We are the angry mob

Public outcry seems to have been something of a theme for this year. Following the highly publicised events of ‘Sachsgate’ and the debate over the Jan Moir article on Stephen Gately, it appears that the public enjoy voicing their displeasure with things. Often with consequences for those being complained about. The possible problem with this is that the victims of public outrage become vilified by the one sided vitriolic outpourings, and often become symbolically lynched by the mob.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that those who have suffered at the hands of public outrage don’t deserve it; my question is are theses complaints being made for the right reason?

While working the other day I was ‘fortunate’ enough to experience a form of this public outcry first hand.

It was the middle of a relatively quiet Tuesday for those of you who care. I was the only member of staff on the bar, and busy serving the three tables of customers who were patronising it. While I was taking an order from a couple the peace of the place was interrupted by a man bursting through the door and declaring “Oi mate, some old boy’s just tripped over your sign!” before sweeping out of the place again. A glance out of the window showed a rapidly expanding crowd forming outside the front of the bar. Figuring that this should be dealt with, I excused myself to the customers in the bar and walked outside. That was an experience! I was met in the doorway by a woman who was about to stride into the bar to tell me what had happened, just in case I hadn’t heard her predecessor. Apparently pleased to have someone to turn on each member of the crowd kindly informed me that my personal sign had assaulted an old man, and this was frankly a disgrace. I did happen to notice however that all these concerned individuals were ignoring the injured old man! Once I got to talk to the gentleman concerned he seemed fairly relaxed about it all, saying he just wanted to get his paper and go home. “But you fell over the sign, you must be hurt” one of our band of well-wishers ventured, “probably very shaken up” another kindly observed – no the gentleman was fine, he’d had worse and just wanted to go and get his paper please. Apparently this was the end of the incident, the gentleman was allowed to relax for a moment, and the crowd – seeing there was no trouble to be made - disappeared faster than they appeared.

The point here is this; were these people complaining because they were concerned for the old man and others walking the streets? Or was it simply an excuse to get outraged at something and make a noise about it? Free speech is all well and good, but do some people have to be so free about it? I would go so far as to suggest that in many of these cases, most of the complaints are made because people want something to complain about, not because they care about the issue at hand. If I remember rightly the number of complaints made about the phone calls to Andrew Sachs went up significantly after the Daily Mail reported the article, declaring how disgusting it all was. It turns out that a significant number of the complaining mob had never even heard the phone calls.

Apparently then, lots of these complaints are in fact regurgitated bile passed down from one source through a herd of bleating sheep, who have no personal opinion on the matter, but like making noise about something. Well do us all a favour, and stop it. A mass lynching by a noisy, but ill-informed, mob is not exercising your freedom of speech, nor is it standing up for what’s right. By all means if you have an opinion which needs defending, go ahead. If you are genuinely concerned for the well-being of the injured party, then make yourself heard. But if you just want to make noise because you can, then sing in the shower. Or if you really need to jump on a bandwagon and have your say then go into politics!