Lord of the Flies Today: Would the Group Chat Choose Jack?

Written By James Taylor
Jack Would Start a Second Chat: Lord of the Flies in the Social Media Age

A Conch Nobody Hears

From the Conch to the Group Chat: How a Community Turns on Its Own

William Golding’s struggle over leadership becomes a modern argument about private chats, public humiliation and the price of belonging.

Imagine Ralph creating a group chat. He adds everyone, explains what needs doing and asks people to take turns. Jack joins, makes a joke about Piggy and gets more replies than the instructions. Later, he starts another chat. This one is meant to be more fun. Piggy does not receive an invitation.

That is one plausible way to move Lord of the Flies into the present. The group might choose Jack, but the decisive choice would not necessarily happen in a poll. It could happen through invitations, reactions and the gradual movement of ordinary conversation into a space where Jack decides who belongs.

William Golding’s 1954 novel follows schoolboys stranded on an island as their attempts at cooperation give way to fear and violence. A contemporary version would find familiar pressures in digital communities. The technology would change how the boys organise, reward and exclude one another. It would not need to invent their hunger for recognition.

Jack Would Not Need to Win the First Vote

The first useful correction to the headline is that the boys initially choose Ralph. Jack already leads the choir and expects authority, but that expectation does not secure the election. He receives responsibility for hunting instead.

Later, when he challenges Ralph and fails to win the support he wants, he leaves. His rival group grows around a different offer: hunting, meat and release from Ralph’s demands. The transfer of power happens through the weakening of the original community as well as the growth of another.

That makes a second chat a closer modern parallel than a single overwhelming vote for a bully.

In the imagined version, Jack could leave the official conversation untouched. Ralph would remain its administrator. The rules would remain visible. Yet arrangements for the evening, private jokes and the exchanges through which friendships develop would move elsewhere.

People might join without intending to reject Ralph. They would want to know what everyone was doing. Some would dislike Jack’s behaviour but assume that staying close gave them influence. Others would consider membership harmless because the group had not yet done anything they regarded as serious.

Ralph would discover that holding an official role did not mean holding the group’s attention. Requests would go unanswered because the people receiving them had already made plans in another place.

The question would cease to be who had permission to lead. It would become who could make participation feel necessary.

The Conch Is More Than an Administrator Badge

On the island, the conch establishes a recognisable procedure. The person holding it is supposed to be heard. Its authority depends on an agreement that remains meaningful even when the speaker is unpopular.

A modern equivalent would therefore need more than a technical setting. Giving Ralph permission to add members or remove messages would grant him control over a channel. It would not guarantee that the group respected anyone else’s right to speak.

Imagine Piggy raising a problem with an outing. The transport arrangements leave someone stranded. He explains this clearly, but the replies concern his tone. Someone posts a mocking image. Another member repeats his wording in a joke. Within minutes, his practical objection has become evidence that he ruins everything.

Nobody has disabled his account. He can still type. Yet the cost of speaking has risen sharply, while the original problem remains unanswered.

This is where the conch becomes useful as an idea. A meaningful speaking right includes an expectation that the contribution will be considered. Access alone is a thin protection if every intervention triggers punishment.

Ralph would also have to accept that this principle constrained him. Rules applied only to Jack’s supporters would become factional weapons. The strongest version of Ralph’s community would let an awkward person identify a mistake made by its leader without losing their place.

Ralph’s Hardest Job Would Be Making Maintenance Matter

Ralph’s priorities involve work whose benefits arrive later. Shelter must be built. A signal fire must be maintained. The boys need to keep acting as people who expect a future beyond their immediate pleasures.

The contrast becomes painful when the hunters’ neglect of the fire coincides with a passing ship. Jack returns with the visible achievement of a successful hunt. Ralph sees an opportunity for rescue that may have disappeared.

In a digital adaptation, this conflict would not have to involve an algorithm. A private conversation could make excitement more rewarding than maintenance all by itself.

The person who organises transport prevents a problem that never becomes visible. The person who checks on an excluded friend does work most members never see. Meanwhile, the funniest insult receives an immediate response from everyone present.

Those are different kinds of reward. A responsible action can succeed without producing a memorable moment. A performance needs an audience and supplies its own evidence of popularity.

Jack would be persuasive if he sometimes delivered something genuinely valuable. He could arrange enjoyable events, bring hesitant people into the conversation or defend a member against an outsider. A leader who offers nothing but cruelty is easier to refuse than one who combines real benefits with selective humiliation.

Ralph’s challenge would be practical as well as moral. He would need to distribute the unglamorous work, recognise it and make participation tolerable. Being correct about the group’s needs would not excuse failing to understand its members.

Piggy Would Become a Joke Before Becoming an Enemy

Piggy’s vulnerability lies partly in the distance between what he contributes and how the others treat him. His judgement can help the group, but it does not purchase the standing needed to protect him.

An imagined chat could widen that distance through repetition. An unflattering photograph might become a recurring reaction image. His name could become shorthand for complaining. Eventually, people unfamiliar with the first incident would inherit the joke without ever deciding whether it was fair.

The damaging step would be the conversion of a person into a role. Once Piggy meant embarrassment, his ordinary behaviour could be interpreted through that expectation. A correction would sound pompous. An objection would sound oversensitive. Silence would be treated as sulking.

Even sympathy could preserve the arrangement. Someone might tell him privately that Jack had gone too far, then laugh publicly when the joke returned. Piggy would receive reassurance without any change in the conditions that made reassurance necessary.

This version should give him more than speeches about reason. He would want friendship, make mistakes and occasionally respond badly to humiliation. Requiring him to remain perfectly composed would give the others an easy excuse to disregard what they had done.

The important question would be whether the group recognised an obligation towards someone whose company it sometimes found difficult. Protection that depends on being charming is a privilege, not a reliable rule.

The Beast Would Arrive as an Unverified Message

Golding’s beast gains force through fear and misinterpretation. A dead parachutist becomes apparent evidence of a creature. The boys’ experience of danger is sincere even when their explanation is wrong.

A modern version could begin with a cropped screenshot, an unidentified voice note or a warning passed between friends. The message would not need to be fabricated from nothing. A real fragment stripped of context could be enough.

Suppose someone says that an outsider has threatened a member. Jack responds quickly and forcefully. He offers protection, names a suspected culprit and asks who is prepared to stand with the group. Ralph asks where the warning came from.

The difference in response would become politically useful. Jack could present his certainty as care and Ralph’s questions as hesitation. Members frightened by the allegation might prefer the person who appeared ready to act.

Verification would then acquire a social cost. Asking for the complete exchange could be treated as doubting the person who shared it. Correcting the account could appear to weaken the group when unity was supposedly essential.

The threat might also change shape. If the original allegation failed, the argument could shift towards what the outsider might have intended or what someone like them would probably do. The group would move from a checkable claim to a suspicion that no single correction could settle.

This imagined sequence is an interpretation of the novel’s fear politics. It is not a finding that every frightening message follows the same path. Its force comes from the point where investigating danger becomes less welcome than displaying loyalty.

Reactions Can Teach the Group What to Perform

There is research relevant to this comparison, although it cannot tell us how Golding’s fictional boys would behave with phones.

In a 2021 study, researchers William Brady, Killian McLoughlin, Tuan Doan and Molly Crockett examined moral outrage on Twitter through observational research and behavioural experiments. They found evidence that positive feedback encouraged subsequent expressions of outrage. People also adjusted their expression to the norms they observed around them.

The distinction between expressing outrage and feeling it matters. The work does not establish that every forceful post reflects deeper anger, that outrage is always unjustified or that public Twitter behaviour maps directly onto a private school chat.

It does suggest a plausible question for the adaptation: what would the boys learn from the responses their messages received?

If a restrained objection attracted little interest while an accusatory version earned enthusiastic support, a member might repeat the more successful approach. If harshness became routine, newcomers could learn the style without anyone explicitly teaching it.

The imagined Jack would benefit from a group that began anticipating his preferences. He would no longer need to start every attack. Members seeking recognition could supply stronger versions of positions he had already rewarded.

Yet the same principle leaves room for another outcome. A group could recognise a careful correction, welcome an apology or support someone who interrupted a cruel exchange. What receives approval is part of what the community teaches.

Roger Would Test What the Others Allow

Roger makes the modern comparison more unsettling because he is not simply another Jack. Early in the novel, he throws stones near a younger child while keeping a distance imposed by remembered restraints. He tests a boundary before crossing far more terrible ones.

A contemporary Roger could begin with a minor invasion of privacy. He shares something embarrassing and watches what happens. An objection would tell him that a limit still exists. Laughter, indifference or protection from Jack could tell him something else.

The next incident might be more intrusive. Each response would become information about what the group permitted and whose discomfort mattered.

Jack would not have to issue detailed instructions. A leader can create dangerous freedom for an ally by dismissing complaints, treating the target as deserving or portraying criticism as an attack on everyone. Roger could then act with confidence that consequences would fall elsewhere.

This is different from saying that offensive jokes inevitably escalate into serious abuse. They do not. The useful issue is whether the group can recognise and enforce a boundary when doing so costs a popular member something.

Roger would expose the gap between written rules and actual protection. The rule might forbid harassment. The real policy would emerge when someone complained about the person Jack wanted to keep.

Simon Would Discover That Evidence Needs a Hearing

Simon recognises something the others resist. He suspects that the feared evil belongs within the boys’ own behaviour, and he discovers that the supposed beast on the mountain is a dead parachutist. When he returns, the boys kill him during their frenzied gathering.

His fate makes a simple fact-checking adaptation inadequate. Finding the correct explanation does not guarantee that anyone will receive it.

A modern Simon might obtain the complete recording or speak to the person whose message had been circulated. His evidence could resolve the original allegation while threatening the shared account through which the group had justified its conduct.

Jack would have something to lose. So would members who had passed on accusations, laughed at the target or ignored a request for help. Accepting Simon’s account would require them to reconsider their own actions.

The conversation could therefore turn towards Simon’s motives. Why had he contacted the outsider? Why was he making the group look bad? Had he always been against them?

At that point, the evidence would still exist, but membership would determine who was allowed to interpret it. The group’s defence would become an argument about the messenger’s loyalty.

A responsible adaptation would preserve the difference between online humiliation and Simon’s killing. They are not equivalent harms. The comparison concerns a shared failure of reception: the refusal to let an unwelcome person interrupt a story that has become useful.

Piggy’s Glasses Introduce a Different Kind of Power

The spectacles are practical tools as well as symbols. They allow the boys to make fire, and their theft deprives Piggy of something he personally needs while strengthening Jack’s group.

That gives a digital adaptation an opportunity to move beyond popularity. Some resources remain powerful even when nobody admires their owner.

An imagined Piggy might manage a shared account, preserve important records or maintain the only organised contact list. The others could ridicule him while relying on his work. They would want the benefit without accepting his right to question how it was used.

Jack’s decisive move could be to take control of that resource. The specific mechanism would depend on the story, but the consequence would be clear: Piggy’s contribution would survive while his influence disappeared.

This connects the novel with the wider problem of rules being weakened as power becomes concentrated. A community can retain the tools created for everyone while allowing a smaller circle to decide who benefits.

The difference between attention and ownership would now matter. Ralph might still persuade some members privately, but persuasion would be harder to organise if Jack controlled the channel through which they normally acted together.

Leaving the Chat Would Not Necessarily End the Problem

A phone offers an apparent escape unavailable on Golding’s island: close the conversation. That difference limits the analogy, but it does not make exclusion trivial.

In the imagined adaptation, the group could also organise school friendships, weekend plans or a shared project. Leaving its chat would mean losing access to part of an offline life. A person might mute the messages yet remain the subject of them.

Members would have unequal freedom to withdraw. Someone with several other friendships could leave at modest cost. Someone whose social life depended on this circle might endure behaviour they disliked because the alternative felt like isolation.

The story should show those circumstances rather than declaring every silent member a willing supporter. Fear, dependence and uncertainty can produce outward conformity without inward agreement.

That distinction also matters when challenging Jack. A public demand that everyone denounce him immediately could frighten hesitant members back towards his protection. Private contact and a credible alternative community might make resistance possible where confrontation alone did not.

The collapse of the boys’ original society is useful here because it makes belonging tangible. Choosing a group means choosing where to stand, whom to trust and what risks to accept. The modern version would need to give those choices comparable emotional weight without pretending the circumstances were identical.

The Ending Would Put the Adults Under Examination

The novel’s final violence destroys both Piggy and the conch when Roger releases the rock. Ralph is hunted, and the fire used against him draws the attention that brings rescue. A naval officer arrives from a wider world already engaged in war.

That ending prevents a comfortable division between dangerous children and civilised adults. The officer can stop the immediate killing without standing outside the human capacity for organised violence.

A contemporary adaptation should resist ending with a responsible adult simply taking away the phones. Removing a channel might interrupt abuse. It would not explain why the group had learned to reward intimidation or why warnings had failed to secure help.

A stronger ending could bring the messages before a school or organisation that had already received complaints. The adults would have to examine their own decisions. Who had dismissed the early incidents? Who had trusted the popular account? Who had treated the preservation of a reputation as more urgent than the treatment of a child?

That would keep the focus on responsibility without claiming that every institution behaves this way. The fictional adults would need specific choices and failures, just as the boys do.

Jack’s appeal could then be understood without treating it as inevitable. He might gain followers where pleasure, fear and access favoured him. He could also encounter resistance from members who protected someone else before cruelty became the condition of admission.

Golding’s novel is fiction, not an experiment proving that people always turn on one another. Its characters include care, hesitation and attempts at cooperation alongside domination. A modern reading becomes poorer when it erases those possibilities in pursuit of a claim that humanity is hopeless.

An alternative ending could turn on a small intervention, before the worst harm occurs. Someone opens a new chat to arrange the next meeting. Piggy’s name is missing from the draft invitation. This time, another member notices before it is sent.

Sources

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