Arkansas engineer Kyle Quinn seems like a great guy, and his Friday sounded quite pleasant.

After a day of work at the Engineering Research Center at the University of Arkansas, Kyle Quinn had a pleasant Friday night in Bentonville with his wife and a colleague. They explored an art exhibition at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and dined at an upscale restaurant.

Saturday, however, didn’t go quite so well.

Then on Saturday, he discovered that social media sleuths had incorrectly identified him as a participant in a white nationalist rally some 1,100 miles away in Charlottesville, Va. Overnight, thousands of strangers across the country had been working together to share photographs of the men bearing Tiki torches on the University of Virginia campus. They wanted to name and shame them to their employers, friends and neighbors. In a few cases, they succeeded.

The forces of fury had a picture of a person and went to work. The headline to Daniel Victor’s story at the New York Times calls them “amateur sleuths.” He goes on to explain how things went awry.

A man at the rally had been photographed wearing an “Arkansas Engineering” shirt, and the amateur investigators found a photo of Mr. Quinn that looked somewhat similar. They were both bearded and had similar builds.

By internet frenzy standards, that was proof enough.

So the crowd got it wrong? This is unfortunate.

For someone whose only sin was a passing resemblance to someone else — the actual man in the Charlottesville photo has not been conclusively identified — Mr. Quinn bore the direct consequences of the reckless spread of misinformation in breaking news, a common ritual in modern news events.

No mention of the mob. No outrage. Accidents happen, and the New York Times has a system in place to doxx better than the mob can doxx. Yay, Times. But what of the mob?

There is a bad mob, and no shortage of fury directed toward them. But there is a good mob, spurred to action by a thousand voices calling for blood. What if Kyle Quinn’s life ended on Saturday? Would “oopsie” have explained it?

Mark Popejoy, an art director in Bentonville, Ark., attempted to correct dozens of Twitter accounts that had inaccurately pegged Mr. Quinn as the Charlottesville rally participant. He would point out that the University of Arkansas had confirmed that Mr. Quinn was not involved, and ask that the Twitter users delete their erroneous tweets.

While some appreciated the new information, others adamantly refused to change their minds, he said in an interview on Monday. He said he didn’t know Mr. Quinn but sympathized with his position.

“I think it’s dangerous just to go out accusing people without any kind of confirmation of who they are,” he said. “It can ruin people’s lives.”

This reflects an inherent characteristic of mobs. Once they get up a head of steam, they can be impossible to stop. Part of this is that stupid people are just stupid, and that can’t be fixed. Stupid people are particularly susceptible to joining a mob. But part of this is that the mob mentality overcomes reason, supplants it with fury.

Outside the Durham County Courthouse, another mob was at work. Not a bad mob, the type we love to hate, but a good mob. But still a mob.

#BREAKING Protesters in #Durham topple confederate monument downtown pic.twitter.com/a3BNIavyxC

— Derrick Lewis (@DerrickQLewis) August 14, 2017

While the mayor of Baltimore announced the removal of confederate monuments, the mob decided to destroy on its own in a scene eerily reminiscent of Iraqis removing Saddam’s statue. When the offending statue fell, a few people in the mob kicked it. Had they given this any thought, they might have realized that kicking a bronze statue is a good way to hurt, if not break, your foot, and since it’s a statue, it can’t feel the kicks. But they were on an outrage roll, so thought had nothing to do with it.

That this was an angry mob failed to generate much recognition nationally, though the New York Post noted it.

Hours after an angry mob pulled down a statue honoring “Confederate Soldiers” at a court house in Durham, NC, officials in the county declined to criticize the protesters.

In a statement titled “response to recent events in Durham” the Durham County’s public information office said only “Our elected officials and senior staff understand the unrest in our nation and community” after last weekend’s white power rally and terror attack in Charlottesville, Va.

“We share the sentiments of many communities around the nation that admonish hate and acts of violence as we believe civility is necessary in our every action and response.

Civility? Be a more civil mob? Tear things down more civilly? Is that how it works? While there is no outpouring of support for the pimples who disgraced themselves in Charlottesville, there is fear of calling out the “good” mob. The question isn’t whether the statues should come down,* the streets named after confederate soldiers renamed.

Calling the mobs “protesters” and adoring the purpose of the mob doesn’t change the fact that it’s a mob. Mobs are not an acceptable means of accomplishing goals, good or otherwise.

Had someone from the mob decided that Kyle Quinn had to die, would it be any different than the murder of Heather Heyer? Sadly, there will be people who will rationalize a distinction that makes one murder better than another. Condemn the mob mentality. Condemn the mob. All mobs.

*If the statues were historical artifacts, they should be put in museums. Destroying historical artifacts is no better in America than anywhere else. For the most part, however, these aren’t artifacts, but relatively new paeans to bad times. They shouldn’t have been erected. Their removal remedies this gross error.