Listening to the Herd

ONE OF THE MOST INTRIGUING facets of online social networking has to be the herd mentality powering parts of Twitter. Just watch the herds latch onto celebrities who offer their minions a few tweets a day. Or watch the Irish herds circle around "friends" who wouldn't even offer to buy pints at meet-ups. Experts who have studied social status point to the "culture of honor" and its occasional permutation towards different forms of aggressive  behaviour. Twitter's landscape is very conducive to herding which means sociologists will find elements of the herding economy inside Twitter's ecosystem. And if you run inside a herding economy, you are driven by motivations to protect your herd, otherwise you find yourself "in an economically precarious position." [1] If you run a herd, you have to quickly react to threats, like challenges to your standing in the herd. Some psychologists point out that this vigilance is often more of "protecting their sense of self-worth" and that some people have a hair-trigger response when they feel personally threatened by intrusions to their status or by perceptions they create in their own minds when they believe they have been insulted. [2]

So if you believe the sociological research, you don't need to be running in a herd to react when you feel insulted. You might be one of those people carrying a chip on your shoulder, needing to exert your claim to higher social status through a concomitant increase in the aggressive tactics that you use online.

Live and learn.

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1. Adam Waytz -- "The Psychology of Social Status" in Scientific American, 8 Dec 09.

2. PJ Henry -- "Low Status Compensation: A Theory for Understanding the Role of Status in Cultures of Honor" in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, ISSN 0022-3514, 2009, vol 7.

Thoughts arising after conversations with members of the silent LinkedIn generation.

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