Mobs SuckIt's a strange fact of life that individually people might be wonderful company, but in a group they are invariably insufferable. Or maybe it isn't a fact and it's merely an impression I carry around inside my bitter heart, but this is my little ghetto on the Internet and no one is going to tell me that any of you are checking my facts. I could write that Elephants are the dominant species of intelligent creature on this planet, and it would be decades before anyone ever noticed or bothered to point out the error. So I find I have a certain freedom in my declarations here. In this case, though, I'd challenge you to prove me wrong: People are usually pretty good souls when you meet them one-on-one or in small groups, but the larger the group, the worse it is, until they've formed up into countries and are hurling bombs at each other. If you have any doubt about how grouping ourselves up makes us worse people, dumber people, then I give you as final proof the Flash Mob.
There are commercials on television right now for some sort of phone/texting service/device, wherein a bunch of slacker-type kids are all texting each other as they plan a zany prank. In one, they all gather in the lobby of an office building, get on escalators going in opposite directions, and have a three-second crazy string fight as they pass each other on the way up and down. In another, they crash a supermarket, run a plastic finish line across the aisles, and have a cart race. Each one ends with the zany kids making a break for freedom before The Man can have them arrested. Or, perhaps, beaten savagely for being morons.
This sort of shit is attractive to kids, of course, who think they are going to be the first people in the universe to beat Death and live their lives free or some such bullshit, somehow accomplished through minor property damage and annoying the fuck out of their elders. But the Flash Mob phenomenon isn't restricted to just kids—there are grown adults out in the middle of streets having pillow fights, for god's sake. These are all probably nice, interesting folks if you meet them one at a time, but put them into a 'mob', and you've got a huge dollop of assholes.
There's the rub: The mobbing of humanity. The more of us there are, the worse we behave, and that, I think, is a proven historical fact, although I will not expend any effort in actually proving it, historically or otherwise. Why else do I bother writing a column if not to be able to write things without having to back them up?
The thrill of working through a mob, of course, is the freedom from personal responsibility. You don't have to think for yourself, you simply act. It's the same principle dictators and bullies have been using for crowd control for years—bury the individual inside the pulpy mass of a crowd and direct them. Some people react better to this than others; some people immediately go blank-eyed and crazy and start doing what they're told, some people need some prodding and convincing. Some few actually never give in. The frightening thing about 'Flash mobs' is that there's no coercion—these are grown or almost-grown people acting like assholes simply because a lot of other people are acting like assholes.
Some people might be doing it once or twice just to investigate, out of curiosity. Why the rest of them are there is up for wild speculation, the only kind of speculation I usually engage in. For some, I'd guess it's an extended childhood. For example, I own a cat, which I adopted as a kitten, just a few weeks old. As a result, the cat has not gone through the natural maturation process, and remains, mentally, a frisky little kitten who gets his kibble handed to him in a bowl, and his dainty litter box scooped out by some idiot. The point is, the cat hasn't been forced to mature and thus remains a child forever, and the same thing happens with some humans. They remain, effectively, adolescents well into their third and fourth decades, clinging to the music, video games, and fashions of their youth and still finding shit like random Flash Mobs entertaining and exciting. One suspects that a large number of the supposed 'adults' who show up for such things are still back in high school, mentally and emotionally.
On the other hand, plenty of people with no other discernible personality disorders are desperate to appear knowledgeable and as part of a group of 'insiders'. Nobody wants to be considered irrelevant, and in today's society, since everything is driven by marketing, your days as a relevant person are short. One day you wake up and you're thirty-six or so, and suddenly no one gives a shit what you think, because you're smarter about spending your money than the average teenager. Teenagers, as I clearly recall from my own youth, will buy anything. Some people, noting their slow descent into irrelevance (hey, some of us were irrelevant even when we were young) will try a lot of dumb shit in order to appear smart, and that may be where the Flash Mob appeals to them—they get to have secret knowledge, to be part of something no one else is part of. It can be very tempting to be able to walk around with a secret, especially when that secret appears to be edgy and fun.
Or maybe that's giving people too much credit for being contemplative and in touch with their inner selves, when in fact it's much simpler: We're all programmed to fall into mob behavior for some reason. It's an instinct. It's how lynchings, riots, and democratic elections take place: We see our fellow humans sprinting for a ledge, and we get sucked along, eager to be a part of things, and we don't pause to wonder what we're doing or why until we're sailing down to our death.
Either way, people—gathered together into large groups—suck. I suspect that for anyone still actually reading my column, this conclusion surprises no one.
