[SquibblesRedux]

The article and the phenomena it describes makes me think of the ending of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World [1]. (I strongly recommend the book if you have not read it.) A line that really stands out:

"Drawn by the fascination of the horror of pain and, from within, impelled by that habit of cooperation, that desire for unanimity and atonement, which their conditioning had so ineradicably implanted in them, they began to mime the frenzy of his gestures, striking at one another as the Savage struck at his own rebellious flesh, or at that plump incarnation of turpitude writhing in the heather at his feet."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World