, a birthday cake is brought in with
flaming little candles, one for each year of the person’s life (unless he or she is
too old, in which case there will be commentary or jokes about the number of
candles). The birthday person makes a wish and attempts to blow out all the
candles with one breath in order to make the wish come true. Of course, almost
no one believes that birthday wishes come true, but they repeat the ritual in
deference to long tradition. Sometimes additional words are added to the song,
such as “And many more to you,” which may make for an awkward moment
because the syllables do not match the melody. The ceremony ends with
applause.
“Happy Birthday to You” is a good example of a contagious narrative because
it has spread around the world in many translations, and it may be the best-
known song of all time. It is contagious in part because of the constant
reappearance of birthdays, not because it is anybody’s favorite song. It is not
particularly admired for its beauty or grace. It grew unplanned and uncontrolled.

There is no history of a government edict requiring the song to be sung, or a
marketing campaign promising lifelong popularity for those who sing it or have
it sung to them. Digital counts show that the song grew in English like a disease
epidemic in the 1920s and 1930s, faltered around World War II, when people
had more important things on their minds, and then took off again.
Warner/Chappell Music had long claimed a 1935 copyright on the song, and
it collected millions of dollars per year in royalties, but it lost the copyright in
2016 when it was shown that “Happy Birthday to You” had striking similarities
to a published 1893 song, “Good Morning to All.”9 “Good Morning to All” was
a virtual nonentity, even though it closely resembles “Happy Birthday to You,”
with the exact same melody and very similar words:
Good morning to you
Good morning to you
Good morning dear children
Good morning to all.
The happy birthday version is so similar that it might easily have come into
being by accident in some kindergarten classroom when a teacher somewhere,
somehow wanted to mark the occasion of a child’s birthday. The mutation then
went viral from that obscure beginning:
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear [name]
Happy birthday to you.
Let’s consider why the seemingly minor mutation has done so much better
than the original. The slight change in the lyrics served to make “Happy
Birthday to You” part of a new and growing ritual and a symbol of caring, the
birthday party, whose popularity began to grow around the 1890s. This
association with other infectious narratives enhanced the song’s contagion, and,
because the ritual recurs from year to year, it reinforced memory and reduced the
recovery rate that eventually extinguishes most epidemics. Also, the change in
the words allows the singers to insert the birthday person’s name, thus
personalizing the song and adding more human interest.
Also consider why the authors of “Good Morning to All” did not realize that