Author’s note: Last weekend Every held a conference in New York called Thesis. I gave a talk called “Narratives Have Network Effects,” but it was limited to 10 minutes, and I had a lot more to say. Plus, I had many conversations with folks at the event that made me want to go even deeper. So I decided to expand it into a full essay, which you are now reading.

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Every product we buy, every job we take, every relationship we have, and all the decisions we make are based on narratives—stories that explain how the world works and what’s going on in it. The narratives we believe determine our actions.

A few examples:

• You heard AI is going to change everything, so you quit your job to build a startup using GPT-3.
• You heard countless stories about true love in movies and books, so you broke up with your girlfriend because it didn’t feel the way you thought it should.
• You heard carbs are bad, so you started eating salads for lunch.

If we want to accomplish our goals, we need the narratives driving our actions to be accurate and useful. We also need other people to buy the narratives we believe in if we want to attract customers, investors, employees, or any other kind of partner. So it’s worth understanding where they come from and how they grow.