Sasquatch! dance fever: The wisdom of crowds -- or mass hypnosis?

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As much as we’d like to understand everything about our world, sometimes things happen that simply can’t be fully, rationally explained. This is why art exists. It’s by nature full of mysterious power, hard to contain and even harder to explain. Hence this video, which has making the rounds in the past week among my music-lover pals. It shows one geeky guy, shirtless, shimmying to the hypnotic beat of Santigold’s ‘Unstoppable’ at the recent Sasquatch! music festival.

He’s lost in his own world, all by himself, when suddenly it’s mayhem, as he is surrounded by a huge throng of fellow celebrants, joyfully following his lead, losing themselves in the music. This is what happens when people hear a great new song or flock to a hit movie -- it’s the true wisdom of crowds, when everyone wants to get in on a collective experience. But it’s fascinating to see it unfold in real time, on video, as the wave builds and gathers momentum.

Bob Lefsetz, the pop music gadfly, offers a far more in-depth commentary on what’s going on, viewing the dancing guy in the clip as a metaphor for making it in the music business (‘You create something different that’s good and hang in there until you hit critical mass. And this mass will be decided by the audience!’). But I wonder if this is all about something more spontaneous -- simply the joy of being in the moment. Or is it perhaps mass hypnosis? Any ideas out there?