crab basket

1) Any place where people hate being there, but are too scared, or guilted to move on, or organize, or to speak honestly about source of the problem. Where everyone pulls down someone who does something to get out and calls them deserter or quitter because they dont want to be lonely. 2) shithole, hotel california (you can check out any time you like, but you cant never leave), facebook, small town, abusive relationship, college, dilbert corpo, military 3) Originated from phenomenon of real life behavior of crabs caught in a fishing basket who could technically get out, but the ones near the edges are being pulled down by the ones at the bottom of the basket, hence noone leaves and everyone hates being there.