bystander intervention training?

well if ever a subway car full of bystanders needed it, here's your proof I guess!
Seriously....what in the holy fuck is wrong with these motherfuckers? I saw the long version of this one-sided beating earlier today. It went on for over a full minute. At least a dozen unanswered punches and not one motherfucker lifted a goddam hand. Not even an attempt to pull this guy off.

It's like that old movie "The Time Machine" when that girl falls into the water and people just watch her drowning because they are so apathetic and ball-less.

But yes, there's a part of this newscast where somebody on the street briefly mentions "bystander intervention training." What a fucking joke. If you have to be trained to give a fuck, just kill yourself.

Where is that 80 year old Asian woman with a plank when you need her?

Video shows Asian man attacked on N.Y.C. subway train - YouTube

Actually, it does need to be a thing. When humans encounter something outside their experience, they tend to short out a bit if it is dramatically different than what they're used to. You want to freak a bunch of people out, and watch them have no idea to respond, the next time you're on an elevator, instead of turning to face the doors (as everyone does), face the people inside the elevator with you. Watch how awkwardly they respond to this. You really want to freak 'em out? Start picking your nose as you stare at them. They'll all feel uncomfortable, act uncomfortable, and almost none of them will articulate to you why what you're doing makes them feel that way.

So you're telling me that with all the people in that subway car every fucking one was "freaked out" to the point of doing absolutely nothing? How/where were these people raised? Sorry but I can't wrap my mind around it. "Encountering something outside your experience" and watching a man get beaten and choked unconscious are apples & oranges. Seriously do you actually know anybody able-bodied and not physically handicapped who would not even try to intervene?

Most of the time someone jumps in to stop fights, but this is NYC we're talking about.

I mean a fight is one thing - who knows why they are fighting? If it's not a total blowout I might not want to try to break it up. But somebody not even fighting back or is completely TKO'd and can't intelligently defend themselves? Somebody might get seriously injured or worse - damn, try at least to break it up. There were plenty of boys (no men I guess) in that car and the aggressor wasn't Mike Tyson. Damn no wonder criminals act like they have no fear of getting caught - nobody does shit in that city. I hate to say it but they get what they deserve with that FUBAR pussy attitude.

Maybe there should be some security on the subways?

Yeah, it happens. Especially when you're talking about a confined space like a subway car. How long do those things run between stops (where one can expect to get out)? I don't know. WTF happens if you're the only person to stand up for someone being attacked and the attacker also happens to have a weapon? (Doesn't matter what the weapon is, it could be a sharp piece of glass.) Can you count on the others in the car to stop that person? Can you count on them to at least render aid to you so you don't have to worry about bleeding out if you get stabbed or whatever?

Look, dude, it sucks that we're a bunch of shitty meat puppets who need training on how to behave in certain situations but that's the case. Think back to the shit you went through in Bootcamp. It was all designed to teach you how to react in a dangerous situation without having to think about what the best response might be. If you stop and think, you'll wind up dead. A buddy of mine who was in the Swedish military told me something that has always stuck with me. Years after he got out of the service, he was in a bar, in Sweden, when some fuckstick with an AK-47 showed up and started shooting up the place. My buddy says that what he can remember is seeing the guy walk through the door with the gun. The next thing that he knows, he's on the floor, hiding behind a table that's been flipped on its side as bullets are hitting it. Only later did he realize that his conditioned reflexes kicked in when he saw the dude come through the door and that he's the one who flipped the table to use as a shield. It was his military training that saved him, not anything else. That's what got me about the shots of the kids walking out after the Parkland shooting, all in a line, with their hands clearly in places to show that they didn't have a gun and weren't a threat to the police on the scene. Those kids didn't do that naturally, they'd been trained, thanks to all the active shooter drills in the years since Columbine, to do that. Why do you think that this video was produced?



It's because people don't know WTF to do when some nutter decides to shoot a place up.

There is. But you can't have a cop in every car on every train. Well, you could, but that costs lots of money, and nobody wants to pay for that.

Okay, so beef up security for a time, if necessary. These attacks on Asians are probably going to continue for a bit.

They've been ongoing since the 19th Century, just nobody gave a shit until recently. Not kidding. Look up the history of San Fransico (or really, just about any major metropolitan area of CA) and you'll see that this has been a characteristic of America for a long time. The same is true elsewhere in the US.

Whatever happened to the Guardian Angels?

I'm well aware that chief. These attacks are new though and due to people blaming Chy-Na for Covid.

Basically.

The San Francisco Japantown was one of the largest in the US before 1942 and wypipo kept all their "friends' " properties after the war. The place was about 16 square city blocks, a fraction of what it used to be and the poor mall at the center of it has all but closed because of the coronavirus and SF's particularly stringent precautions.

I saw the other day that their founder is running for mayor.

Curtis Sliwa (also a former radio talk host) showed up in Tampa back in the late 80s after a serial rapist started terrorizing the slum known as "Suitcase City" and organized a group. For years one of the radio stations had a drop of him saying "We're gonna slam him and jam him and make him suck some concrete." Lots of talk, but I don't know that they ever accomplished anything.

Isn't there some controversy around The Guardian Angels?

Are they, though? I posted just the other day about how I worked in a place with a bunch of Laotian refugees and they all got treated like shit because they were immigrants, despite the fact that before fleeing Laos they had careers like being doctors, generals, and so on. It's just like how cops were murdering lots of people and nobody really gave a shit until George Floyd's murder was caught on camera.

Back in the 90s, I worked with a white guy who had a very pronounced limp. I never asked him how he got it, but one day he told me (and anyone else who would listen). When he was a younger fellow (in his 20s or so, which means 10+ years before I knew him), he found himself in a town in Georgia and after having a few beers, ran into the local cops. Doesn't matter what kind of drunk he was, what happened next wasn't cool. Not only did he get his ass beat by the cops, but they broke his leg and denied him medical treatment. Since the leg didn't heal properly, that's why he had the limp. Why he was telling all of us this was that he had to go back to testify in court about those cops. It seems that they'd killed a kid in their custody and the family was suing for wrongful death and Ricky had been given a summons since they'd fucked him up for life. (No shit. While I was working with him he had to take time off to have his leg rebroken and reset to try and correct his limp. It didn't really work, though he said he wasn't in as much pain afterward.)

None of this shit is a new thing, it just didn't get as much attention as before.

Nobody gave a shit until George Floyd? Have you not been paying attention to the past 25 years and the past 10 in particular? People have been giving a shit, it's just taken the last Gen X and Millennials time to grow up, learn and get into positions of power and now everyone has a camera in their pocket. Change doesn't happen over night no matter if the left thinks it does. The first major thing I remember was Rodney King, a lot of people gave a shit from what I remember.

Anyway,

Bolded part is mine.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/ar...s_being_attacked_and_what_can_you_do_about_it

Yeah, I have, and not a lot has changed.

And what was the biggest outcome from that? OJ got to walk. The cops who murdered Eric Garner aren't in jail, the cops who murdered Tamir Rice, aren't in jail, and the list goes on.

Let me lay out a hypothetical for you: Suppose that once a day you got your ass beat for no reason, then suddenly, you started getting your ass beat twice a day for no reason. Nobody really noticed that you were getting your ass beat once a day, but now that it's twice a day, people suddenly care. How would you feel about that? You might be inclined to report your second ass beating as it just happened, the daily ass beatings you don't even think about because you've become so inured to them that they don't really register as shit that shouldn't happen to anyone. Even if you do think to comment on them, it seems weird because nobody gave a shit when you only got one daily ass beating a few years ago, but now that you're getting two, that catches their eye in a few instances.

Interfering in a fight or a beatdown is also a good way to get stabbed. I don't know what I would do if I happened by an ass-kicking that needed stopping.

This is exactly what happened on the MAX here in Portland a few years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Portland_train_attack

This - if everyone in the carriage had decided to help, it would be a different matter. But your brain is telling you you can't deal with these guys alone, and you can't be sure anyone else will pitch in.

Remember, even after learning about the WTC attack via cellphone calls, the passengers on Flight 93 took a vote as to whether to act, despite knowing they were likely dead either way.

The brain does NOT typically want you getting into danger - even the "fight" instinct is reserved for fights you know you can win or cases where you see no other options. It takes a while of getting off to the "did it and lived" neurotransmitter high to get folk interested in putting themselves in harm's way.

I have nevertheless gotten involved in disputes, including physical disputes, more often than once. I'm not actually a fighter, and I sure don't look like a young man, but I'm big and I have a beard, and I guess that kind of intimidates people. They sort of assume that some big guy who is willing to get involved must therefore be able to do it.

A lot of those people who assault others like that are actually not real fighters. That's why they'll go attack an old woman or someone like that. When someone tough enough wants to intervene, they'll usually back right off and even run away.

It depends a lot on the situation - if it's one attacker, they may well back down from a bigger opponent. The US is so fucked-up I wouldn't put money on it, but in the UK/Europe you can also put a reasonable bet on whether someone is likely to have a knife/gun or not depending on the location.

Yeah, I've been involved in the same. Just my presence changed the equation in the attacker's mind, and the fact that I stepped forward seemed to embolden others who weren't willing to commit.

But I also recognize that's different for large men and other people.

But what I hear from smaller people regularly is no one can make a difference, and that's bunk. Maybe you can't, but that doesn't mean everyone can't. I have stopped fights before that way, without having to actually get into a fight myself.

And maybe that will end up in a bad place for me someday, but that's my risk to take.

In the meanwhile, it helped someone else, and while there are lots of ways to help others, keeping people from physical abuse is definitely one of those ways.

This is an important point that needs to be taken into consideration. Someone has to be the first, and that takes courage, but once there's a "first", it's easier for people to be a "second" and "third" and so on.

In just about anything. Not just stopping fights.

My racedar is pinging.

As far as the fight in question, the tall black dude clearly outweighs, is taller, and stronger than any of the others. I think I would have taken video and called 911 rather than risk losing teeth.

It's all about situational awareness.

I'm just sayin'.

That was my typical morning elevator ride, before COVID.

That scene in Captain America: Winter Soldier would have been fucking hilarious if they'd done this.

*farts* Hail Hydra