The Final Look at the Tipping Point

While reading the rest of the book, I discovered many interesting points that I never knew had an impact on one another. Gladwell uses real life events in order to explain his argument making it more comprehensible for readers. In chapter 3, “the Stickiness Factor”, Gladwell discusses how something memorable can have a major impact on the tipping point. The fact that something appeals to a large group helps to set off an epidemic in some sort of way. Sesame Street and Blues Clues are two examples used by Gladwell in order to explain his “stickiness” theory. He explains how children can learn through different teaching methods of reading and counting rather than the in class technique. It appeals to children in different ways as the shows bring in different characters or puppets in order to express teaching in different ways. Overall, this chapter covers the fact of “the stickiness factor” which is the phenomenon to “stick” a thought or trend etc. in the minds of people and influence their behavior. The next chapter, “the Power of Context (part 1) refers to the fact that the enviornment or something historical can have a impact on the tipping point as well. The main thing that stood out to me in this chapter was the fact that the decline in crime rates occurred in New York City due to a couple of enviornmental changes made by the mayor and the city officials. They began with small goals that could possibly make a difference within the whole community. City officials began painting over graffiti, cracking down on subway toll skippers, and dissuading public acts of degeneracy. Gladwell continues to explain how this also helped the decline in crack cocaine use and the aging of the population. This is very amusing as it particularly proved his point regarding how little things make a big difference. I also never thought about how the atmosphere could have a major impact on someone or a city as it did in New York City in the 1990s where a decline in crimes occurred due to all those little changes.
The next chapter pretty much explains how groups of less than 150 members usually display a level of intimacy, interdependency, and efficiency that begins to disappear as soon as the group gets bigger than 150 showing how something has to appeal to a large group of people. In the final chapters of the book Gladwell continues to explain different things that help the tipping point occur as a social epidemic. The blowout of the airwalk shoes and how they were designed for skateboarders but became a big hit for the nation. Gladwell then brings up the relationship between suicide rates of teens in a city and the problem of persistant use of cigarettes by teens.

This was a very interesting example as he continued to explain many reasons of these events “tipped” through the methods described in previous chapters. The second last chapter “Conclusion: Focus, Test, Believe” interested me the most as Gladwell’s final chapter talks about how something low-key, cummulative can build up over time and then turn into a massive tipping point. This book overall, gave me a greater perception of the world and how everything is affected by one thing or another. This was a very interesting book that helped to explain arguments of the tipping point but it also explained the many events that occurred in the past and what “tipped” them in the first place.