Mobs, Individuals & The Internet

You are probably tired of hearing about the debate on working for 18 hours a day by now. Allow me to add to your boredom by taking the conversation into another important community issue, the problem of identity loss in a group setting.

But before that, let me give you some context.

A day or so back Shantanu Deshpande made the mistake of angering an internet mob. He wrote a post "encouraging" people in their early 20s to work "18 hours a day for 5 years" without cribbing about work-life balance. In a couple of edits made later, he clarified that he meant the time figure only as a metaphor to give your all and then some but the internet does not take clarifications very seriously.

In a few hours, the post had hundreds of thousands of impressions and was making national news. At this moment, Shantanu was the poster boy, the singular representation of the toxic work culture that Indian companies and startups are infamous for.

To be clear, I found the post quite distasteful. Having seen youngsters burn out right in front of me due to working long hours at their companies, I too felt pretty angry when I read his "rona-dhona" (cribbing) jibe. I may have laughed out a little too loudly at some of the comments under his post as well, but satire and criticism aside, I also noticed something else.

There were a lot of personal attacks being made against Shantanu. Jokes about his baldness, his past work experiences, his face, his family and so on.

That was quite disturbing. That is where the internet mob and I go our separate ways.

I think bad ideas should be criticized quite loudly, they should be ridiculed, they should be satirized but we shouldn't lose our compassion in criticism.

Why Do Good People Turn Bad In Groups?

I'm a psychologist so the notion of good and bad is not as clear-cut in our profession as it would be in common parlance. Still, it's worthy to wonder what makes otherwise kind, compassionate people turn into abusive and violent trolls in a group.

A mob can be considered a common interest crowd where every member of the crowd is held together by a common cause or idea. They have a shared reality, a shared morality and a shared norm of conduct. A mob is characterized by its shared opinions and diffused identity. You can rarely identify one member of a mob from the other but ask them what they are mad about and they will say surprisingly similar things.

Shantanu went from being a random startup founder to the living representation of every bad manager in this country. Every manager who makes their employees work overtime without appropriate pay, those that force travel on employees for a meeting that can be done online, managers that dont share clear feedback and expect you to read their minds, those that blame you for your lack of output despite the economic condition of the company being poor.

Every bad manager suddenly turned into Shantanu and every person who commented on his post became a faceless part of the mob, just one among the thousands piling on the guy.

We Can Be Better

I don't think Shantanu was just the helpless victim of all that happened. He wrote quite a flaunty post about working hours, worded it poorly (going by his account) and then didn't share a great clarification of the context he had in mind when writing it. I think his TV interview was quite disastrous as well, thankfully, not a lot of people watch TV news anymore :)

That said, I don't think he deserved the abuse his family received or the personal attacks he had to face.

I think we can collectively call out a terrible idea without devolving into mudslinging. It's hard. Our instincts make us push limits in a group setting (even more so in a mob-like setting) but that's what we have to learn.

Maintaining one's own personal identity in a moment when the group is pushing them to do something else is tough, online mobs exert very strong peer pressure on others, but it's worth it. When every instinct in our body is telling us to make a personal joke since everyone is doing it, we should have the courage to hold back. We can choose to be kinder in a group, not for others, but for ourselves. I think we should make the choice whenever we can.

Now, I have never met Shantanu or talked to any of his employees, so I could be completely wrong about what I'm asserting here. Maybe he is a toxic asshole who overworks his employees and is now lying as a form of damage control or, he might be a bit more complex than that.

Maybe he is someone who has poor articulation or maybe he just messed up this one time. Either way, I think the internet can be a kinder place by focusing on the ideas of the people, instead of the people themselves. We can remember our own individuality in moments when the group is pushing us to do something else.

Whenever we face peer pressure, we have some choices we can make. Some choose to sit out and do nothing, others give in, I want to stand against this peer pressure and assert myself and my values. You can do it too.

I am not going to ask you your opinion on Shantanu's post. Instead, tell me how you think we can make the internet a better place, and how we can make it a place where people make mistakes and learn and grow instead of what it is currently.

I will be looking forward to your thoughts and opinions :)

PS: There will be some people giving even more controversial takes on working hours now that the debate has flared up again. Don't let them misuse your passions for clout and engagement.