The Tipping Point
Malcolm Gladwell landed on my radar a little over a year ago when I noticed a trend in minimalist book covers. He’s just like, “Throw a pencil on there and be done with it!”
So, I checked out The Tipping Point. Tipping point: “that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire” (Gladwell, back cover). Tipping points are striking instances in which everything changes. Gladwell argues that sociological trends can follow epidemic-like patterns similar to that of viruses. He introduces three agents that are instrumental in facilitating a social “outbreak”:
People! But only certain kinds. ~Special~ people.
Stickiness. Something must be memorable to become popular enough to “tip”. In this chapter, he discusses the fruitlessness of certain advertising techniques and dives into the background behind successful educational programs such as Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues. (Remember when Steve left the show and all these rumors about a heroin overdose and him being this uncontrollable Satanist surfaced and all your childhood hopes and dreams vanished? No? Just me? That’s fine. Turns out none of that was true, he just got tired of the show after six years. But then they replaced him with Joe and Joe was mad lame).
Context. This chapter refers to the environment in which ideas proliferate. Gladwell references the “broken windows theory”, a criminological belief that “crime is the inevitable result of disorder. If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread” (Gladwell 141). Nobody likes a broken window, guys. That’s how you get cold. Basically, according to this view, the little things matter. New York City’s crime rates suddenly tipped in the mid-’90s, decreasing at an extraordinary pace. Gladwell credits this transformation to increased efforts in addressing seemingly insignificant crimes like fare-beating and vandalism. This framework implies that criminals are not criminals because they have innate illicit tendencies; rather, their environment nudges them to engage in illegal behavior. So, instead of honing in on criminals themselves, we can fix more minute problems within the environment. Food for thought.
The book as a whole serves as a guide on how to focus your efforts more productively to create change. Gladwell leaves us with grandiose suggestions, but does the data back it up? It is hard to say. He seems to have a narrative that he wants to push and then uses one-sided stats and ad hoc anecdotes to do the pushing. But damn does he sound really smart while he’s pushing.
Personally, I do not necessarily place a ton of weight in his conclusions; yet, he raises intriguing solutions to problems that I think are worth investigating. He also incidentally provides readers with the history behind cool concepts that I have taken for granted up until now, like the meaning behind “six degrees of separation”. Furthermore, Gladwell is a careful writer who emphasizes clarity. The book has a straightforward structure that clearly explains each factor involved in a tipping point and then ties them all together to really drive his message home. Taking both the negative and positive factors into account, I give The Tipping Point 3 out of 5 flames. There is always value in reading something that encourages you to look at the world in a different way, but take his ideas with a grain of salt.
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