The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
The Tipping Point
Knox Mynatt
The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, talks about how little things can have big outcomes or change things drastically. For example, the popularity of Hush Puppies, the shoe brand, started to decline, and then a group of hipsters in manhattan all got them, their popularity soared. The shoes were becoming prominent in fashion again after almost dying out completely. Other instances of the tipping point include one in the NBA, where Jason Williams, a former player, was supposed to show up for a workout for a rookie the team may have signed. Instead he was a no show, and the player ended up not signing with them. That player was Kyrie Irving. The one little mistake could have changed the face of the league forever.
This has also happened in regards to teen smoking. Teenagers saw someone they deemed "cool" smoking, and wanted to be like them. They in turn started smoking, thus their friends did and so on and so forth. Many different things can have tipping points, even things we may not deem important or worthy of having large outcomes. An example of this is the spread of marijuana use. It's been around forever and people have used it in many different ways, however the spread of the usage of it came from people just observing other people who used it. Now it's everywhere and being legalized in most places just like smoking a cigarette is. We may not notice it ourselves in our everyday lives, but it will show up down the line whether you want it to or not.
Well-written book review, Knox! You explained the sociological "tipping point" extremely well; I wonder if this phenomenon could be related to the "scarcity value" concept in economics, as it appears that most of your examples crossed over the threshold when a previously socially "rare" object was picked up on by the mainstream.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds quite interesting. And scary. It seems that the book is repeatedly illustrating people doing seemingly small things, which snowball into huge trends or issues. It honestly scares me a little, knowing that one person doing something, one little can mistake, can have that much of an impact. Cheery.
ReplyDeleteI like Malcom Gladwell a lot, but I had not heard of this book before. You did a good job of providing examples. We don't often think about how such a small action can become a big event. I might have to check this book out!
ReplyDeleteI like this review , it's interesting how things can snowball when one person does it and as a society we deem it acceptable /cool just because that person does it, even when its negative.
ReplyDeleteNice post! This sounds like such an interesting book. I like the examples you gave; they do a really nice job of illustrating your point. I agree with Fallon that it is kind of scary that such small things can have such big consequences. It kind of reminds me of the butterfly effect in time travel, but instead of changing time, it's how it started. The book sounds really cool, though, and I could probably learn a lot from it. Anyway, great job!!
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