one-on-one that of you would say as part an online mob, I bet you wouldn't. The mo gives you strength. It gives you permission to release your inner sadist, In her 1973 short story The Ones who Walk Away From Omelas, science fiction author Ursula K. LeGuin describes a para dise that for reasons never explained can only be sustained by the pain and suffering of a single outcast individual s the paradise of the internet something similar? Can we only feel companionship and camaraderie online if we periodi cally solidify it by attacking some faraway moral transgressor? I hope not. That's not the kind of online community I want. But history and psy chology show that although the sadistic mob instinct may be repressed, it never dies, 02014 BLOOMBERG VIEW