Why are there no fat vampires?

What absurd questions can teach us about cultural assumptions - and why understanding them is becoming a competitive advantage for modern businesses.

Last weekend, I found myself somewhere I rarely expect to find meaningful insight: deep in a Facebook comments section.

The original post posed a question so unexpected that it genuinely made me laugh: Why are there no fat vampires?

What followed was exactly what you'd expect. The comments quickly descended into debate. Some cited Sinners. Others pointed to True Blood or the original Blade film as evidence that fat vampires had existed all along. Before long, people were arguing fictional biology as though it were established science, while others questioned why anyone would even ask such a thing in the first place.

I closed the app, but I couldn't stop thinking about it.

By Monday morning, I'd brought it to the Memo section of our weekly team meeting at The Unmistakables. Every week, we ask the same question: What have you heard? We share the conversations, observations and moments from culture that have made us stop and pay attention - not because every observation becomes an insight, but because relevance starts with curiosity.

The discussion that followed wasn't about vampire mythology. It wasn't even about body image. It was about something far more fundamental: cultural assumptions. The invisible ideas we inherit, reinforce and rarely stop to question.

The most commercially valuable insights often arrive disguised as ridiculous questions.

Why cultural assumptions matter

Every culture develops assumptions about what is desirable, believable and normal. Over time, those assumptions become so familiar that we stop recognising them as cultural. They simply become reality.

Vampires are a surprisingly good example. Across centuries of folklore, literature, television and film, we've collectively arrived at a remarkably consistent image of a creature that doesn't even exist. Slim. Beautiful. Seductive. Powerful. It's not that every vampire fits that description. It's that most of us instinctively imagine one that does.

Nobody explicitly taught us that image, yet somehow we've all inherited it.

The same thing happens far beyond fiction.

Think about the assumptions we hold about what a CEO looks like. Or a gamer. Or a luxury customer. Or a "typical" family. Ask ten people to describe each of those and you'll hear subtle differences, but you'll also notice striking similarities. Those similarities aren't accidental; they're the product of the stories, images and experiences we've absorbed throughout our lives.

The challenge with cultural assumptions is that they don't feel like assumptions. They feel like common sense.

When exceptions distract us from patterns

What fascinated me most about the Facebook thread wasn't the original question. It was how quickly people tried to answer it literally.

Someone found an exception. Someone else explained vampire biology. Others dismissed the conversation entirely because they could think of one fictional example that didn't fit the pattern.

It struck me how often we do the same thing in business.

A cultural observation is raised and our instinct is to challenge its accuracy before exploring its meaning. We ask whether it's universally true, whether the data supports it or whether there's an example that disproves it.

Those are important questions, but they rarely come first.

The more valuable question is: What does this conversation reveal?

Because exceptions don't necessarily erase patterns. Sometimes they simply remind us that the pattern exists.

The fact that so many people immediately reached for examples from Sinners, True Blood and Blade wasn't evidence that the original question was wrong. It was evidence that we all shared a remarkably similar mental image before we started searching for exceptions.

That is what made the conversation interesting.

Not the vampires.

The assumptions.

The business case for challenging cultural assumptions

This is where the conversation stops being entertaining and starts becoming commercially important.

Every organisation is shaped by cultural assumptions, whether it realises it or not. They influence who products are designed for, who advertising is created to attract, who is represented in campaigns, who is invited into research and, ultimately, who feels that a brand was built with them in mind.

Most of those decisions aren't made consciously. They're inherited.

Businesses invest millions in understanding customers. They commission research, build sophisticated audience segments and analyse behavioural data in extraordinary detail. Yet some of the biggest barriers to growth aren't hidden inside spreadsheets. They're hidden inside assumptions that have gone unquestioned for so long they've become invisible.

Assumptions about aspiration.

Assumptions about success.

Assumptions about identity.

Assumptions about what "normal" looks like.

When those assumptions no longer reflect the world around us, relevance begins to drift.

We've seen organisations redesign products for customers who no longer exist, recruit against outdated ideas of leadership and build campaigns around lifestyles that feel increasingly disconnected from reality. None of those decisions were made with bad intentions. They were made because cultural assumptions had quietly become business assumptions. When those assumptions go unchallenged, relevance doesn't disappear overnight. It drifts, until one day organisations find themselves wondering why their customers have moved on.

Culture moves before the data does

One of the biggest mistakes organisations make is believing that culture announces itself through reports.

It doesn't.

Culture shows up first in conversations. In jokes. In memes. In comment sections. In questions that sound too ridiculous to take seriously.

Long before data confirms a shift, people are already talking about it.

Take the rise of GLP-1 medications such as Ozempic and Mounjaro. Much of the business conversation has focused on changing consumer behaviour: smaller shopping baskets, different food choices and new opportunities across health and wellbeing.

Those changes matter, but they're downstream.

The more interesting question is what those conversations reveal about aspiration, beauty standards and identity. They signal that cultural assumptions around health, attractiveness and success are evolving in real time.

The businesses that will win won't simply respond to changing consumer behaviour. They'll understand the cultural assumptions driving it.

That's the difference between reacting to trends and understanding relevance.

Relevance begins with curiosity

At The Unmistakables, we often say that relevance isn't about chasing trends. It's about understanding people.

That understanding doesn't begin with a dashboard. It begins with paying attention.

It's why every Monday we ask, What have you heard?

Not because every observation becomes an insight, but because every meaningful insight starts with curiosity. It starts with noticing the conversations that others dismiss, the headlines people skim past, the memes everyone shares without asking why and the questions that seem absurd on the surface but reveal something much bigger underneath.

Most people scroll on.

We stop and ask what culture might be trying to tell us.

The questions worth asking

It's easy to dismiss a question like Why are there no fat vampires? as internet nonsense.

It's much harder—and much more valuable—to ask why that question resonated in the first place.

That's where cultural assumptions reveal themselves. Not in the answer, but in our instinctive reaction.

The organisations that stay relevant aren't necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets, the largest datasets or the fastest response times. They're the ones willing to interrogate the assumptions everyone else has stopped seeing.

The next time a conversation makes you roll your eyes, resist the temptation to dismiss it.

Instead, ask yourself:

What cultural assumption is this exposing?

Because culture rarely changes in boardrooms. It changes in conversations. By the time those conversations reach your strategy deck, your customers have often moved on.

At The Unmistakables, there's one question we always ask:

What have you heard?

Not because every conversation matters, but because the ones that do often reveal the cultural assumptions shaping the world around us. Those are the conversations worth paying attention to.

More often than not, relevance arrives disguised as something everyone else is too quick to dismiss.