Comment by exasperaited

Yes -- I do think there is a lesson about the pile-on.

A few years back I criticised someone (without naming them) online (since the egregious, thoughtless conduct itself was online) and triggered something of a pile-on that I thought was a bit too much.

Subsequently I realised that I had under-read the situation myself, and the conduct wasn't simply thoughtless at all, it was repeated, self-interested and very calculated; people finding that out was actually the accelerant of the pile-on.

So I wasn't really so guilty of it after all. But I definitely witnessed what you talk about -- the "you're with us or with them" of it all, the social compulsion to join the pile-on.

I will probably still openly criticise people if I think it is very merited, but any criticism needs to be tempered with as much of an antidote for a simple pile-on as it can.