The Tipping Point
For Christmas, my father gave me a copy of The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell writes about how social epidemics are created. We all know of some fads that never quite took off, some that are still gaining momentum, some that have lost their momentum, and some that crashed like a tech stock.
One of his case studies is the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. Historically there were actually two riders, Revere and Joseph Dawes. But while Revere woke up the countryside, the countryside where Dawes rode barely stirred. Both riders were delivering the same message ("The British are coming!"). But Revere delivered it in such a way that really took hold. A lot of it had to do with Revere - the kind of man who knew who to talk to in each community he passed, the kind of man who knew how to "sell" his message.
Gladwell spends a good deal of the book talking about the kinds of people that are needed to start an epidemic. There are the Connectors (a person who knows a lot of people in different groups), the Mavens (a person who knows a lot about something), and the Salesmen (a person who knows how to convince you to do something). He also talks about how the context determines whether an idea will succeed or fail. Imagine how futile Revere's efforts would have been if everyone wanted the British to come.
Gladwell spent a lot of time talking about how social epidemics start, but it would have been interesting to look at why they die out. He describes one case study where the epidemic died, but more post mortems would have been interesting. It may just be that a counter epidemic takes place.
As I was reading I thought about the various and sundry epidemics that I've been part of. For example, I have a friend S who decided that it would be more beneficial to spend the money that he would have spent on a movie and buy a board game with it. After doing some research, he stumbled across Carcassone and Settlers of Catan. For a while, he played games with anyone who came over, including me. I introduced the game to Paul and Sarahlynn while they were new parents and didn't get out much. They in turn introduced it to Jessica and Scott, who have become huge fans. We also taught the game to Andi and her husband. S also introduced S&P, who played with M&K and P&A. Now our whole peer group is "infected." Already I know that some infected people are introducing the game to their parents, so the board game craze is moving out.
I've been a part of two different Magic epidemics. The first epidemic happened in college. My friend D taught me how to play at his apartment. Eventually he wore me down and I bought some cards. We started playing in our fraternity suite at lunch time. Some of our friends watched us play for a couple of days before they asked to be taught how to play. We taught S (of the board games) how to play. Soon we had ten people in our peer group playing. But gradually people lost interest in the game. Strategically it was still as interesting, but the costs associated with keeping up with the game grew prohibitive. Of the group that started playing many still have their cards and like to come out and play, but I'm the only one to keep up with the game as far as I know. As an interesting sidenote to the story, S passed his cards on to his brother K, who is part of an epidemic of Magic players where he lives.
The second epidemic happened at my previous place of work. I discovered that most of the group of guys that I worked with were former Magic players. So I proposed that we could play, but minimize the upkeep costs associated with the game by playing with small subsets of cards and to keep the game fresh by rotating the card sets whenever they got stale. Instead of a massive initial investment, everyone only had to kick in a little bit of money every once in a while. This worked well for quite a while. But a combination of factors caused the game to end. The card sets had a number of unanswerable game breakers. People wanted to use larger subsets of cards. We played the same game for a long time and people wanted some variety. We lost the room that we had been privately playing in and no one wanted to play in front of our co-workers and (perhaps more importantly) managers. Finally we started losing players and there was no longer enough to keep the game going.
One of his case studies is the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. Historically there were actually two riders, Revere and Joseph Dawes. But while Revere woke up the countryside, the countryside where Dawes rode barely stirred. Both riders were delivering the same message ("The British are coming!"). But Revere delivered it in such a way that really took hold. A lot of it had to do with Revere - the kind of man who knew who to talk to in each community he passed, the kind of man who knew how to "sell" his message.
Gladwell spends a good deal of the book talking about the kinds of people that are needed to start an epidemic. There are the Connectors (a person who knows a lot of people in different groups), the Mavens (a person who knows a lot about something), and the Salesmen (a person who knows how to convince you to do something). He also talks about how the context determines whether an idea will succeed or fail. Imagine how futile Revere's efforts would have been if everyone wanted the British to come.
Gladwell spent a lot of time talking about how social epidemics start, but it would have been interesting to look at why they die out. He describes one case study where the epidemic died, but more post mortems would have been interesting. It may just be that a counter epidemic takes place.
As I was reading I thought about the various and sundry epidemics that I've been part of. For example, I have a friend S who decided that it would be more beneficial to spend the money that he would have spent on a movie and buy a board game with it. After doing some research, he stumbled across Carcassone and Settlers of Catan. For a while, he played games with anyone who came over, including me. I introduced the game to Paul and Sarahlynn while they were new parents and didn't get out much. They in turn introduced it to Jessica and Scott, who have become huge fans. We also taught the game to Andi and her husband. S also introduced S&P, who played with M&K and P&A. Now our whole peer group is "infected." Already I know that some infected people are introducing the game to their parents, so the board game craze is moving out.
I've been a part of two different Magic epidemics. The first epidemic happened in college. My friend D taught me how to play at his apartment. Eventually he wore me down and I bought some cards. We started playing in our fraternity suite at lunch time. Some of our friends watched us play for a couple of days before they asked to be taught how to play. We taught S (of the board games) how to play. Soon we had ten people in our peer group playing. But gradually people lost interest in the game. Strategically it was still as interesting, but the costs associated with keeping up with the game grew prohibitive. Of the group that started playing many still have their cards and like to come out and play, but I'm the only one to keep up with the game as far as I know. As an interesting sidenote to the story, S passed his cards on to his brother K, who is part of an epidemic of Magic players where he lives.
The second epidemic happened at my previous place of work. I discovered that most of the group of guys that I worked with were former Magic players. So I proposed that we could play, but minimize the upkeep costs associated with the game by playing with small subsets of cards and to keep the game fresh by rotating the card sets whenever they got stale. Instead of a massive initial investment, everyone only had to kick in a little bit of money every once in a while. This worked well for quite a while. But a combination of factors caused the game to end. The card sets had a number of unanswerable game breakers. People wanted to use larger subsets of cards. We played the same game for a long time and people wanted some variety. We lost the room that we had been privately playing in and no one wanted to play in front of our co-workers and (perhaps more importantly) managers. Finally we started losing players and there was no longer enough to keep the game going.
posted by mypetrock at 10:50 AM
1 Comments:
Hey there - I literally just stumbled on this post (better late than never)...
It's really not important but Scott and I learned Settlers from our friends Matt and Jen and I remember Matt teaching Sarahlynn and Paul to play while Sarahlynn was pregant - I could be wrong but I thought they told us later, "Oh, the "Growing Moss family" has the same game!"
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