The emotional appeal of ‘Humans of New York’

What is it about Humans of New York (HONY) that sparked a social-media sensation?

The photographic storytelling project was created by Brandon Stanton, who originally started the enterprise as an attempt to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers and turn it into a book. In his own words, HONY “began to take on a much different character” when he “started collecting quotes and short stories from the people I met, and began including these snippets alongside the photographs.”

Now, Stanton has 17.5 million fans on Facebook, 5.2 million followers on Instagram, and 416,000 followers on Twitter.

[twitter-timeline id=616691889354346496 username=humansofny]

The simple profile of another human showing vulnerability paired with a simple photograph caught on like wildfire across the globe. There are now Humans of Bombay, Tehran, Paris, Amsterdam, San Antonio, and many other cities, as well as social-media pages dedicated to countless colleges and universities. It seems as though every major and minor group of people wants to jump on the “Humans of” bandwagon.

Natasha Culzac of The Independent puts it this way:

It appears that the blog panders to our inherent curiosity and perhaps even just helps us remember that everyone else is just as dejected, messed-up or as weird as ourselves.

What is the method of this madness? 

The beauty of HONY is that it harkens back to our collective love for storytelling, but modernizes those roots with social media. Aristotle describes three modes of persuasion: logos (logical argument), ethos (credibility of the speaker), and pathos (emotional appeal). Stanton captures photos of real people and posts their words (logos), but he details the emotional component (pathos) that allows us to connect with his stories. He grabs our attention through the kinds of words that HONY subjects reveal about themselves.

“A big part of a nurse’s job is translation. We have to turn medical language into common language. We explain the ‘why’s.’ Why they can’t eat. Why there is pain. Why their hair is falling out. You never know what those big medical words mean to a child, so we do everything we can to demystify them. If they play sports, we may describe their tumor as a baseball. And everyone knows that baseballs don’t belong in your belly. Ninety percent of them play video games, so sometimes the cancer is a monster. We’ve got to shoot the monster. We’ve got to bomb the monster. But we’re going to work together and get that monster. We’ll use any frame of reference that they understand: their favorite TV show, their favorite book, their favorite toy. And if we have an adolescent who’s a little bit angry, we’ll just shove our foot up the cancer’s ass.”

A photo posted by Humans of New York (@humansofny) on May 6, 2016 at 10:08am PDT

Our online selves are carefully crafted, eliminating any remnant of imperfection. We don’t take pictures of those meals where we left the chicken parmesan in the oven for just a few minutes too long, or those beaches where we aren’t sure where the litter ends and the sand begins. We show the four-course meal fit for a king and pristine beaches without a soda can in sight.

HONY breaks up this false narrative of perfection. Stanton brings out a refreshing vulnerability in his subjects, and we crave that. While there are some judgmental voices that occasionally chime in, Culzac notes that “the geniality and accepting nature of HONY’s community usually drowns out any hurtful comments eventually.”

Using pathos, Stanton successfully transforms people on the street into people worth listening to. While he is not the first to do this, HONY is a great reminder of the power of a simple story and a simple photograph.

What do you think? Is HONY something completely new, or is it merely a modern twist on an old strategy?