The Call After Eight

It was after eight. I was home. The phone rang. A distributor who handled our sports events. Normally he called during the day, when it was about orders, schedules, logistics. Never in the evening.

“Did you see that? They tore the thing apart.”

I hadn’t seen it. I turned it on. It was one of those shows where products get tested. Entertaining, fast, for a broad audience. They had taken our product, dismantled it on camera, and had the viewers laughing.

That was the moment.

Not the moment the business collapsed. Not the moment I stopped believing. But the moment the mood shifted. And when the mood shifts, everything else follows.

Until then, public opinion had been on our side. Or at least neutral. People knew the product, many wore it, prominent athletes showed it in public. There were skeptics, but they were in the minority. The hype carried itself. More revenue every month, new markets every month, confirmation every month that it was working.

And then that call.

A hype takes years to build. It takes one night to collapse. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s an experience burned into my body. The way my stomach clenched when I heard the voice on the phone. The way I knew, before he finished his sentence, what it meant.

The next morning, the first retailers called. Not angry. Unsettled. “What am I supposed to tell customers?” That’s the question that comes when the mood shifts. Not: is it true? But: what do I say now? Because the truth had suddenly become a different one. Not because the facts had changed. The facts were the same as the day before. What had changed was the narrative.

Yesterday the product was a hype. Today it was a joke.

The content of the show wasn’t particularly new. They were the same arguments skeptics had been making for months. Placebo. No measurable effect. Suggestion. None of it was a surprise for anyone who had looked into the subject. But it was a surprise for millions of viewers who heard it for the first time on a single evening. In a format that was entertaining. In a format that was clear. In a format you could retell at the office the next day.

That’s the mechanics. A hype lives on word of mouth and dies on word of mouth. Only faster.

I spent a lot of time on the phone in the days that followed. With partners, retailers, people who had been enthusiastic just a week earlier. The conversations all had the same tone. Slightly embarrassed, as if they had done something wrong. As if it was awkward to have the product on the shelf. As if they had to justify themselves.

Nobody asked: is what the show said true? Everyone asked: what do we do now? Because it was never about truth. It was about belonging. Yesterday you belonged if you wore the band. Today you belonged if you laughed about it.

That’s the mechanism that occupies me the most. Not the show itself. Not the content. But the speed at which people switch sides. Without a single fact having changed. Just because the social meaning changed.

I’ve observed this in many things since then. Products, trends, political positions, public figures. The mechanism is always the same. There is a point where the mood tips. And after that, there’s no stopping it. Not because everyone suddenly recognizes the truth. But because everyone suddenly wants to stand on the new side.

The call came after eight. But it could just as well have come at three in the afternoon. It wasn’t about the time. It was about the tone. That brief hesitation at the start, before he spoke. That “Did you see that?” in a voice that already knew what it meant.

Sometimes one phone call is enough.