Are you a “harbinger of failure”? (2015)

I wonder if this correlates with consuming less advertising. People who don't watch many ads may not buy mainstream products.

A friend of mine who grew up in Spokane, WA told me that for some reason Spokane was regarded as the ideal product testing ground by big American corporations, and so he and his friends encountered a lot of weird products that never succeeded, and a few major ones that they saw years before everyone else. Anybody know if this is true?

Some friends are the type who like things in part because they're weird, unpopular and unusual, or because a product flops and they're curious to try it before it's gone.

The British comedy panel show QI (Quite Interesting) had a segment on this. One of my favorite shows to learn all kinds of random topics.

Series N, Episode 15 - https://youtu.be/PNKgry1c8Qw&t=100

I have long called certain people "Oracles of Wrong". If they are the same people, they can also be counted upon to be wrong on any issue of substance. So, anytime there is a decision to be made, look to them, and choose the opposite.

It is hard to be right all the time. Logically, it should be exactly, equally hard to be wrong all the time, but somehow more people achieve it.

In any big group of people known to each other, it is always easy to tell who the Oracles of Wrong are. (If you don't know, it might be you; but if it is, you are probably wrong about that, too.) I have had some decades to think about this, and identify other qualities of these individuals, besides their preference for wrongness. They are of above-average intelligence. They are typically upper-class; some wear a trilby. They prefer alternatives that are personally easy for them, requiring less change in habits or thinking. They have never experienced any substantial personal discomfort as a consequence of a wrong choice.

In cases of uncertainty, look to an Oracle of Wrong for anti-leadership.