Revolutionary War: Malcolm Gladwell vs. The Twitterverse

Back in the fall, Malcolm Gladwell thoroughly ticked off the entire social media-lovers community by declaring Twitter and Facebook ineffective tools for social revolution

He argued that large-scale, high-risk activism was the result of strong ties built over years of real life interaction and that social media networks are built of weaker ties, and consequently, weaker organizations of people who don’t want to do anything that requires more than a few clicks.

And, even after many counterpoints have been made, Gladwell is at it again with his latest New Yorker installment about Egypt. Look, there’s no question Gladwell is a pretty smart dude – he writes for some of the most notable publications on the planet and his books are compelling, entertaining, and insightful. We’re not here to rub his face in the dirt.

But we have to say, MG, we have proof that there is power in social media.

Exhibit A: Flip the Dog
You may have heard about Black Sheep’s “pet cause” – the one that uses social media to find homes for shelter puppies. Well, pending an application (fingers crossed!), we will have successfully “flipped” our latest dog, and we will have done so in just a few days. Sure, our networks are made up of people we know really well and others we don’t know as well. Certainly, our message was passed around casually by people who had no intention of adopting a dog themselves. All they had to do was “like” or retweet. But they did, and that message reached someone who contacted someone else. And an animal has found a loving home because of it.

Exhibit B: Black Sheep’s Social Media Shin-Digs
One of the problems with Gladwell’s argument is that he assumes weak ties are static. But they’re not – not in our world. We expect our relationships formed online to be fostered in real life. We hold events every six weeks (like our shin-dig last night) for that very reason. They’re not just an opportunity for half-price appetizers – they are essential to making our online networks tighter and stronger so that when we do have an important or high-risk call-to-action in front of us, we have a tightly knit legion of support 140 characters away.

Exhibit C: The Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell knows what I’m talking about)
We are inundated with different causes and non-profits and African orphans and national disasters, and it’s easy to be numbed by the sheer quantity or turned off by other people’s obvious self-motivation for participation. That is a major difference from the time of Woolworth sit-ins and now. Back then, your cause likely affected YOU, and you didn’t have to worry about anything else. Now, it’s hard to choose. Maybe a friend recommends a page for a local slow food movement or maybe your distant relative in China posts pictures of themselves volunteering in a hospital. That is how different organizations recruit hundreds of passive supporters. And that’s fine. Because those passive supporters can become impassive, and they can use their strong ties to flip the switch in their closest friends. Voila! The passive to impassive has reached a tipping point, and change being made is multi-fold. You said it, Malcolm, not us.

So is social media driving political insurgency and revolutionizing revolutions? Maybe, maybe not. At the end of the day, social media is a catalyst for affecting change and getting people involved on a grassroots level. We may not be waging wars, but we’re battling local issues and fighting for those forces that pull at our heartstrings – and in our minds, the scale of those issues is irrelevant.

MG, at the end of your October article you sarcastically wrote “viva la revolucion!” We suggest you start writing it like this: #vivalarevolucion.