A behavioral psychologist named Dr. Aris Thorne was studying the brand-new "Like" button on a fledgling platform called Facebook. He noticed a strange pattern. Users didn't just like things they enjoyed. They liked things after seeing that their friends liked them. And more powerfully, they liked things after seeing that a high-status user—a "local king" of their social graph—had liked them first.

In the small, obsessive world of antique manuscript collecting, there was an unspoken title no one wanted:

For decades, "kingliker" was a dusty insult for social climbers and pretentious art buyers. Then, in 2009, the word woke up.

Dr. Thorne published a dry paper titled "The Regal Imitation: Status-Conditioned Positive Reinforcement in Digital Networks." But the internet, which loves shortcuts, resurrected Reggie Poole's old nickname. They called the behavior