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I want to talk about summer reads, guilty pleasures, and the community that is built from “easter eggs.”
Let’s start with one of my guilty pleasures: Following Instagram influencers for fashion, wellness, and generally to keep up with the “kids.” One of those is Taylor Owen (and her now-fiancé James Neal), who are TikTok famous for doing Succession spoofs. I haven’t seen Succession, so most of their videos are way over my head, but this one reeled me in because, of course, Taylor Swift reference. Taylor and James call their community “Regs,” which is short for regulars*. The Regs get certain jokes that others don’t. For example, they joke about being siblings because of the Succession videos, and when James proposed to her in real life, the regs made jokes about siblings getting married. New followers might be confused, but the Regs are in the know. They get it. They belong.
“Easter eggs,” as the name suggests, are hidden treasures waiting to be discovered. Just like a child who is overjoyed to find an egg in the backyard, humans love the thrill of surprise and the joy of discovery.
Taylor Swift is famous for her easter eggs. It all began when she encoded her lyrics with capital letters that spelled out secret messages to her fans, and this grew into all sorts of teasers for upcoming releases, such as the neon ‘Lover’ sign in her ‘Red’ video, which teased the release of the ‘Lover’ album.
I just devoured Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Malibu Rising over the weekend. If I may insert a quick side note here, don’t deprive yourself of great fiction and don’t judge me or yourself for a fun summer read now and then! Why? Because no matter how deep, intellectual, or superficial, inspiration can be found everywhere, and this week’s topic on easter eggs is thanks to reading Malibu Rising, in which we get the story of fictional musician Mick Riva’s four children. Early on in the book, there is a single sentence mention of Celia St. James, who I recall is a character in Reid’s Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Then, I realized, Mick Riva is the third husband of Evelyn Hugo. He also has a cameo in Daisy Jones and the Six. All of these stories are unrelated, yet the characters cross over and make an appearance. Not everyone would notice this unless they are devoted followers of Reid’s work. She’s created a universe of characters that move in and out of other stories, and it’s kind of fascinating!
A brief history of easter eggs
One of the original easter eggs was a single pixel in an Atari game containing the creator’s name—his way of getting credit when companies didn’t acknowledge individual developers. It was found a year after the game’s release.
Why they work
Whether it’s a running joke, an inside joke, or a teaser of something to come, easter eggs work because they offer surprise and discovery. Even better, we, your community, discover together and get to talk about it amongst ourselves. We feel a sense of belonging, and this sense of belonging is central to the human condition.
How could you incorporate easter eggs
Easter eggs are hard to implement because they can’t feel contrived, or they will fail. It also has to be something people can find, but not so obscure that it’s frustrating.
Think of easter eggs as an inside or running “joke,” although it doesn’t have to be funny. It could simply be a reference to something. I’ve had these happen organically when I’m running a storytelling workshop. A participant asked a question in the morning, and he had fabricated a word in the question, acknowledging it wasn’t an actual word. We ended up using that word on numerous occasions throughout the day. It was something that brought us together in the shared knowledge of it.
Maybe you’ve been inspired by one of the examples I’ve shared here, or look at how your favorite storytellers use easter eggs.
My advice is not to work too hard at it. Instead of contriving, stay open to the idea. Pay attention to what’s been said, observe the threads of conversation, and look for ways to bring them back into play.
*Love the idea of naming your community members. Lady Gaga has her Little Monsters, and Beyoncé has her Beyhive.
*Did you catch the easter egg in this article? Look again at the examples I chose.
Take care out there.
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