The idea of crowds and crowd mentality recalls me back to my first year of university living on rez. According to the Understanding Human Communication, crowds all have emotions, sentiments and ideas that all members take into one direction, a ``collective mind. `` Now I was a teenage girl at the time of my first year, I liked to watch television, as I still do, but I was intently concentrated on certain shows that could not have been missed that week such as `American`s Next Top Model` and ``Grey`s Anatomy`. As a result of watching these shows every week in the common area, it resulted in a crowd of girls getting together every week and basically taking over the television for a couple of hours.
Now every week, the same girls would barge into the common room and basically take over the television from anyone that was watching at the time. This was a perfect example of Individual Invincibility. (Sevigny, 2005) Us girls got together as a crowd and were fearless, we didn’t care who was watching TV and what they wanted to watch at that time, we just wanted to watch our program and we wouldn’t take it any other way.
Time continued and hockey season started which coincided with these girly shows which everyone watched every week. Now as much as I liked watching my shows I was also very much a Toronto Maple Leaf fan and watch to watch the game even more than I wanted to watch the shows, however I sacrificed my own interest and continued to meet every week and miss any games that would have been on that night (contagion).
Once these shows started to finish, we no longer had a reason every week to meet, and I guess some of the girls missed the weekly meeting to talk about the show and other girly things on our mind that day. So once I was able to watch the Leaf games without disrupting our weekly meeting because the shows were over, the girls got together and suggested watching another show the same time slot that American`s Next Top Model was on. This suggestibility then made me feel as though I needed to obey to the suggestions of the crowd. (Sevigny, 2005)
https://elm.mcmaster.ca/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_11_1
Dr. Sevigny`s tweet about life as a university student, made me realize that the ideas of the crowd are those that are followed because of fear. First year is scary, I was alone in this huge residence and didn’t know anyone, and it was a little lonely and completely terrifying. The crowd technique is a way of fitting in first year, a way of surviving first year. Looking back I don`t remember what happened in that show or the hockey games that I missed, I remember the fun and friendships that I made that first year. So all in all, crowds aren’t always bad..... just as long as you`re not in one forever!
No comments:
Post a Comment