Mobs have always been with us, to where stoning appears at least as far back as ancient times, so the phenomenon of twitter mobs isn't new. The people behind th

Mobs have always been with us, to where stoning appears at least as far back as ancient times, so the phenomenon of twitter mobs isn't new. The people behind them are the same archetypes they have always been. Consider who is absent from mob formation: honest, grounded, level headed, principled, honourable, responsible, good intentioned, admirable, courageous, adjusted, and other traditionally virtuous people, then look at who is left over. The formation of a mob is always the same, one person channeling the latent hurtness and sensitized aggression of others against their target for the perverse and morbid satisfaction of having done so, and to have been at the center of it. The question we haven't asked (and I haven't either) is what socities or cultures of good people have done to mitigate pools of hysteria forming like these in the past. We know that people actuated by attention are untrustworthy, and treating them as anything other than edgy entertainment is probably harmful socially. You can't fix the mobs, but you can create cultures that isolate them and don't tolerate or believe them in principle, no matter what their cause is. If you can't do that, you can at least respect people who do. I feel like this isn't a new problem.