Mob mentality

There is a local viral video making the rounds that has me quite disturbed, disturbed enough to make public comment.

The video appears to have been shot on Ariapita Avenue in the wee hours of Sunday morning (March 29th). It starts with an irate female violently venting her frustrations on the bonnet and headlights of a black Toyota HiLux pick-up truck, in full view of onlookers on either side of the roadway. I must warn you, up front, that the video does contain some coarse language.

If you are having difficulty seeing the uploaded video above, you can view it here on YouTube.

Based on some of the running commentary provided by said onlookers, it appears that the young lady had just prior caught her boyfriend in flagrante delicto with the outside woman, made a public ruckus and is now preventing him and the outside woman from fleeing the scene in his vehicle.

As you can see, the jilted lover goes to town on the vehicle, ripping off the windshiled wiper and then the front number plate and using them to scrape, scratch and smash the van before it can be driven away. Further on in, you see that the attack on the vehicle escalates as the woman uses bottles to smash against and throw at the van.

A deserved outcome for a "horn", right? Guy got caught and received his immediate comeuppance, right?

My concern is with how that situation escalated during the course of the video. I saw one brave soul  actively tried to stop the destruction (0:57) and calm the scene down. Unfortunately the peacemaker was physically discouraged by another onlookers (who appeared to be a friend of the assailant) from intervening. Throughout the saga, the majority of the crowd goaded the woman into continuing her attack,"chaining her up" as we say and verbally fuelling her rage. And of course, a plethora of smartphones were seen being held aloft recording the incident.

What I cannot fathom is how some of the crowd members deliberately inserted themselves into the story. After the woman had reduced the number plate to a further-unusable state as a club, a nearby female videographer offered her empty beer bottle for use as a weapon (3:11). Gleefully accepted, that bottle was then chucked at the windscreen. More bottles, willingly volunteered by other crowd members, soon followed, some just striking the vehicle and others smashing on impact. The hapless driver's escape bid continued to be hindered as the woman refused to remove herself from the vehicle's path.

While infidelity is an everyday phenomenon, scenes such as these are thankfully not as commonplace. And certainly it is frightening that in addition to urging the woman on to "mash it up", the crowd that had no stake in the dispute save for the raw entertainment value suddenly offered her missiles to hurl at the van. This is the development that disturbs me, a manifestation of mob mentality.The woman did not seek out bottles to  further her onslaught; the crowd spontaneously provided them to her. I shudder to think what would have happened if she had somehow managed to completely smash through the windshield, exposing the driver and the alleged outside woman. Would the supply of bottles have ceased then?

That for me is the true tragedy of this situation. The public and open display of violence, as eye-catching and  entertaining as it was, embarrassed all three main players in the scenario - the woman, the man and the purported outside fling. However, the crowd's unbidden eagerness to ensure that the scene perpetuated and intensified through their active participation brought shame directly to themselves as well.