I'm reading Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference. Self-helpish title aside, it's a fascinating book about how ideas become popular.
An integral part of Gladwell's thesis is that certain people have a kind of genius for knowing dozens of dozens of people. These are not social climbers, but rather people who are overjoyed by connecting like-minded folk. When these superpopular people hear about fashion trends, handy products, political movements, or some other zeitgeisty idea, they spread it.
But how to identify such a social butterfly extraordinaire? Gladwell includes a little test so the reader can have an idea where he fits in the global scale of sociability.
The more points you get, the greater access you have to the world around you, and the greater chance that the rest of society will realize the wisdom of being influenced by you. Gladwell broke his results down thusly:
All told, I have given the test to about 400 people. Of those, there were two dozen or so scores under 20, eight over 90, and four more over 100.
Johnnyscore: twelve.
Out of his group of four hundred, Gladwell says, "there were two dozen or so scores under twenty." So right off the bat I'm in the bottom 5% of that 400. Factor in the fact that twelve is pretty far from twenty, and chances are I'm more like the bottom 3%.
Which while humbling, rings true. I get around (geographically), but I think my buddy knows more people at his favorite bar than I do in the metropolis of New York and the continent of Africa put together. Breakdown: I have five fraternity friends from college, two friends from high school, two friends in New York, about five friends from Newsweek, a friend in Kenya and a friend in Accra. Other than that, I really don't know anybody's name.
I went to a college with like, eighty people, and still every time someone told a story hinging on the characters involved, I was useless.
"So Avery saw Elizabeth D. and-"
"Is Avery his first name or last name?"
"You effing know Avery. He was at the Krappa cookout. He's the guy with the blonde hair and the hat."
"Thought that was Mason."
"Avery. He's got that big blue truck."
"No frigging idea."
"Go get beer or something. You're killing the story."
"I'll kill your story."
"What?"
"Leaving now."
Example two: Usually people make out an A-list and B-list for their wedding. The wedding is planned around the number of A-list invites; when A-listers opt out, B-listers are invited to fill in the spaces. But I have zero B-listers. No less than desirable cousins, no friends I've lost touch with, no people who I would feel awkward telling I didn't invite to my wedding.
Here's my one B-lister: Mike Loftin, class of '99. That's it. Loftin and his wonderful wife are my entire dim damn B-list. Suck it like a lemon, Mikey.
So anyway: good book. And the moral of today's blog is, "If you don't like nobody, hold on to your friends that do like people. Because people that don't like nobody don't know nobody that can give them a heads up about a new job when they get back from Africa. And people that don't like nobody inevitably have nowhere to put their ideas other than a blog. They just type and hope someone takes interest. And that's no way to go through life." Leaving now.
