I’ve always been fascinated with how trends start, grow, and die.

Whether they’re business boom-bust cycles, pop culture fads, or stock prices, similar patterns exist.

Different disciplines have described how trends work. My favorite explanation is George Soros’s Theory of Reflexivity. Soros is one of the world’s best currency and stocks speculators.

Simply put, the Theory of Reflexivity states that a jolt in the market influences the perceptions of the individuals interacting with the market. Meanwhile, the individuals engaging with the market also change the fundamentals of the market. The back and forth creates a massive feedback loop, creating a trend.

With this in mind, online videos are a perfect medium for observing Soros’s theory at play.

YouTube is a marketplace where authors compete for attention from viewers. The infinite supply of short, user-generated snippets makes each video more disposable, fulfilling Andy Warhol’s “15 minute of fame” prophecy.

The metric for defining the popularity of videos is Views, and VideoSlush’s pricing structure is based on the rate of change of a video’s Views. To continually increase price, more and more people are needed to watch the video. The expansion eventually becomes unsustainable and dies.

Reflexivity occurs when VideoSlush traders watch YouTube videos, increasing Views. The quickly rising Views increase the price of the video. If the trend of the views rises fast enough, more traders are drawn to the video, further increasing the views. Due to the rapid stream of video releases, full-fledged mini-bubbles happen in 1-3 day cycles.

As a side note, Warhol’s “manufactured art” also exemplifies reflexivity. The subjects of his art, like Marilyn Monroe, are already famous, which makes the audience like the art. And with more people liking the art, the art itself becomes more famous as well.

Next time you see something cool (like a funny video blog from YouTube ) on something mainstream (like Entertainment Tonight), you know the trend is close to over. In order for the trend to continue, the video must be distributed through a larger channel so it can reach an even larger audience. The expansion becomes unsustainable, and the trend dies at the peak of its popularity!

I hope this gives you the high level context for the game! I’ll be giving VideoSlush gameplay strategies in future entries.