For all our talk of progress, artificial intelligence, digital revolutions and “moving forward as a society”, one thing stubbornly refuses to evolve at the same speed: human nature. Hairstyles and technology changes but egos stay remarkably similar. Scroll through social media for half an hour and you can witness corporate boardroom behaviours that would have been perfectly recognisable in the courts of kings, religious empires and political movements centuries ago; these platforms may be modern, but the patterns are ancient. Perhaps that is one of the strangest gifts social media has given us is unintentionally becoming a giant public case study of power, ambition, insecurity, influence, manipulation, tribalism and control. A live-action museum of human behaviour, updated every few seconds. Some of it is inspiring, others deeply worrying; but many deserve far more reflection than we currently give it.
The Need for Checks and Balances
Healthy systems have checks and balances because history repeatedly teaches us that power without accountability eventually becomes dangerous. Not always immediately or dramatically, but eventually because when one person or group controls the narrative, controls dissent, controls access and controls consequences, warning signs begin to appear.
We see it in politics, corporations, online communities, influencer cultures, friendship groups and hobby forums; the moment accountability disappears, behaviour often changes with it. That is not because all leaders are bad people. – many aren’t; some genuinely want to help others. But humans are also vulnerable to ego, fear, status and self-preservation – these vulnerabilities never vanished simply because we invented smartphones.
Henry VIII did not become infamous because he enjoyed healthy disagreement and collaborative governance. He became one of history’s great cautionary tales precisely because power concentrated around one individual can become dangerous when ambition, entitlement and personal desire override restraint. If you remove oversight and the opportunity for people to challenge decisions, we inevitably end up with the potential consequence that reality itself starts bending around a powerful person’s emotional needs.
The frightening part is how often modern audiences think they would never fall into similar patterns while simultaneously participating in them online only to regularly.
“If I Can’t Control You, I Will Destroy You” – that sentence sounds dramatic until you spend enough time observing public pile-ons, cancel campaigns, online humiliation rituals and reputation warfare. Then suddenly it sounds rather familiar because modern social media has created an environment where some people do not merely want disagreement defeated, but also their opposition erased; Not corrected, no debate, just gone; careers are targeted, livelihoods threatened, families dragged in, screenshots are weaponised. When context is removed, narratives can be manipulated and once emotional outrage combines with public performance and algorithms rewarding engagement, things escalate quickly – this is where comparisons to abusive control dynamics begin appearing.
Not every argument/criticism is abusive or oppressive, but certain behavioural patterns absolutely overlap:
- coercion
- intimidation
- public humiliation
- gaslighting
- isolation
- punishment for dissent
- controlling information
- demanding loyalty
- emotional manipulation
At its worst, online culture can resemble a digital version of “possession rather than respect”.
You do not belong to yourself, but to the tribe / ideology and controlled by the algorithm. and if you try to stop complying with the consensus, punishment follows. Perhaps not the kind metered out by the torture chambers of medieval history, but one that will almost certainly impact on your emotions and mental health.
Need to Win
One of the most destructive forces in human behaviour is the inability to lose gracefully or in the corporate world: the inability to be questioned. The “need to win” can quietly poison individuals, organisations and entire movements.
You see it when leaders cannot admit mistakes, companies deny or “need to look into” obvious failures or when monetisers (influencers) double down instead of apologising; as a result, debates become less about truth and more about domination; winning becomes the objective with truth as a secondary criteria – this is not new. History is filled with rulers, religious leaders, corporate executives and political movements that convinced themselves they were justified because they had enough supporters, enough money or enough influence – human beings have an astonishing ability to mistake popularity for morality.
Religious Leaders, CEOs and the Dangers of Untouchable Status
One uncomfortable truth repeated throughout history is that the more untouchable someone becomes, the greater the risk. That applies to kings, revolutionary leaders, celebrities, corporate CEOs, religious authorities, etc. The danger begins when people stop questioning them; a healthy organisation welcomes scrutiny, an unhealthy one treats scrutiny as betrayal.
There is a reason corporate scandals so often emerge from cultures where executives were treated almost like royalty. Employees become frightened to challenge decisions; groupthink develops, ethical concerns are buried beneath profit targets and the prioritisation of making money today over the consequences of tomorrow becomes normalised.
We have seen it with financial crashes, environmental damage, exploitation scandals, data privacy, addictive platform design. Short-term ambition can become extraordinarily dangerous when detached from responsibilities; social media accelerates all of it because attention itself is now monetised.
Outrage gets the clicks; conflict gets the traffic, division gets engagements. A calm, sensible person quietly suggesting, “Perhaps we’d all benefit from a bit more vitamin D during the winter months,” is never going to go viral. Meanwhile, an instaslut with industrial-strength cleavage, wearing what appears to be two shoelaces and a pout, aggressively oiling herself up like a rotisserie chicken will somehow rack up three million views, a brand deal, and a podcast about skin health.
Question Narratives
One of the healthiest habits any society can develop is the ability to question narratives without automatically becoming tribal. Not every official narrative is true, neither is every alternative narrative, but history repeatedly shows us the importance of asking questions.
Who benefits?
Who controls the story?
Who gains power?
Who profits?
Who is silenced?
Who is rewarded for obedience?
Who is punished for dissent?
Blind trust is dangerous but so is cynicism – the challenge is learning how to think critically without becoming permanently consumed by outrage or paranoia, which, admittedly, is difficult when social media platforms sometimes resemble an international shouting competition sponsored by energy drinks.
Cancel Culture and Public Punishment
Public shaming has existed for centuries; the internet simply industrialised it. In medieval times, punishment might involve stocks in the town square; today it involves trending hashtags, quote tweets and strangers attempting amateur psychological analysis based on a 14-second clip whilst bouncing their oversized mamary glands. Sometimes public accountability is necessary because genuinely awful behaviour deserves consequences.
However, social media often struggles with proportion, nuance and forgiveness and as a result, a society obsessed only with punishment eventually becomes fearful.
A society with no accountability becomes chaotic; balance matters, but unfortunately, balance is not especially profitable for online platforms.
Legacy: How Will You Be Remembered?
Perhaps the most important question history leaves behind is not: “How powerful were they?”, but: “What did they do with that power?”
Legacy belongs to everyone eventually, be they Kings, CEOs, Religious leaders, Monetisers (Influencers, Politicians, Platform owners, right down to you and me as ordinary users. The internet has created the strange reality where millions of people now leave behind searchable behavioural records of how they treated others when angry, powerful, anonymous, praised or challenged. Future generations may study social media archives the way we study historical letters and political speeches now and I wonder what conclusions they will arrive at… Will they think of us as wise, measured, considerate, capable of disagreement without destruction? Or that we became addicted to outrage, attention and emotional tribalism?
That choice still belongs to us.
Human Nature Does Not Change That Much
This may be the most important lesson of all: human beings like to imagine that modern society has evolved beyond the darker patterns of history.
Yet the same instincts continue appearing:
- fear of exclusion
- desire for status
- loyalty to tribes
- hunger for power
- attraction to certainty
- obsession with winning
- resentment of criticism
- temptation to control narratives
The costumes changed; our skirt hems have raised, I believe that the psychology largely hasn’t which is exactly why historical lessons matter. Not because history repeats perfectly, because patterns repeat and patterns become easier to recognise once we stop assuming “people back then” were uniquely flawed while “people now” are enlightened. The same human operating system is still running underneath the updates.
Speak Up / Stand for Truth.
Perhaps the healthiest response is not hopelessness, but responsibility. We should all
Speak up against abuse of power.
Question unhealthy behaviour.
Challenge manipulation.
Support accountability.
Resist mob mentality.
Avoid blind loyalty.
Stay curious.
Stay grounded.
Most importantly, remember that disagreement is not automatically hatred and criticism is not automatically oppression – a mature society requires people capable of independent thought, emotional restraint and moral consistency, especially when it is inconvenient. Social media can absolutely bring out the best in humanity:
- support during crises
- education
- connection
- creativity
- exposure of wrongdoing
- communities forming across borders
But it can also expose the worst:
- narcissism
- cruelty
- tribalism
- dehumanisation
- performative outrage
- manipulation
- ego without restraint
In that sense, perhaps social media is not creating entirely new human behaviour after all; perhaps it is simply revealing us more honestly than ever before and so I’ll close today with the question as to whether that should probably concern all of us just a little bit – over to you all.
