the.com/mob
The only crowd where intelligence goes down as the headcount goes up.
means A large, often disorderly crowd of people acting together, usually driven by shared excitement or anger rather than individual judgment.
from Mob is a clipped form of the Latin phrase 'mobile vulgus,' meaning 'the fickle common people.' English borrowed the full phrase in the 1600s, then — fittingly for a word about impatience and crowds moving fast — wore it down to just 'mob' within a few decades. The clipping itself was controversial at the time; critics complained about this trendy slang shortening, much as people grumble about abbreviations today.
- origin
- short for mobile vulgus, latin for fickle crowd
- psychology
- anonymity lets individuals act without personal guilt
- irony
- forms fastest around the loudest person, not the smartest
- modern form
- now mostly gathers online instead of in streets