Justin Reich, teaching MIT's CMS.595 Learning, Media, and Technology, examines why connectivist MOOCs failed to take hold despite their ambition to disrupt traditional education. He argues that unfamiliar pedagogical models face a structural disadvantage he calls the curse of the familiar: institutions, teachers, and students default to formats that resemble what they already know. Reich traces how early MOOC designers hoped open, networked, learner-driven courses would replace lectures and textbooks, and why those experiments were largely rejected in favor of more conventional course structures. The session turns to what actually succeeds in changing educational practice, pointing to strategies that introduce new technology through familiar formats and that build durable communities of educators who sustain innovation over time. Drawing on case studies from online learning history, the lecture makes a broader argument about the limits of top-down technological disruption in classrooms.