The Hush Puppies urge ; How popular trends spread like viruses in our culture
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Book Preview
"The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell discusses his new book, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference" at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Elliott Bay Book Co., 101 S. Main St., Seattle (206-624-6600).
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About five years ago, you might have felt an urge to buy a pair of Hush Puppies. Suddenly, suede old-man shoes looked like just the thing.
Shoppers bought the Puppies or resisted the Puppies, then shrugged off the whole affair as one of those odd vagaries of fashion. Not science writer Malcolm Gladwell. He ignored the shoes altogether, and instead did some serious thinking about the urge.
Gladwell found that the Hush Puppies trend started among a small group of New York club kids. "How," he wondered, "does a thirty-dollar pair of shoes go from a handful of downtown Manhattan hipsters and designers to every mall in America in the space of two years?"
This question gave birth to Gladwell's celebrated article in the New Yorker exploring the way "ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do." Gladwell found that an epidemic - be it the flu or a style of footwear - "can rise or fall in one dramatic moment. . . .The name given to that one dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once is the Tipping Point."
He's now expanded that article into a book, "The Tipping Point" (Little, Brown, $24.95), exploring, as his subtitle says, "how little things can make a big difference." We intuitively believe that big changes must be caused by big events. He asks us to try to understand change differently, writing that "We need to prepare ourselves for the possibility that sometimes big changes follow from small events, and that sometimes these changes can happen very quickly."
The Tipping Point, Gladwell believes, is brought about by three major factors. The first, the Law of the Few, says that you don't need a crowd to start a virus, you just need a Connector (a widely and well-connected figure), a Maven (an expert who convinces his friends of the viability of the trend), and a Salesman to bring it to the masses. The second, the Stickiness Factor, says your message must be delivered in a compelling manner. And the Power of Context says that you must create an environment your epidemic loves, the way germs love a day-care center.
Gladwell's background is in science reporting, and his descriptions of how epidemics work are beautifully researched. He has a knack for describing psychological experiments, and a happy way with examples. He illustrates his chapter on the Stickiness Factor with a surprisingly fascinating exploration of the educational children's TV shows "Sesame Street" and "Blue's Clues," showing us how their creators effectively engage kids. "Blue's Clues," for instance, tries to get kids to "verbally participate, to become actively involved. If you watch `Blue's Clues' with a group of children, the success of this strategy is obvious. It's as if they're a group of diehard Yankees fans at a baseball game."
Gladwell's writing falls into the elegant, wry, humane mold of Susan Orlean, or Calvin Trillin at his most strictly reportorial. The sanity and clarity of his prose suggest that his theory, too, must be sane and clear.
But a reporter is not necessarily a theorist, and Gladwell's theory begins to show its weak spots when he turns from the descriptive to the prescriptive. He suggests ways to end teen smoking, not to mention crime, based on his theory of epidemics, but here the structure begins to crumple.
Maven and Connectors and Salesmen are conflated. The Power of Context drops out of sight.
Gladwell's book has been widely reviewed, mostly by other science writers, and unsurprisingly, they've focused on the viability of his theory. But maybe these experts are simply reading the book incorrectly. The theory lies like a veil over the undeniably compelling stories Gladwell tells. If you sidestep the theory itself, if you think of it as a mere excuse for these wonderful forays into the world of behavioral psychology - a world unknown to most of us - you will find a terrifically rewarding read.