Beware the Angry Mob…

The Sound of the Marching Boot by Profero Global

Over the last couple of months the angry mob have been hard to escape. Pitchforks have been sharpened and the gates are rattling. Of course, if you read the Daily Mail then this sort of behaviour is de rigueur, but more recently a new breed of righteous Puritanism has emerged, a more dangerous sort. And it is born entirely from the Internet.

It is human nature to get (over) excited by crowd behaviour, to be swept along in the intoxicating fug of mass fury and indignation, while complaining is something of a national sport in the England. Nothing stiffens Albion’s collective backbone in quite the same way a good old grumble. Of course, we never take it quite as far as the French, that would be unconscionable, but there is little compared to the sound of a dreary Englishman with a sense of moral superiority.

Our nation’s history of rebellion is not quickly forgotten! However, where once a steady stream of letters or a well-organised protest would be a sound and legitimate representation of the number of people who felt genuinely aggrieved or insulted enough to take action against a perceived offence, the net has unleashed a worrying and, frankly, dangerous strain of fury. This is an anger predicated not on reasoned thought or deliberate organisation but on kneejerk reaction and the sheer unrelenting power of digital to sweep up all before it.

Protest groups can be set up, and swell, within minutes on sites such as Facebook; trending topics on Twitter provide the spark needed to inflame demagogic passions in an instant; even websites can be targeted and abused by an unregulated horde of superficially aggrieved firebrands, unchecked and within moments of an alleged offence.