A description for people who don’t click on links.
https://twitter.com/AP/status/1586442983850778624?s=20&t=3XU5IeCHf91e9NB2Gwbi6A
Am I the only one who is surprised that Halloween is that big a deal in Seoul?
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Nope. Like, the American adult version of Halloween is a pretty easy sell to young people in much of the developed world (putting on silly and/or sexy costumes, drinking, and maybe scary movies), and it works even if you just get a half dozen friends together, the American child’s version requires broad cultural buy-in so as to get candy door to door. Toss in a smattering of cultural taboos against ghostly or satanic imagery, and the fact that it’s not exactly a Christian holiday so as to get cultural buy in that way, I really wasn’t sure how much of the rest of the world would give even a single fuck.
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Good god that’s horrible.
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These mass crowd crushings are so confusing to me. I don’t get the psychology. Especially if it wasn’t a panic. So sad for sure.
The “30 for 30 Hillsboro Disaster” is one of the saddest and most disturbing documentaries I’ve ever watched.
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The idea that it is a matter of psychology is a common misconception. It’s a matter of physics and of physical distance between action and consequences. There’s a good article on it here.
One word bears a lot of blame here, at least in English. Mention a “stampede” in front of [crowd dynamics expert] Galea and he starts to look pretty wild-eyed. “This is just absolute nonsense,” he says. “It’s pure ignorance, and laziness … It gives the impression that it was a mindless crowd only caring about themselves, and they were prepared to crush people.” The truth is that people are only directly crushed by others who have no choice in the matter, and the people who can choose don’t know what is going on because they’re too far away from the epicentre – often reassuringly surrounded by marshals and smiling faces.
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I think of it more in terms of fluid mechanics than psychology. Model the crowd as a fluid and introduce a bottleneck. The crowd either has to move faster at the bottleneck or be compressed.
This leaves the question of why people applying pressure at the back continue to do so. Sometimes the answer is that there is a fire or something and they have a choice between applying more pressure or standing there waiting to die. But often in disasters involving large crowds it’s simply that the people continuing to apply pressure have no idea what is going on up the front, and often are being encouraged to move forwards by marshals. By the time you realise things are dangerous you have passed the transition point into being part of fluid dynamics and no longer have any freedom of movement. There’s a description of this happening at the start of the article above (although in that case the dangerous situation did not progress to a crowd crush).
I think the fluid dynamics analogy does help to understand that gentle pressure at the back can translate to fearsome pressure at the choke point. Think about a wide gentle river narrowing to a waterfall or something.
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Although in cases like Hillsboro and Cincinnati (1979), venue security either allowed or actually encouraged crowds to grow larger despite people at the front being trapped next to fencing or locked doors.
The whole quote is actually worse!
“So when I questioned the death of George Floyd, it hurt my people,” West continued. “I want to apologize. Because God has showed me by what adidas is doing, by what the media is doing, I know what it feels to have a knee on my neck right now. So thank you God for humbling me and letting me know how it really felt. Because how could the richest Black men ever be humbled other than to be made to not be a billionaire in front of everyone off a comment.”
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And they say shame doesn’t work.
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Super interesting.
Why not the bearded lady in the circus
I was caught in one at a Jane’s Addiction concert and the pressure is beyond intense. The girl in front of me fell down and was pinned to the ground and I had both legs planted and was pushing back with everything I had and I couldn’t move. There were a bunch of people pinned to the ground in front of me who probably die if I can’t hold the crowd back there. Maybe 1000 people tops and I was completely immobilized and strangely calm the whole time. Haven’t felt anything similar since (12-9-1990) and hope I never do.
There are a bunch of videos from the show on YT, but I can’t find any footage of the opening song. I was a crowd surfing menace.
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And Keanu still walks among us.
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I’m catching up on this thread, but if you’re still looking, let me know. I bought a nice one a few years ago.