The Pareto Principle

Some of you know it as the 80/20 Rule. The principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from roughly 20% of causes. In other words, a minority percentage of causes have a substantial majority effect.

Politicians and their patron saint Niccolò Machiavelli have known this simple crowd control algorithm for centuries. But to be fair to them it’s not just governments and their politicians who live and die by the Pareto Principle. Capitalism thrives on it, artists are tormented by it.

The internet and its virtual communities of social platforms adopted the principle from day one. It was a prime directive practically ripped from Machiavelli’s “The Prince”: capture no more than 20% of traffic, then tell the world that you are the world. How small can you go in the 20% club and still assume the “I’m king of the world!” position? Well, we now know what share of the social media market $44 billion will buy: 9%. As our Titanic hero Elon Musk would say, “let that sink in.” 

Comedian Bill Burr has quipped an interesting number on more than one occasion, when poked about the blowback from audiences over his sarcasm about women. “What, like 20 of them?” he scoffs, mocking the relatively small number of booers or hecklers. But regardless of how he truly feels about women, you may want to pay close attention to his defiance of the Pareto Principle. Some internet neighborhoods have condemned the likes of him and Dave Chappelle as public enemies. Yet reality is the eighty percent undertow behind the shallow shores of the twenty percent. As Chappelle and Burr enter the deep end of accountability, they manage to outsmart the Pareto effect. They are the Schrödinger cats of the comedy circuit.

If comedy’s not your thing, maybe the dark side of the 80/20 ratio will grab your attention.  The two political parties in the US have never enjoyed much more than 20% of actual population support, never mind 51% of voters over the past few decades. And yet, every time a new politician is sworn in they can’t help but parrot the same tired dogma: “The American people have spoken.” They sure have. Somewhere between half and eighty percent either disapprove of you or at best are apathetic. 

When the American Republican Party splintered in recent years from mainstream conservatism to neo-fascist movements, it mastered the Pareto Principle as an alternative fact maker. Ripped from the cover of survival coffee-table books, it convinced itself that when standing up to a bear you should make yourself look bigger. “Never mind those votes, they’re not real anyway. Look over here, deep into my huuuge eyes... then close your little mind and let me take you back, to a magical place from the past that never existed.”

So the next time you cruise the internet’s underworld, watching the rage Geiger counter shoot up by the thousands and the thirst traps by the millions, you may want to remind yourself about the Pareto Principle. Eighty percent of reality is beyond the interest of media and social platforms. They weren’t developed to enlighten you in the first place, their prime directive is to sell. What you’re seeing is blinding you from what you’re not. Which is how selling works. 

One of society’s greatest oxymorons is street wisdom. Survival is powered by instinct, not by wisdom. Street instinct is the king of urban myths, and as such it roars as the ruling monarch of the internet.