The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth

Besides overt aggression, meanness includes alternative aggressions such as social aggression and relational aggression. Relational aggression “covers ignoring, spreading rumors, shouting, eye rolling, glaring, snickering, and sneering. It is intended to harm by damaging or manipulating others self-esteem, social status, or friendships” (80).

Robbins defines the “Cafeteria Fringe” as the “people who are not part of or who are excluded from school or societies in crowd” (6). Typically in schools, these are the people who do not occupy the central tables in the cafeteria, where the “popular” students congregate. 

Robbins defines “crowd contagion” as “[t]he controversial theory that in the midst of a crowd, an individual’s layers of restraint peel away, revealing potentially barbaric instincts” (136). Primatologist Richard Wrangham has theorized that the individual can dissolve “mindlessly” into the collective. The group can take a higher risk position, because personal responsibility is also dissolved.