JakeR's Reviews > The Crowd: Study of the Popular Mind

This book made me understand a lot about why crowds do the things they do. For example, why are there so many harmful comments on social media? It's because on social media, everybody's pretty invisible. There will be no immediate consequences to perhaps one of their insults among millions of others. Once everyone notices the power of becoming invisible, the only thing visible becomes the crowd.
Also in the books Homo Sapiens and Homo Deus, the author also explained that this kind of crowd psychology was what built civilisations. The blind crowd following a leader, convinced not by logic but perhaps simply how persuasive that leader is.
The crowd is quite blind, changing along with the tide, despite all the factors that makes them so stubborn, in the end, things change with the passage of time. Ideas lives and dies with the will of the crowd.
What fascinates me the most is how the crowd could've fought. They perfectly had the power to do so.
I arrived from a conclusion from this book, which is the power of persuasiveness have great power. The leader manipulates the minds of the crowds into agreeing with them, whether using persuasive speeches, or triggering emotions of the crowds, it all depends on what the leader can make the crowd do.
The author constantly talked about the crowd as this less intelligent sort of being, yet it becomes less of the intelligence of the crowd for it is mainly the leader that takes control. It is more of the power of collective abilities. This collective ability can change tides in history, commit horrendous crimes or do amazing goods. The power is in the hand of the crowd, therefore, if the leader can grasp that power, the leader will have the powers to change the world.