Almost everyone sings the praises of the rapid exchange of information that the internet has catalyzed, but fewer recognize that it’s a mixed bag. Some news is so important and so timely that its reporting must be both meticulous and swift. That’s a tall order.
Other news is important but not timely, so meticulousness suffices. Still other “news” is trivial and only requires swift reporting — such is the way of gossip rags.
Unfortunately, the internet has helped blur these distinctions further. And so we see on our social media, messages that appear important, but aren’t treated with the respect their importance should demand. At their root, they are produced and disseminated as the worst tabloid filth.
That may be unfair to the tabloids, however. While most people realize those are unserious, the messages I mention are treated as sacrosanct.
Glenn Greenwald recently reported on the vicious attacks leveled on Shaun King, a criminal justice writer for the New York Daily News. King was publicly accused on Twitter of having lifted several paragraphs from a Daily Beast article — with the harshest rhetoric emanating from Daily Beast editors and writers.
Trouble is, no one bothered to contact King or his paper before leveling the career-stopping accusations. Their unbridled grievances blinded them to the banal truth: King’s editor made a mistake.
But it was too late. The accidental mob had already picked dry his reputation, and no one seemed to care much once the story was corrected. Not the mob at least. Nor his accusers.
Now, history is rife with examples of mob mentality, but what sets this particular brand of mob apart is that it appears accidental.
This mob doesn’t grow by an earnest, if misguided, belief in the truth of their convictions.
Rather, the accidental mob grows when we implicitly believe that a person’s guilt or innocence has something to do with the gravity of the charge. So, if you’re an accused axe murderer, forget about it. The accidental mob will treat you as guilty before you can utter a word.
The accidental mob grows when we place our instincts and ideologies above reason and truth.