The concept of bandwagon effect is one that nearly any person has experienced if not directly heard of. Long heralded as the bane of hipsters everywhere, the bandwagon, also identified as the late majority, is the large group of interest that follows based on previous success. The more popular or successful a thing, event, etc. becomes, the more people “jump on the bandwagon.”

The idea is not a new one, and in fact ties into the mentality of large groups of people and is a major element of social psychology. In laymen terms, bandwagoning can be thought of as the trailer on the back of a large truck. Whilst the front end is being steered by a driver, the back end hangs off and is rather clumsy and guilty of taking wide turns. Readers might think of events in previous years ranging from Y2K in 2000, to SOPA in 2011, to Kony 2012. All of these were events perpetrated on social media where they gained massive attention. Even if the information that most people assumed was wrong, they maintained that same rhetoric because others had done the same. I distinctly remember many people posting statuses and generating buzz about Kony, though no one actually did anything about it. This is where the danger lies. Social media has allowed people greater access to information but simultaneously made us lazy.

Most people get their information from social media such as Twitter or Facebook yet fail to fact check. Pew Research reported that roughly 64 percent of U.S. adults use Facebook whilst at the same time, 30 percent also use Facebook for the news. While this is happening, there is great potential for the spread of false information as DIgiday.com spoke to the satirical news network National Report, who stated that they wished to deliberately introduce fake stories to prove how easily stories can manipulate audiences. A previous piece released by the outlet chronicles the fictional account of a quarantined Texas suburb that was allegedly exposed to the Ebola virus. The post was shared over 300,000 times.

The issue stands that people are ultimately lazy in certain aspects of their lives, and combined with the mass of information available to modern audiences and coupled with the basic human desire to fit in with crowds, it creates an unfortunate problem in many people's thinking. In 1997, a 14-year-old student from Idaho conducted an experiment regarding gullibility and convinced 43 out of 50 people that water should be added to a list of banned substances. Tying into elements of majority rules, bandwagoning holds sway over many current social issues ranging from social justice to global events.

One of the main problems with bandwagoning is its leakage into politics. Huffington Post stated that, “people become more supportive of policies that have more general support.” While some might be tempted to believe that this could be indicative of public common interest, a simple empirical observation of the average person reveals people are simply more likely to vote on emotion than reason. To use Donald Trump as an example, it can be observed that a great deal of hatred for the candidate stems from the fact that other people hate him too. As in most politics, a great deal of people simply don’t do their research and borrow the opinions of others.

While of course there are exceptions in circumstance and in the individuals themselves, it takes no great stretch of imagination to find that people can vote for superficial or arbitrary reasons, such as John F. Kennedy’s superior TV persona to Richard Nixon. In the instance of Bernie Sanders for instance, who has been observed by Huff Post and Time to be a favorite among millennials, he has also seen a surge of popularity, a bandwagon if you will. In the same translated thought pattern, especially among many college students, the love for Sanders stems from its own self-perpetuating opinion. In the same way that Trump receives so much negative reception, Bernie receives the opposite.

The commonality however is a lack of information present in the voters on discussed issues and perhaps more importantly, issues not discussed. Trump’s anti-immigration policies are often subjects of debate, but his other policies are far less discussed. Bernie’s by contrast is often highlighted for pushing reducing the cost of education, though it seems the talk stops there as well.

There is nothing wrong with agreeing with others, but this same logic may become obstructed when the urge to agree with a majority outweighs any meaningful analytical observations. Ignorance of subjects willfully or not is unfortunately a stopper to finding solutions and manifests itself at all levels of interaction from the small to the large.