Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering

by Malcolm Gladwell

We have looked, so far, at two elements of epidemics. The first is the overstory. The overstory casts a shadow over whatever is happening on the ground. The second element is group proportions. The mix of people in a group determines when and if that group tips. Both of those elements were on display in the Poplar Grove suicide epidemic. Poplar Grove has its own particular overstory—an extreme ethic of achievement—that had devastating side effects. And its group proportions were all wrong. It was a monoculture. It needed alternative identities in which students overwhelmed by the norms of the school could find safe haven. But there was a third factor. Remember what one of the sociologists studying Poplar Grove, Seth Abrutyn, said: In at least three of the four clusters, there was a high-status student that was very visible, who very much embodied the ideal of Poplar Grove’s youth.… A lot of the youth who had died by suicide seemed like they were perfect, and then were just gone. So it was sort of like, “Well, if they can’t survive in this context, how can I?” One of the engines of the Poplar Grove epidemic was that the students who started the school’s suicide cluster had special status: They occupied a significant position in the school’s hierarchy. I talked about this idea in The Tipping Point. I called it the Law of the Few.