I was first introduced the concept of critical mass through the 100th monkey effect/phenomenon.  For those of you who don’t know and are too lazy to click the link, the 100th monkey effect refers to a report that while monkeys were transmitting knowledge by normal means of education, there was a specific point (the 100th monkey to learn) at which the knowledge ceased to be conveyed normally and jumped to something resembling spontaneous learning that defied social and natural barriers.  Critical mass as it is generally understood just describes the number of people required to do something before it is widely adopted which will in turn fuel even more widespread adoption of that action or behavior.

The 100th monkey effect seemed weird to me the first time I encountered it.  You have to understand that it was the first thing I heard when I walked into an unlisted after school club called Charlotte’s Web that had no visible link to any subject.  The faculty member proceeded to tell me that I was the last member they would accept because the club was now one away from achieving critical mass and they didn’t want it to get out of hand. In retrospect, my high school was pretty cool. After I had a chance to think about it, the 100th monkey effect seemed more reasonable than critical mass itself.  After all, societies around the globe all seem to have designed similar origin myths independently of one another at around the same time.  Tools too were developed in different societies independently.  But critical mass… that always seemed like it should be one.  The idea, of course, is that the early adopters are doing so on a basis of merit rather than simple emulation.  Let’s look at the classic example of someone looking into the sky.  A passerby might follow the onlooker’s line of sight while they continued to walk and, if there was something of interest, they would pause.  Enough people standing around looking up though and a passerby would stop to scan the sky simply because there were so many already doing it.
The pedestrian assumes there is something up there, or that the behavior has merit, even if they can’t see it.

While critical mass is interesting and exciting in a kind of mass hysteria, lemmings off a cliff kind of way, I think the first couple of people are the most interesting part. That’s why I was so happy to see this video.

I guess you could say that the first few people started dancing because it’s fun and the others started dancing because critical mass was achieved.  I’d rather argue that while not everything has a critical mass of one, dance parties do.

Weirdo Kid Starts Huge Dance Party – Watch more Funny Videos

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I was first introduced the concept of critical mass through the 100th monkey effect/phenomenon.  For those of you who don't know and are too lazy to click the link, the 100th monkey effect refers to a report that while monkeys were transmitting knowledge by normal means of education, there was a specific point (the 100th ...

Tags: 100th monkey effect, critical mass, dance party, infectious, viral