A crowd is not us.

When people are part of a mob, they stop being individuals, their inhibitions disappear, they don’t follow their normal moral compass.

Mob mentality is when we end up professing beliefs and acting out in ways which we would have never otherwise done or considered independently.

I mean we have all heard one or two injustice done by some mobs; In the wake of any security threats, the least chance people get, people prefer to harm the suspected person or people without due recourse for states security operaives to take charge. In my own scenario, I’ve heard of a thief burnt to death for stealing a tuber of yam.

Would any of them (mobs) have turned up alone to burn the victim? It’s unlikely.

But when they are surrounded by like – minded people, they don’t see themselves as violent individuals, it’s the group that’s responsible for the violence, not them personally.

Humans are gregarious and we look for people like us to associate with. Nowadays, the easiest way to find that is online. Under ordinary circumstances your average person doesn’t post on twitter demanding the death of a fellow human being or a president.

But mob mentality and anonymity of being behind a keyboard means people are braver when they are together. Twitter is often the ultimate example of dehumanizing someone.

“A crowd is like a patient to a doctor, the hypnotized to the hypnotist,” wrote by Bill Buford.

We have already seen the mob effect on twitter, where some people’s lives have been ruined because others deemed that had said or done the wrong thing.

Twitter is often the ultimate example of dehumanizing someone. All you see is just posts which may or may not be a picture of the person themselves and their twitter handle. It’s often hypothesized that online trolling and harassment occurs because there is anonymity and a lack of consequences for the perpetrators. While this is certainly true, there is another side to the coin.

The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious personality vanishes. A collective mind is formed.

Humans have a predilection to imitate one another’s behavior. It’s so easy to do that most of us aren’t even aware when we are doing it because we are social animals, we tend to follow social norms. Only a quarter of people have the fortitude to stand up and say, “ I’m not going to participate in this.”

Mob mentality makes people braver when they are together.

A crowd is rabble to be manipulated, controlled, roused. When people have formed an opinion about something, it can be very hard for them to change their minds.

A crowd is not us…………