Crowd Mentality Rant

There’s this scene in Men In Black where Will Smith’s character, Agent J, is arguing with Tommy Lee Jones’ character, Agent K, about how ridiculous it is to believe aiens are, and have been, amongst us for decades. “But people are smarter than that!” Will objects (or words to that effect).

To which K responds, “No. A person is smart. People are stupid.”

And it’s the bloody truth, innit? Why, oh why, is it that every time a crowd of humans forms, the intelligence of the group as a whole must sink, not to the lowest common denominator of the group, but of the bleedin’ race? It’s as if the sheer proximity of others reduces the capacity for thought. One can almost see the transmogrification take place, the jutting of the brow, the slackening of the jaw, the parting of the lips to form the mouthbreather incarnate.

Picture this: Rush hour. Crowded subway train opens doors to disgorge passengers. People waiting on platform decide to enter train whilst people on train are trying to disembark. Idjits!

Okay, so you’re off the train (finally) and proceed to try to get to work. But now you’re stuck in the middle of a crowd apparently auditioning as extras for the next Romero flick. Hey people, I’ve got no problem if you’re not in a rush, but you can at least have some consideration and get the hell out of the way! Or at least move as if you’ve got blood pumping through your veins.

Oh no - escalators. It never ceases to amaze me how some people can’t grasp the concept. They’re steps . . . and they move! Yeah, yeah, step on already! I don’t even care if you plan to climb or stand, but what the hell are you waiting for, a step with your name on it?

All right, you make it through the day (I’m not even going to mention the freaks who don’t know how to use revolving doors and elevators). Let’s say you and a couple of your buddies stop at a bar for a couple of beers. Blow off a little steam, right? Bar’s a little crowded, is it? Well, no problem - until you’re on your way to the bathroom and some yahoo has decided to set up camp outside the bathroom door. Excuse me? Get the hell out of the way, ya moron! And don’t give me dirty looks because I interrupted your rap with a woman you’re not going home with anyway. Oh, I promise you, she thought you were really cool, the way you were leaning up against the sign that said “Men” (as if trying to reassure yourself).

It really is enough sometimes to make you lose faith in the human race. But then, you think, hey, what the hell, maybe Romero is casting. If you’re quiet, you can almost hear them: “Uhhhhhhhhh”

Ever go out to dinner with a big group of (presumably intelligent) friends and try to split the check? Math is easy. Group math is nearly impossible. I agree with your post entirely. Clearly you ride the Metro in D.C.

Excellent rant!

The extreme examples of this are people trampled to death at sporting events and rock concerts. No threat, no obvious cause for the unthinking stampede, but it happens anyway.

Know the one that always mystifies me? The “non-event” traffic slowdowns on interstates. All of a sudden brake lights flash, traffic slows down to a crawl for miles until the bottleneck passes…a car in the median changing a tire. Whoopee-wingy. Pass the “non event” and the traffic speeds back up and smooths out.

Great line from Men in black, but my cinematic image is we’re all actually knuckle-dragging primates heaving mastadon femurs around.

Veb

Damn you, Quixotic…I was just about start a rant somewhat similar to this one, you piece of shit. But I’ll grace your thread with my agreements with you on this topic. You basically stated my opinions verbatim, and did a better job than I would have been able to.

However, one thing: This problem is not going away. It’s getting worse. It used to be people in LA would riot when a black man is beat up by a bunch of cops. Now they get in a near-riot frenzy when a basketball team wins the championship. What the fuck is wrong with those people?!?

I will give the Midwestern answer:

::sagely nods head::

Ayup.

This reminds me of someone’s (Kaa) signature I saw on Slashdot:

“Kaa’s law: In any sufficiently large group of people, most are idiots.”

The reason that some people don’t jump on escalators and instead wait is because they want to synchronize their moving and stopping with the movement of the escalator, and get a rhythm.

Escalators do not go in uniform speed. Some are much faster than others, even in the same building or structure. There are also some that are quite steep. All this can have some people can develop a little vertigo sometimes (It happens to me). The people who wait are getting their bearings straight after a rush of vertigo.

I don’t remember where, but someone posted a theory about intelligence and crowd dynamics. Once you get past a very small number, the “average intelligence” of the group declines.

I feel your pain…but you forgot to mention people who just stand there looking like idiots in main lanes of pedestrian traffic. I am talking about people who decide a busy doorway is the perfect place to stand with a cup of coffee and talk. I am talking about the fools that choose to stand in the middle of a busy airport to route through their belongings. I am talking about the evil semi-humans that I had to wait for last night who decided to do their fireworks in the middle of the only sidewalk linking the people at a major public event (which just got out) and their vehicles…causeing literally hundreds of people to stand there waiting for their stupid fountain to finish. Why can’t people understand the concept of either going with the flow or getting out of it’s way??? Ugh!

Wow. Why are you in such a hurry?

Life is passing rapidly around you and you don’t even notice, I fear.

Slow down.

Yes, folks can be silly and crowd around a door or be silly like crowd into an elevator before it’s disgorged it’s passengers (and YOU have never done this, right?). Take the stairs. You’ll feel better. A little exercise and no one uses them.

“Get the fuck out of my way!” should be the call of the year 00.

Here, you can have my place, okay? I’m in no hurry. I’m already where I want to be.

In college orientation class they were doing an experiment. They divided the class into small groups with leaders and the teacher drew two lines on the board. One was clearly slightly longer than the other. The group leader asserted the wrong one was longer than the other and nearly inevitably the group would go along. Of course I refused. I could see he was wrong and said so and would not be swayed otherwise.

The point of the experiment was to show how peer pressure works and how groupthink works to make crowds stupid. Of course the fact that my responses did not fit the experiment threw things off. I got an F for the day because of that, as well as a lecture about how sticking out in a crowd showed poor social adjustment.

I agree with you whole heartedly! I bet a lot of other people will agree, too. I bet we could all get together and agree on this, and may be some other stuff, too. Anyone who doesn’t agree with us will be shunned, because they won’t belong to our agreement group. We could even form a little club, and sign up other people to join, and maybe get together a Political Action Committee…

Ohh, yeah. I was just thinking this the other day at my college’s cafeteria. The way it’s set up is this: You’ve got your entrance over on the right side of the room, moving along to the left, you’ve got an entrance to one serving area, then the exit, then the exit to the other serving area, then the entrance. You see? So, when the line into the right serving area gets too long, the logical thing to do would be to have it bend to the left, towards the main entrance, right? So, what do you think everyone does every time? They line up to the right, and get in the way of everyone trying to leave with their heavy trays laden with piping hot food. I’ve tried to set an example. Whenever I’m at that critical point where the line can bend either way, and there’s nobdy behind me, and a bunch more people are coming, I try to stand on the left side, and steer the newcomers into lining up behind me. They never do. They always seem to assume that I’m hovering near the line for no apparent reason, and line up on the right side, and I then have to awkwardly maneuver myself back in line again.

However, it is sometimes possible to have a little fun with it. In high school, I used to enjoy getting to class early, and if the door wasn’t locked, going in and turning off all the lights in the room. The next person to arrive would show up, see that the lights were off, and assume the room was locked. The next people would arrive, see the one person hanging around in the hall, and assume the room was locked. And so on. Finally, the teacher would show up, try to unlock the door, and discover that it was already unlocked. And I’d be inside, all ready to have a good laugh at their expense. That, and occasionally starting rumors about myself just to see how blown out of proportion they would get when I finally heard them again. I had manipulating the herd mentality down to a science. Hey, I took my fun where I could find it. Group psychology. It works for me, it can work for you!

lee, this is a joke, right? It must be. It has to be. I’m not a man who places much stock in the orderliness of the universe, but this is just demoralizing. Unless it’s a joke. Which it must be.

I generally don’t have a big problem with people getting in my way, but I do so love that exchange from Men In Black. Pretty much sums up Man as a Social Animal. And it’s from a Barry Sonnenfeld movie. Which brings us back to doubting the orderliness of the universe.

Also: neuro-trash grrrl, you’re my hero for the day.

I love that line from Men In Black.

If I had to think of a reason for this…actually, nevermind, I can’t think of a reason, I don’t know much about psychology, but a good analogy would be “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” i.e., the crowd seems to be only as smart as the stupidest person in it for some reason. And boy, there are a lot of stupid people.

No, it is not a joke. I did rather poorly in that class and was eventually kicked out of that school. They said it was because I was insane. In reality, I just would not keep my mouth shut about a football player that was stalking me.

BTW: Because of that mess, I now have a letter somewhere that says I am sane.

Not that many care but the other night I was having sex in my bedroom I wasn’t aware that my dog was in the room well to my surprise I hear a fart and imediatly look at her in a questioning way “Did you do that.” Of course she says no and it’s starting to smell so we know it’s happened well then we here a noise underneath my bed so we think that someones in here spying on us perhaps my brother…so my girlfriend covers herself with a blanket and peeks under the bed and my damn dog is there, ruined the whole moment but we did resumed later on in the day but I made sure my dog wasn’t under my bed. I love animals! Especially my dog Serinoh.

Why do people who are meeting people who are exiting an airplane rush in groups of ten to the exact center of the exit lane, there to engage in group hugging/kissing/handshaking/backslapping/did-you-have-a-good-trip-and-how-was-the-weather bullshit interminably while the rest of us poor cattle mill about, lowing and mooing, aimlessly shifting from one foot to another, consulting our watches, bleeding from our ulcers as we realize we now have no chance of making our connecting flights and how do we explain that to all the people who will be inconvienced because of the incredible insensitivity of the brain-dead morons who engaged in the afore mentioned stupidity? Do these cretins have no concept of congested space? Do they believe that two (or more) bodies must occupy the same space at the same time? Do they see a space and feel impelled to fill it with their unwashed reeking brain-dead bodies? Is it a religous practice? No, it is arrant fucking stupidity and these people have the legally protected right to breed more of their ilk. Their votes count for as much as yours or mine. It is illegal to kill them even though all thinking people would welcome their deaths and celebrate their funerals. I believe that the recent spate of “airline rage” stems completely from encounters with this sub-group of brain damaged alcohol-fetus syndrome crack-baby slack-jawed inbred group of cousin-marrying knuckle-dragging offspring of the Jutes and Kallikaks.

My father told me that there was finite amount of intelligence in the world. Trouble is, the population’s growing.

I think he’s right.

I hear you, girlfriend. One time I refused to drink hydrochloric acid in science class, although everyone else already had.

Science teacher: “Matt, drink it.”
Me: “But it’s hydrochloric acid!!!
Science teacher: “Get him to drink it!”
Classful of 24 other boys: “DRINK IT! DRINK IT! DRINK IT!”
Me: “NO!!!

I complained to the principal, who told the teacher, who got pissed off because I went over his head. (Yea, I’m sure a guy who wanted me to drink stomach acid would have been real receptive to my complaints.) I brought up this incident to my parents about three years later when they wanted to know why I had hated the lovely school they had paid so much money to send me to. They were aghast and decided they agreed with me.