Charivari

Learned a new word last week from an anonymous letter-writer:  charivari.  He said that the lynch mob mentality we had seen in blog forums or social networking sites was modern-day charivari.  He wrote in support of our company that recently figured in the most talked-about national issue since Hayden Kho’s sex video scandal.

From an online encyclopedia – “Charivari was a ritual used by medieval and early modern Europeans to chastise community members who failed to conform to social expectations, especially sexual ones. Examples included a widow who remarried, a wife who beat her husband, or a couple who failed to have children. In France, where this term originated, teenage boys and young unmarried men usually led such rituals. The youths would parade through the streets, making rough music by banging pots and pans, shouting mocking insults, and sometimes threatening violence.”

It’s a sad reality we in the new millennium witness everyday, and cannot change.  The smart mobs who desire genuine change through social (digital) action are outnumbered by the bad or flash mobs.  These ones are just silly, lost and unimportant, and yearn for meaning and acceptance by simply joining in the ‘fun’.  Some are blind disciples, holding on to the influencers they follow, whose ‘power’ has actually corrupted themselves.  The flash mobs sound angry but they’re not, for education is a condition for genuine rage.

The Internet, they say, is the largest mob ever assembled in history.  You can’t fight that.  So, ignore.  Do something else.  Enrich yourself with good vibes.  Like, watch Wall-E, a wonderful drama and comedy on nonconformism.

But if you enjoy seeing how contempt could kill, check out Doubt, Mississippi Burning and The Crucible.