  Studying extreme ideas in routine choices and discussions is of utmost
importance to understand the increasing polarization in society. In this study,
we focus on understanding the generation and influence of extreme ideas in
routine conversations which we label "eccentric" ideas. The eccentricity of any
idea is defined as the deviation of that idea from the norm of the social
neighborhood. We collected and analyzed data from two completely different
sources: public social media and online experiments in a controlled
environment. We compared the popularity of ideas against their eccentricity to
understand individuals' fascination towards eccentricity. We found that more
eccentric ideas have a higher probability of getting a greater number of
"likes". Additionally, we demonstrate that the social neighborhood of an
individual conceals eccentricity changes in one's own opinions and facilitates
generation of eccentric ideas at a collective level.
