"One Harvard political scientist tweeted about pictures of 'Montana cows! Iowa corn! Hawaii beaches! New Mexico mountains. What’s not to like? Better than a noisy convention hall!'"

"Which might be paraphrased as, 'Who needs crowds anyway?' By way of answer, an entirely corporeal Donald Trump was filmed pitching up at an aircraft hangar in Yuma, Arizona, to speak to several dozen mostly non-mask-wearing enthusiasts, who were seated in the blistering heat. The president seemed in no doubt that the physical interplay between the speaker and the spoken to is a critical part of persuading others that something exciting is going on. This has been conventional political wisdom since the dawning of the era of mass communication. You need to show everyone that crowds of others love you and support you. It was true at Nuremberg, it was true at those meetings of the Supreme Soviet whose written minutes would record that the speeches of the Leader were punctuated by 'stormy applause.' It’s true of democratic politicians, hence the clasped spouse and the cheering delegates.... The implicit question here is, do we need crowds any more to furnish us with social proof?...  For the past ten years the most successful TV comedies haven’t told you when to laugh, or how. Not Curb Your Enthusiasm, not The Office, not The Thick of It, not Fleabag. There is no social proof here any more, you’re on your own. In fact putting laughter tracks on those shows would destroy them. In the 2020s my laughter emerges from my own unique sense of humour, which you, the comedian, just happens to have appealed to."

From "Will we ever feel the power of crowds again?/Now that empty stadiums and online political rallies are normal, many won’t want to rejoin a mass of swaying bodies" David Aaronovitch (in The London Times).