We love excitement and being excited so much. So much that we're willing to manufacture it — or at least create the conditions for it to exist and thrive in. (This isn't isolated to the excitement emotion, but it's a particularly profound example.) Whether it's Hollywood blockbusters or pricey perfumes, we superficially agree with the maker (including the marketers, good and evil) that it's something worth being excited by.

Superficial because we haven't experienced it yet — we anticipate and whet our appetites with a teaser trailer or yummy sampler, yes!

We may stretch the truth for ourselves. We may very well selectively discard facts in favor of more emotions. And at the very shallowest level exists this "hype cloud", despite what is meaningful is several layers deep.

People are so predictable this way, you know?

You can repeatedly play on these sensory blind spots.

Humans (as a species) have a big blind spot when it comes to driving through the oncoming waves of novelty, churning to mature. And we, in our paradoxical nature, love surprises, but only when part of them is what we secretly desire. Everyone (I generalize) loves to be surprised by a fat bag of cash. No one wants to die in an agonizing, suffering way. "Expect the unexpected" is hence selectively true.

If you don't apply hype to a product or service, then hype isn't relevant to you. Think about Google's Gmail and how its unorthodox, massively-scaled beta shunted generic expectations of growth. Remember, since hype is a superficial agreement, it takes two (you and the maker/marketer) to tango/tangle at the surface. If you reject the hype, then you may be seeing through some trickery, or are just very jaded.

By creating the right flavor of your own hype, you don't just "set expectations". You manufacture excitement (and that's by no means a bad thing — deliberate candlelight adds romantic mood to dinner), and it's the right flavor which makes a valuable experience that much more exciting for you. An experience which would've been meaningful without additional excitement, but now has added value because of your choices.

Believe the hype — but only if you control how you receive it.