21 May

The people who study violence and social collapse say that the most dangerous time for any society is when a population begins imitating one another, en masse. This innocuous looking gig behaviour is actually a KPI for a society in all sorts of trouble. The logic isn't even difficult. Huge crowds of people so willing to copy what each other is doing is a mob. We can be lucky if the mob is focused on something like a band. But the behaviour goes well beyond the gig, to the wider culture. They bring it with them, to the gig. Social media has made this infinitely worse. A machine for imitative 'trending' behaviour. It's an astronomical accelerant of violence and social collapse.