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Quick Summary: Read about how the long tail doesn’t only apply to culture and commerce, but also to relationships.

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In my earlier post about the Long Tail of Pain, I just drew a diagram of how social media allows us to experience pain anytime, anyplace, in any form, but didn’t elaborate on the idea adequately.

In this post, I’ll explain what a long tail is and how digital media has changed it. I’ll also explain how the long tail doesn’t only apply to culture and commerce, but also to relationships, specifically pain, via the Three Laws of the Long Tail of Pain.

Let me first explain what a long tail is.

A long tail curve is a statistical distribution in which a small number of data points have disproportionately high values compared to a large number of other data points that have progressively low values. If you rank these data points and plot them in the decreasing order of their values, you get a curve that first falls very sharply (forming the almost vertical head) and then falls more slowly (forming the almost horizontal tail). The Pareto Principle (the top 20% contribute 80% of the total) is an example of a long tail curve.

Let me now explain how digital media has changed the long tail.

Digital media has basically reduced the cost of production and distribution — and, therefore, the entry threshold — of products, services and ideas. In doing so, it has extended the tail of the long tail curve, so that the top 20% now contribute, let’s say, 50%, and not 80% of the total.

The most used example for this is how book sales on Amazon, or music sales on iTunes has a substantially longer tail than traditional book stores or music stores. As a result of substantially reduced (even close to zero) reproduction, inventory and distribution costs, Amazon or iTunes can have a substantially larger (effectively endless) library of books and music. The availability of almost endless choice unlocks latent demand for diversity, driving volumes for even the less popular items.

Another effect of this endless choice (especially in books, music and movies) is the breakdown of a monolithic blockbuster-driven popular culture into many parallel niches, or micro-cultures.

In his totally brilliant book, The Long Tail, Wired magazine editor Chris Andersen explains how endless choice in the long tail is changing the economics of culture and commerce.

The really interesting part is that the long tail doesn’t only apply to culture and commerce, but also to relationships. I’ll touch upon how the long tail applies to other aspects of relationships in later posts, but I’ll illustrate one aspect of the the Long Tail of Relationships here with how it applies to pain in relationships, via the Three Laws of the Long Tail of Pain.

In a relationship, the intensity of pain is highest during the break-up itself. Then, you move back to your own social circles, sometimes move to different cities and basically lose touch with each other, except for an occasional telephone call once every six months. The separation allows your wounds to heal and the intensity of your pain decreases over time. Finally, other than the occasional pang of nostalgia, it becomes another fine line on your forehead, inseparable in its effect from a million other regrets.

Which leads to the First Law of the Long Tail of Pain –

Pain is like a radioactive element; it has a half-life of ‘t’ days. In every ‘t’ days, the intensity of your pain becomes half of what it was. Over time, the intensity of your pain approaches zero, but never really becomes zero.

Social media, by allowing you to stay in touch with your ‘friends’ anytime, anyplace, in any form, makes it virtually impossible for you to lose touch with each other. Therefore, instead of bumping into her at the shopping mall once in two years, you bump into her online every day, on Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, or some other social media website. Inevitably, every time you bump into her, you open up another unhealed wound, yet again. It’s important to note here that the intensity of pain decreases with each subsequent encounter, because it’s buffered with time and space, but the total quantum of pain (the area under the curve) increases.

Which leads to the Second Law of the Long Tail of Pain –

Social media extends the half life of pain, lengthens and thickens the long tail of pain and, therefore, increases the total quantum of pain (the area under the curve).

In fact, the more socially connected you are in terms of having an overlapping set of friends, the more difficult it becomes for you to avoid these encounters. Social media almost demands that you have an increasingly larger and more overlapping social circle and, therefore, doesn’t allow you the time and space you need to heal.

Which leads to the Third Law of the Long Tail of Pain –

In fact, the additional quantum of pain in an ‘online’ break-up (area under the ‘tail’) is often greater than the normal quantum of pain in an ‘offline’ break-up (area under the ‘head’).

If the questions I have asked in this post provoked you to think, do ask yourself some more questions –

- What is the half-life of your ‘typical’ relationship? What is the variation in the half-lives of your relationships?
- Has social media increased the half-life of at least some of your relationships by making it difficult for you to extricate yourself from your ex?
- Has social media decreased the half-life of your ‘typical’ relationship by making it easy to meet more people and have more relationships?

Do leave a comment below or e-mail me and let me know what you think about the Three Laws of the Long Tail of Pain.

Recommended Reading:

• The Long Tail of Pain (13)
• The Economics of Free (2)
• Open Source Relationships and the Long Tail of Pain (0)
• List of Marketing, Public Relations & Social Media Blogs in India (14)
• How Do You Feed MediaSnackers? (14)