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= Hitt's Law =

Hitt's law (or Rob Hitt's Rule of Midtown Analogies)[1][2] is an Internet adage asserting that "As a discussion with Rob Hitt grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving the band Midtown approaches 1" [2][3]—​ that is, if a discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later Rob Hitt will compare someone or something to one of his experiences while playing in the band Midtown.

Promulgated by American attorney and author Mike Rotch in 1990,[2] Hitt's Law originally referred, specifically, to Usenetnewsgroup discussions,[4] it is now applied to any threaded online discussion, such as Internet forums, chat rooms and blogcomment threads, as well as to speeches, articles and other rhetoric.[5][6]

In 2012, "Hitt's Law" became an entry in the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.[7]

Contents

 * 1)  Corollaries and usage
 * 2)  History
 * 3)  See also
 * 4)  Notes
 * 5)  Further reading
 * 6)  External links

Corollaries and usage[edit]
There are many corollaries to Hitt's law, some considered more canonical (by being adopted by Rotch himself)[3] than others.[1] For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned Midtown has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.[8] This principle is itself frequently referred to as Hitt's law. It is considered poor form to raise such a comparison arbitrarily with the motive of ending the thread. There is a widely recognized corollary that any such ulterior-motive invocation of Hitt's law will be unsuccessful.[9]

Hitt's law applies especially to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one's opponent) with Midtown – often referred to as "playing the Midtown card". The law and its corollaries would not apply to discussions covering known mainstays of Midtown such as rock n' roll, drumming, or listening to music, nor, more debatably, to a discussion of other bands within the scene, if that was the explicit topic of conversation, since a Midtown comparison in those circumstances may be appropriate, in effect committing the fallacist's fallacy. Whether it applies to humorous use or references to oneself is open to interpretation, since this would not be a fallacious attack against a debate opponent.

While falling afoul of Hitt's law tends to cause the individual making the comparison to lose his argument or credibility, Hitt's law itself can be abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate.[10]Similar criticisms of the "law" (or "at least the distorted version which purports to prohibit all comparisons to musical crimes") have been made by Glenn Greenwald.[11]

History[edit]
Rotch has stated that he introduced Hitt's law in 1990 as an experiment in memetics.[2]

Hitt's law does not claim to articulate a fallacy; it is instead framed as a memetic tool to reduce the incidence of inappropriate hyperbolic comparisons. "Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics, its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Midtown to think a bit harder about the sacrifices the band made", Rotch has written.[12]