The Strange Logic of the Overton Window – When the Fringe Becomes the Frame

Public debate isn't a marketplace of ideas. It's a funhouse mirror. You mostly see your own reflection – until one day, the window moves, and you realise the world has changed.

The phenomenon has a name: the Overton Window. Coined after policy analyst Joseph Overton, it describes how an idea shifts from fringe to mainstream. Not gradually, and certainly not neutrally. It moves because someone pushes. What was once dismissed as absurd or radical becomes common sense – sometimes overnight.

And today, that window is wide open. Flooded with ideas ranging from overdue to outright bizarre.

Let’s take two examples – one that makes sense, and one that… doesn’t. (Your mileage may vary. That’s the point.)

First up: children and screens.

For years, concerned voices were brushed aside by media researchers insisting that nothing can be proven, so let’s just keep collecting data. Meanwhile, kids became lonelier, more anxious, more sedentary – and parents kept pushing the stroller straight into the algorithm.

But now? The tide has turned. Across borders and political camps, screen overuse has moved from private worry to public issue. Not because the lab said so, but because real people kept knocking on the window. Eventually, policymakers looked up. Ten years too late – but the window moved.

Now, the weird one: crypto.

What started in obscure libertarian forums has now reached prime time, with Donald Trump launching his own token and the industry rebranding itself from rebel to respectable. Crypto was supposed to decentralise power. Instead, it concentrates it. A market without state turned into a state without ethics. The Trump family’s own meme coin is valued at over 2 billion dollars. The whole thing is surreal. Yet somehow, here we are.

The slow window (screens). The fast one (crypto). One reveals how we talk ourselves out of reality. The other, how we try to buy our way around it.

But maybe I’m biased. Maybe I’m just a velvet-jacketed bore who still sees crypto as a cocktail of pyramid scheme and bachelor party gone wrong.

And that’s precisely Overton’s point.

The window always moves. Not because truth emerges, but because momentum does. Sometimes led by serious thinkers. Sometimes by hype. Always by someone pushing. So if you want to stay relevant – not just right –you’d better pay attention.

It’s a warning to researchers who clung to academic purity while the world changed without them. And a nudge to people like me, who miss the signals because we still want the future to make sense.

In the end, the Overton Window isn’t a mirror. It’s not here to flatter your worldview. It’s a shared frame – and often the only one we’ve got.

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Illustration: Sketchplanations – The Overton Window© Sketchplanations / License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0