Person enters the room, or exits a conversation. In descending order of preference, they can either (1) talk to someone who is sitting alone, (2) join an existing conversation, or (3) sit alone. But because people don’t want to be the first person to seed a new conversation, there aren’t many people by themselves to make 2-person conversations out of. So, to fix the incentives...
When you start a conversation with someone who was sitting alone, give them a dollar. (Not entirely serious but not entirely joking either.)
I agree that this is the key dynamic making this happen. Except it’s worse than that. Imagine that you enter the room or exit a conversation. Out of the options listed above, you are indeed probably going to pick #2. But which existing conversation will you join? Unless you’re going out of your way to keep group size small you will likely be influenced by two things: (a) prefer a group containing someone you know/like; (b) prefer a group that looks like it will be glad to accept a new person. Both of these favour larger groups over smaller. So larger groups will grow faster.
Person enters the room, or exits a conversation. In descending order of preference, they can either (1) talk to someone who is sitting alone, (2) join an existing conversation, or (3) sit alone. But because people don’t want to be the first person to seed a new conversation, there aren’t many people by themselves to make 2-person conversations out of. So, to fix the incentives...
When you start a conversation with someone who was sitting alone, give them a dollar. (Not entirely serious but not entirely joking either.)
I agree that this is the key dynamic making this happen. Except it’s worse than that. Imagine that you enter the room or exit a conversation. Out of the options listed above, you are indeed probably going to pick #2. But which existing conversation will you join? Unless you’re going out of your way to keep group size small you will likely be influenced by two things: (a) prefer a group containing someone you know/like; (b) prefer a group that looks like it will be glad to accept a new person. Both of these favour larger groups over smaller. So larger groups will grow faster.
I think this exacerbates the pressure on less popular people though.