Mob mentality & Social media.

The madness of the crowd

Capeproject
6 min readDec 15, 2020
Birbhum: Irate mob charging a policeman during a protest after the body of a railway hawker was found at Bolpur railway station in Birbhum district of West Bengal on Monday. PTI Photo (PTI6_4_2012_000157B)Image Credit: PTI on Gulf news

First let’s understand the term mob mentality:

Herd mentality describes how people can be influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors on a largely emotional, rather than rational, basis. When individuals are affected by mob mentality, they may make different decisions than they would have individually.

“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups,” George Carlin.

Let’s see, if the herd bias can affect us in real life. While you’re out shopping, you will look at two stores in the mall selling clothes.

Which store do we normally choose? The one that’s crowded, full of people or the less popular/empty one? we are intrigued to know what is attracting their attention and walk into the crowded store, hoping to find something good or else why would the place be crowded, right?

Not only me, most people would choose the busy store over an empty one and of course it’s a rational decision to make. However, many are just making their decision based on the decision of others.

HERD MENTALITY is a strong force which overrides logic, questioning, debate, reasoning, common sense. It may result in bad…

--

--