Mass Hysteria Throughout History

D I R T Y L I T T L E D I R T B A B I E S

You are the dancing queen Young and sweet Died from dancing plague In 1518

About the sun one: As a child I remember looking at the sun for too long and when I started looking around I kept seeing it in greens and pinks, probably where it temporarily burned my retina. So yeah, they probably looked at the sun for too long and started seeing the afterimage in different colours flying around the actual sun.

Mass hysteria is such an interesting concept, that a bunch of people can start doing something uncontrollably because someone just decided to meow, laugh, or dance on the streets

"These people can't stop dancing! What do we do!?" "Add music"

Imagine sleeping, then suddenly waking up to the sound of 30+ nuns meowing.

I remember this one time in high school where one of my classmates started giggling for no discernible reason. There was nothing that could've gotten her laughing, but next thing you know I started giggling for no reason, and then pretty soon everyone in our table were giggling as well. It thankfully stopped after about 20 minutes or so when the concerned teacher asked us what was going on, we burst out into laughter, and it fizzled out shortly after. They say laughter is contagious, but I realized they meant it literally.

This video singlehandedly inspired me to deliver a speech on mass hysteria in my college speech class. Naturally it received a perfect score

Makes sense they started meowing. They're cat holics.

A whole city danced themselves to death and my history teacher didn't fucking tell me?

"Hey guys could we talk about-" " M E O W " "Yea that"

6:07 that's just an average night in Jamaica nothing unusual

“All girls school” one has a beard

Everyone gangsta till Tarrare eats the meowing nuns.

4:38 - this barely one second of animation by itself causes me to laugh uncontrollably for hours

there was this particular case of mass hysteria in delhi (where i live) back in 2001, several people reported waking up with scratches and bite marks all over them and the news quickly spread and people came to a conclusion that there was a literal monkey man with wolverine claws, a black helmet, and a hi-tech suit which gave him super powers or something and also made him invisible. cases started increasing rapidly with people killing innocent bystanders mistaking them for the monkey man, cops were deployed to patrol the city at night and hundreds of people were calling the police reporting incidents of having seen the monkey man (most of them fake). this lasted for over a month.

Middle Ages: Some one dances uncontrollably Its satan Today: ha. Drugs

"lol religion was so dumb back then" Science at the time: "It was hot blood"

Sam is just giving me a list of things to visit in the past once I get my hands on a time machine.

I miss this man with the entirety of my soul