kennahijja | Fandom and the Mob: a Rant

As much as I'm often proud of fandom – its collective creativity, courage and subversiveness – there are a few things about it I dislike. There's extreme shipping, which fills me with scared amusement and confusion; there's writers deleting their stories for other but serious RL reasons, which pains me almost as much as the random destruction of historical artefacts. Those are minor wibbles. There is, however, one thing that above all else that just plain disgusts me – and that is the rabid mob mentality fandom can exhibit from time to time.

I'm talking of the attack dog mentality that stampedes braying after a leading opinion, hurling insults and mindless approval without pausing to spare an individual thought or a shred of consideration that the 'other side' might have feelings, or reasons, or might on some level be acting in good faith. Perhaps there's something liberating about feeling in the right and being edged on by a crowd of others feeling the same way; maybe that provides the sort of anonymity that allows one to behave like an utter arse which one wouldn't get away with in any other situation. I don't know. I only know that it's perfectly disgusting to watch.

I'm by no means saying that there can't be disagreement, or strong disagreement, or even sharp arguments worth falling out over. But if there are no arguments, not the flimsiest attempt of questioning one's own point of view rationally before starting to scream, and not the tiniest bit of respect for other people and opinions – nothing but a virtual mob, yelling – then it's truly fandom at its very lowest.

I'm only talking about mob mentality here, not about right or wrong. This rant has been brought on, of course, by recent events, but I've been in fandom for a few years now and have seen it happen again and again. Sometimes over an opinion I agreed with, sometimes over one I disagreed with. Truth be told, it sickens me even more if I happen to agree with the side the mob is on, because it makes me want to be able to change my mind, or yell the old "get off of my side, you're making me look bad (and feel sick!)." But then I've always believed that it's preferable to lose well than win badly.

It just makes no difference whether you (or I) think the cause is a bad one or the most worthy of all or anything in between: if in order to make your point, you have to incite, or pander to, or rely on the mob (or, if you happen to stir it up by accident and fail to try and slap it down again), you've already damaged even the very best of causes beyond salvaging. Yeah, it means you can be right and still be made of fail.

Most of the time, fandom is a great place to be, but at times like this, it sickens me. I honestly wish we could be better people, a better community than that, but sometimes, it seems we can't. And that's a bloody shame!

Won't make a habit of ranting for sure, but this has been festering inside me for a very long time.

ETA: Apologies if I'm owing any of you replies still, but I won't be getting around to it. It's time for War, not Wank.

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How is 'mob mentality' different from 'peer pressure' or what the newspapers term 'the overwhelming force of public opinion'? All three refer to the same things, the difference is that each term comes loaded with a certain amount of respect and a positive or negative spin on it.

Because I don't know if I agree with you here - using the negative term 'mob mentality' just seems to reduce the issue to a simple black and white: People who Follow The Herd are Always Wrong. If it's a mob - all it's members are st00pid and crazy - no one is actually making up their own minds but are being led by the nose! It just seems like a way of dismissing the other side: just like

pushdragon above - People who make a lot of their human interaction on the internet are more likely to be the passive-aggressive, timid type, who in RL wouldn't dare express a confrontational opinion to someone's face or

jaelle_n_gilla - The younger people are, the more the worls seems to be made of black and white.. Both of these statements are simply not true, furthermore they're just ways of not dealing with the issue at hand. Same goes for 'mob mentality'. And well, if you're talking about the wank du jour it seems like there are two mobs - right now, both sides have members exhibiting shameful behaviour.

Please don't try to use my words as rebuttal to

kennahijja's arguments. I speak only for myself, provocatively, and without her careful tact and diplomacy.

To accuse one or both sides of a wank of mob mentality is not to say they don't have valid and coherent arguments. In fact, the tragedy of mob mentality is that it often obscures valid arguments beneath layers of vindictiveness, cruelty and sheer hate so that it becomes impossible to reach the truths at its heart. The genuine posters who might otherwise be persuasive get buried beneath the ugliness.

There is a point, I think, in which public opinion becomes mob mentality. Some indications that the point has been passed include:

* Posts that attack the poster rather than the argument
* Involvement of f_w
* Posts which deliberately mis-understand the opposing argument, reading slurs into innocent words in order to find grounds for offence
* Name-calling
* A sense that the posters are beginning to enjoy the feeling of mass outrage and offence
* A degree of violent anger well out of proportion to the original offence
* And the classic indicator: posts which exhibit the above symptoms where the poster hasn't actually read much of the evidence beyond one or two inflammatory secondary posts.

It's the hate without reason that sickens. The original arguments may well be persuasive and intelligent. It's the posts that come after that my comments had in mind. The posters who feel safe making nasty, ill-informed, personal comments not only to the original offender but to anyone who defends them because they know they can't be blamed because other people had said it first. The ones who stayed silent until they had mob support. It's part of human nature that people lower themselves to appalling behaviour in a mob that they wouldn't countenance if they bore sole responsibility. I didn't think it was controversial to suggest that the same behaviour might apply online.

And I suppose I should reiterate that this isn't a specific observation on the current wank, but on past issues. I haven't read the current because of exactly these reasons.

I hope that clarifies my objection; I'll let

kennahijja clarify hers.

Nono, I think a) her point was perfectly fair and a good one, really. It's pretty easy to mix the point with the behaviour here (and again, I'm not neutral on this issue in the first place - there *is* an element of wanting to protect people I *know* were acting in good faith and for good reasons). Perhaps I should have made this post after a wank where I really was on the side of the mob and still found them disgusting, but, well... it really fit here too.

That aside - WORD! You summed it up so much better than I could hope to. Thanks.

I'm sorry, it may be that I misinterpreted your comment.

It's just that your statement -

People who make a lot of their human interaction on the internet are more likely to be the passive-aggressive, timid type, who in RL wouldn't dare express a confrontational opinion to someone's face

seemed to me like an ad hominem attack of the kind you described above. I read it as saying "Oh, these people who are arguing are just passive agressive losers in real life anyway, so pay no attention to them."

kennahijja made me realise that perhaps what you meant was the net makes it easier to be vitriolic because of the anonymity and because it's easy to see whoever's out there not as a real person

If that's what you were saying then I apologise. It seems I was interrogating your comment from the wrong perspective. :-) I'm sorry - it's just that this wank has made me paranoid. Maybe I'm seeing hostile intent where there is none.

I think that peer pressure is something you can more easily resist (not easy, but more easily) while an (online) mob is just mindless vitriol en masse yelling everybody down.

I do think that people following the herd *without thinking about it* are always wrong. You can agree with the issues (I've done so in several wanks that still disgusted me), argue reasonably and with a shred of respect for the opposing side even if you think they're painfully wrong. As I said above, it's even worse if I think they're right.

I sort of agree with

pushdragon's point that the net makes it easier to be vitriolic because of the anonymity and because it's easy to see whoever's out there not as a real person. Maybe I've led a sheltered life, but I don't see that sort of thing in RL very often, and on the net pretty frequently. Though I agree that age has nothing to do with asshat behaviour - there's no way those extremes can be put down to kids surfing where they shouldn't (even though it *sounds* like kids, but sadly, it can't always be...).

Fandom and the Mob: a Rant

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