Mob Games

tamarins do your thing

the mob

The mob has no sense of proportion. Once the mob decides that you have committed some grievance worthy of punishment, no punishment is enough. The mob will keep dogging you until you and your entire family are destroyed, or until something else distracts them.

“Twitter do your thing” is the Twitter dogwhistle for a mobbing. And when Mauro Beltramini wrote on Facebook, “Y’all know what to do,” he knew he was summoning an online mob to destroy Harris County Assistant District Attorney Kaylynn Williford. The mob doesn’t need to be told what to do: its thing is uncalibrated retribution.

mobbing

We are not the only primates who engage in mobbing: baboons, capuchins, and tamarins, undoubtedly among others, will “approach[], gather[] around, intently observ[e] and harass[] a predator.” (Crofoot 2012.) Tamarins’ mobbing is a “proactive response to an encounter with a predatory species that does not pose an immediate risk,” which is part of the classic definition of mobbing (“a demonstrati…