The Folly of Crowds.

During the Middle Ages crowds came to play a large role in the state of society.  Mass warfare such as the Crusades or the revolutionary movements that occurred in the late middle ages spawned by revolutionary protestants against the papacy or against nobility illustrated perfectly the role of crowd psychology.  These revolutionary movements culminated during the 18th century in the French revolutionar, a sordid and bloody affair which offended the sensibilities of traditional conservatives and was much discussed by the intellectual class.  Counter-revolutionary thinkers emerged to challenge the French revolutionaries noting the violence and bloodshed that had occurred.  These thinkers included Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre leading the Catholic counter-revolution.  These were followed later by a new class of intellectuals such as Alexis de Toqueville, Gobineau, and especiallly Gustav le Bon, artistocrats who attempted to explain crowd psychology.  In more modern times, following the rise of the Russian revolution, the Soviet tyranny, and later the Nazi revolution and the role of the world wars, conservative intellectuals further lamented the role of unleashing the mass mob on society.  Thinkers such as Ortega y Gassett commented on these events and proclaimed the rise of the mass man (something that would only reach extraordinary proportions in the modern age).  One thing to note about these early thinkers is that they were all uniformly opposed to the role of the crowd, viewing crowds as largely prone to irrationality, even insanity, and perhaps violence.  Instigators played an important role in rousing crowds often towards violent ends.  Warfare was seen as a culmination of crowd psychology, though as time passed on wars became more technocratic.  These early thinkers praised the lone individual and the human person, the artistocrat and aesthete above the vulgarity of the mob.

However, with the rise of modern society and technocracy a new form of thinker arose.  These thinkers studied crowd psychology and many came to argue that the crowd or group could achieve results not achieved by individuals.  These thinkers were different from those of the past, in that those of the past had a nineteenth century understanding of science, while the new thinkers relied on calculative reasoning often bolstering their results with advanced science, psychological studies in group psychology.  These thinkers maintained that groups could achieve effect results or that the "crowd had wisdom" that the individual did not possess.  These thinkers were also active in the early promotion of the internet, when the internet became a mass movement.  The digital crowd or more aptly as seen today the digital mob, was promoted early on  as a way to achieve mass knowledge.  However, if anyone looks at the internet today, as opposed to the internet of only 10 or 20 years ago one can see the net effect of this mob psychology.  For one thing, by allowing entry to anyone, it has led to an increased stupifying effect in which an entropy on information flow has led bad information to overcome good.  Further, the effects of the mob are all too often nasty and are becoming nastier.  On social network and media sites, the mob rules absolute and individuals engage in nasty polemics against each other that would likely result in violence in real life.  By promoting politics and controversial issues and then opening up "free speech" and comments to anyone with no proof of identy, the internet and media sites have allowed for a mass mob based in brutality to arise.  Thus, we see confirmed again the folly of crowds as originally considered by the early crowd theorists of the nineteenth century.  Further, we see another aspect of the folly of crowds in the increasing vulgarity of taste, often arising through mass illiteracy, and an excessive reliance on false forms of mass media.  We also see the role that the internet has played in mobilizing recent mass movements including riots and flash mobs in America, riots in Russia, and populist movements against the financial sector (often leading to violence) in America and politicians in Russia and the Middle East.