Reminds me of Kitty Genovese. We humans are really weird sometimes.
Stop Leaning In. Put Down Your IPhone. And HELP ME.
41–50 of 144 posts
Re: Stop Leaning In. Put Down Your IPhone. And HELP ME.
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're pretty much on your own in a large city never expect anybody to help you. The only people that will help you is family and friends. Risking your life, safety or just wasting time for the sake of helping a stranger happens as often as people donating large amounts to charity. So if you want to fight your robber you better have a large knife or gun on your person because people won't help you.
I experienced this in London after being mugged. I had to walk a long way to a police station because every person I asked for assistance refused to either lend me their phone or to phone the police themselves.
I'm saddened by that. In London, I would not offer anyone my phone, as I've travelled too much in Europe and seen too many thieves. I would certainly offer to call the police for you, and I'm shocked that you could not find anyone who would do that.
It's no help to you now, but for others, I am certain - well, I would strongly hope - that a hotel would offer their assistance to someone obviously distraught.
Re: Stop Leaning In. Put Down Your IPhone. And HELP ME.
#43one other challenge may be that in San Francisco there's so many crazy homeless people, you never know what could happen. I saw a homeless guy fall over in front of a bus last week and waited a few seconds, no body did something; I was just about to go other to help pick the guy up, but good job I didn't - as he was just crazy - got up and started trashing all the trashcans around him etc.
This really shocked me when I visited SF last year. We have issues with homelessness, drug abuse and lack of support in some of Scotland's bigger cities, but SF was on a whole other level.
We seen people throw themselves in front of cars then demand cash from the driver, destroy restrooms in fast food joints, and just sit the street talking incoherently to themselves. We were there for less than a week.
I wondered if perhaps while we've not been great at reducing homelessness here, we have better support for those with acute mental illness.
I know every large city has its problems, and I absolutely loved visiting SF (I'd go back in a heartbeat), but seeing this just made me sad.
Re: Stop Leaning In. Put Down Your IPhone. And HELP ME.
#44It's not a mobile phone thing; I got punched in the face on a commuter train 20 years ago and none of the crowd got involved then either. It's partly bystander effect ("I'll leave it to someone else to intervene") and partly a very real fear of the intervention going wrong. Maybe you get stabbed. Maybe the police get involved and you end up with an assault conviction and consequent expulsion from the middle class. Ma…
There have been quite a few stories where people that intervened were themselves charged with assaults. There's been burglars breaking into houses whose owners were charged with invasion of privacy for having security cameras in their own house. Taking justice in your own hand - helping people out in a violent situation - is frowned upon and discouraged. Perhaps even moreso in the US, where it's much more likely that…
> There's been burglars breaking into houses whose owners were charged with invasion of privacy for having security cameras in their own house.
I don't normally do this but extraordinary claims need evidence. Citation?
Re: Stop Leaning In. Put Down Your IPhone. And HELP ME.
#45this is a well known phenomenon called the "bystander effect" wikipedia entry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect long story short, what's going on in people's minds when they don't help is that, probably someone else will step in, and playing hero will probably just get in the way. which, isn't that helpful if 100% of the bystanders are thinking that. It's somebody else's problem. there's a simple re…
It may be partly "somebody else will fix this", but also largely "is this really what it seems"? It could be a genuine robbery, or a piece of improv street theatre, or a sociology experiment. And since nobody else is responding, maybe they see something I don't. As an aside, apparently she pretty much did what you suggest (which is the standard advice to deal with the bystander effect) in that she asked one particula…
Yeah I'm a bit confused by that part. She got the guy's attention but didn't really say what happened with him after that.
Re: Stop Leaning In. Put Down Your IPhone. And HELP ME.
#46I wonder how much of this is that people don't know what to do. If we were listing the qualities that would encourage someone to help what would they be?
1) Believe that your intervention will do good/be effective.
2) Have a personal relationship with the victim.
3) Be thinking of the victim as a person rather than a piece of the scenery.
4) Perceive the risk to self (legal/physical) to be low.
5) Don't believe someone else will do it.
6) Don't believe that it's a setup where the 'victim' will turn on you.
I'm not saying those are the things that matter, they're just the things that came to mind.
And how many of them typically apply?
This was a knife attack, and that probably takes care of 1 and 4. I've seen untrained people fighting in the street, and it's the equivalent of a monkey slinging shit. Add to that that a knife is less to do with careful application of skill - it's more constant. It's entirely possible, if people had intervened, we'd be talking about multiple people seriously injured, perhaps scarred for life, or killed.
2 doesn't apply, 3 could go either way, 5 might be the case - there were a lot of people there. 6, happens, but again might go either way.
...
And there's a thought - did they see the knife? or did they just see two people having a domestic and screaming at each other? I imagine that might decrease the chances of anything happening.
Re: Stop Leaning In. Put Down Your IPhone. And HELP ME.
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
USian here. Where do you live that you're required to take a first-aid class before you get your driver's license? That sounds like a freaking fantastic idea!
I don't know where he's from, but here in Germany you are required to do so.
I'm also a big fan of the law that requires you to help in an accident and protects you from charges as long as you don't do anything obviously stupid.
Re: Stop Leaning In. Put Down Your IPhone. And HELP ME.
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're pretty much on your own in a large city never expect anybody to help you. The only people that will help you is family and friends. Risking your life, safety or just wasting time for the sake of helping a stranger happens as often as people donating large amounts to charity. So if you want to fight your robber you better have a large knife or gun on your person because people won't help you.
I experienced this in London after being mugged. I had to walk a long way to a police station because every person I asked for assistance refused to either lend me their phone or to phone the police themselves.
To be fair, that does sound like it could be a scam. Also, presumably all the police would have told you is that you should go to the nearest police station.
Once, after withdrawing money from an ATM, two guys came up to me with a 5 euro note. They told me I had dropped it and wanted me to take out my wallet. Supposedly so I could verify that I 'indeed' lost money.
Another time someone came up with some sob story and asked me if he could use my phone, or failing that, if I could make a call for him. I forget the details except that I did have to fight him off later.
These events happened in two different countries, and I have more stories like this.
Re: Stop Leaning In. Put Down Your IPhone. And HELP ME.
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> "As I remounted my bike and rode away, it occurred to me that she didn't at any point thank me..." >> "There's not much to be gained from interacting with strangers..." Good on you for stopping to help but why do you feel like you should have to gain something by helping someone else? The woman you helped was still probably quite shocked and dealing with police to thank you and it's highly likely that in such a si…
>I think this is one of the reasons people have stopped helping others - they expect something in return. People always expected something in return, the thing that changes is that you no longer get it. In a small community, you're likely to meet the person you helped again, and thus leaving them stranded will definitely bite you. Not so in the current huge cities. You say 'if I helped someone the only thing I'd expe…
>> "is this sufficient motivation for you to actually go out and help people?"
Yes. But more than that it's the fact that I find it morally very wrong to ignore someone who needs your help. I can think of several situations where I've went out of my way to help someone. I don't want to sound like a great human being going round helping the needy (I'm not) but if I can help, I do.
Re: Stop Leaning In. Put Down Your IPhone. And HELP ME.
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was a poor decision made in a moment of panic, not a rational, well pondered choice. Is it really that hard to empathize?
11 minutes of panic. With torn ligaments. Empathize with an 'e'?
People's responses don't work that way. In any serious situation, the adrenaline will leave you feeling off for an hour or so afterwards, where you might still make decisions you might say you wouldn't when not under pressure.