To be fair, the benefit of franchise ideas is shared language. Common frames for describing, processing, and experiencing things together. But there’s a fine line between utility and lazily consolidating narrative power. Shared language helps us think together. Franchise thinking is when the template replaces thought.

If you produce ideas, don’t let the validated crowd out the emerging. If you curate ideas, don’t be beholden to consensus and algorithms. And if you consume ideas, gravitate toward what you don’t yet understand instead of going all-in on the ones you already do. Because otherwise — it’s sequels all the way down.

The alternative to franchise thinking is not contrarianism. That’s just another kind of sequel, the reboot that inverts the original. It’s Joker as protagonist in the Batman universe. The alternative is earnest investment in new ideas. This yields less confident conclusions. You can’t write a viral essay that says “it’s complicated and I’m not... See more