In the Swarm

Anyone who opens their apps first thing in the morning gets the distinct impression of witnessing a massive popular uprising. Thousands of heated comments pile up beneath controversial posts, and it seems as though the entire country has finally come together to take action. Yet when you look at passengers on a train or people waiting in line at a bakery, you see individuals hunched over separate screens, deeply isolated in their own glowing cocoons.

In the last century, popular movements gathered physically in public squares and outside factory gates, sharing a tangible space, a unified voice, and a sense of common destiny. In the connected world, what emerges is not a cohesive crowd but a digital swarm made up of solitary individuals who buzz at the same frequency for a few moments, then scatter without forming real bonds of solidarity.

Each participant in the debate acts like a self-contained monad, seeking quick validation and unloading passing frustrations in short messages. This collection of people lacks the ability to develop lasting collective projects. The swarm has none of the cohesion of an organized political body, serving more to spread noisy reactions than to transform the concrete reality beyond the screen.

Before mobile devices became ubiquitous, disagreements at work or arguments in traffic were held somewhat in check by physical distance and social etiquette. There was a natural pause between irritation and response, allowing people to take a deep breath, weigh the consequences, and avoid a public scene. In the online world, that protective barrier has simply collapsed.

The phone in your pocket offers an immediate outlet for irritation at no apparent cost, generating what the book calls waves of outrage. All it takes is an out-of-context recording made on the street or an unfortunate remark by a neighborhood shopkeeper for the court of the internet to declare its target for the day's online mob attack, destroying reputations within hours without a chance to respond or a careful examination of the facts.

This mass outrage produces neither justice nor lasting understanding. The volatility of the feeling means it serves only as a release valve for the stress accumulated in everyday life, evaporating as quickly as it arose once a new scandal appears in the feed.

The internet gained popularity with the tempting promise of eliminating intermediaries. Enthusiastic voices claimed that newspapers, political parties, and teachers would no longer be necessary, because any ordinary citizen could participate in public debate without institutional filters. This accelerated process of disintermediation was celebrated as the ultimate triumph of individual autonomy and free expression.

In practice, however, the result was the fragmentation of the public sphere into millions of disconnected monologues. Instead of a vast civic square for dialogue, closed bubbles emerged where each user consumes only what confirms their existing beliefs, fueling baseless theories and rejecting any authority built on rigorous study.

By dispensing with the mediators who organized and improved the quality of collective conversation, people became not freer but far more exposed to algorithmic manipulation. Public discourse began blindly obeying the imperative of speed and emotional shock, favoring sensational posts over the patient pursuit of truth.