On February 4, the second day of the rally, more than $55 billion of Tesla stock changed hands—more than any stock in history at the time. On the same day, people who started searching Google with the words “Should I” received an auto-suggested completion of their question: “Should I buy Tesla stock?” Millions of people were searching Google to

For a hipster, the rival is popular culture—he eschews anything popular and embraces what he believes to be eclectic, but he does so according to new models. According to Girard, “the effort to leave the beaten paths forces everyone into the same ditch.”

(By the way, did you know that in almost every language in the world, people fall in love? Nobody rises up into it.3)

The key is carefully curating our sources of knowledge so that we are able to get down to what is true regardless of how many other people want to believe it.

We’re model addicts. Right now, the models we prefer are experts. That could be

characters in these novels rely on other characters to show them what is worth wanting. They don’t spontaneously desire anything. Instead, their desires are formed by interacting with other characters who alter their goals and their behavior—most of all, their desires.

“Each person must ask what his relationship is to the scapegoat,” wrote René Girard. “I am not aware of my own, and I am persuaded that the same holds true for my readers. We only have legitimate enmities. And yet the entire universe swarms with scapegoats.”

Mimetic rivalries don't end well unless one of the two parties involved renounces the rivalry.

The more people fight, the more they come to resemble each other. We should choose our enemies wisely, because we become like them.