Sheeple Part 2 :: Conformity

Which of the three turds on the right :: matches the turd on the left? Wait :: Wait :: Don’t answer that yet. First let the other people at your table answer …

Al Gore: The correct answer is one … the hot chick at the death cover up party.

Bono: It’s one … the dancing dark demon of disco.

Abraham Lincoln: One.

Britney Spears: It’s one … “Oops, sometimes people die at the mall” girl.

… okay now you. And everyone is going to hear your answer.

In the Asch Confromity Experiment :: it’s not Gandhi and Cher at the table with you. It’s just five other buttholes with bad 70’s haircuts. But when the BadHaricut ButtHoles put their unanimous support behind a series of obviously wrong answers :: 35% of Sheeple will fall into total conformity with the BullShit :: 75% will defy their eyes at least once.

Just like in the Milgram experiment :: the presence of a dissenter had a dramatic effect. Even if the dissenter also made an incorrect choice … as long as group unanimity was broken … test subjects were much more likely to maintain their independence.

Quoting from Solomon Asch’s orignal 1955 article {link} ::

“Life in society requires consensus as an indispensable condition. But consensus, to be productive, requires that each individual contribute independently out of his experience and insight. When consensus comes under the dominance of conformity, the social process is polluted and the individual at the same time surrenders the powers on which his functioning as a feeling and thinking being depends. That we have found the tendency to conformity in our society so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black is a matter of concern. It raises questions about our ways of education and about the values that guide our conduct.”

Indeed.

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