Shereen Ali

You could hear hoots of laugh­ter as peo­ple aimed their smart­phones in the air to video-record an an­gry woman beat­ing up on a black Toy­ota Hilux ve­hi­cle on the night of March 28 in St James on Ari­api­ta Av­enue, just out­side the Good Luck Chi­nese restau­rant.

One four-minute video post­ed to Face­book on March 29 shows the woman ini­tial­ly us­ing a wind­shield wiper to hit the car.

"Wha–she buy de wiper? She buy de van?" asks a voice on the video.

The slim woman, pos­si­bly in her 20s or 30s, dis­cards the wiper and twists off the front li­cense plate from the Hilux. She scratch­es the car's front with the twist­ed plate, hits the head­lights, hits and grates the bon­net, then fo­cus­es on break­ing the wind­shield. It does not shat­ter, but gets cracked and chipped.

Spec­ta­tors give run­ning com­men­tary and ad­vice, their food box­es and drinks in hand.

"Mash it up! Mash up de screen!" en­cour­ages one.

"Get out! Get out!" shouts one fe­male view­er to the male car dri­ver; she adds, in sup­port to the an­gry woman: "Jump up on top de car!"

Mean­while, you can hear the con­tin­u­ous, me­thod­i­cal "thwack thwack thwack" sound of the an­gry woman hit­ting the large met­al ve­hi­cle.

"Waaaay, she re­al f***ing up dey car boy," com­ments one man.

"Look a glass bot­tle for you here!" of­fers an­oth­er man, half-mock­ing.

"Break it, break it, wooooooooo!" shrieks a woman. One or two oth­er women at times seem to briefly shield or pro­tect the hit­ting woman, as if giv­ing her space to vent, un­en­cum­bered.

Peo­ple pause to watch, en­cour­age, sup­port, jeer or cack­le in pruri­ent glee at the un­ex­pect­ed Hilux dra­ma, which many view­ers as­sumed was caused by a per­son­al re­la­tion­ship gone awry.

All the while, a male dri­ver in the car (not vis­i­ble in the video) is qui­et­ly tak­ing the hits, se­cure in his locked car. Even­tu­al­ly, he slow­ly dri­ves for­wards, his Hilux gen­tly push­ing the woman back­wards along the road, in an an­ti­cli­mac­tic de­noue­ment. He leaves. She leaves. The video ends.

The video went vi­ral over the week­end of March 29, and drew vary­ing com­ments, from peo­ple chastis­ing the woman, to oth­ers prais­ing her.

At least one on­line hu­mour site lat­er spoofed the in­ci­dent, with a sto­ry head­lined: "Pover­ty-strick­en Av­enue crowd wants mon­ey back for lame end­ing to Hilux fight." (www.la­teo­clock­news.com)

What do in­ci­dents like this say about us? Was any crime com­mit­ted? Was the crowd re­sponse ev­i­dence of herd be­hav­iour, was it a sham­ing form of "street jus­tice," or was it just idle voyeurism fu­elled by al­co­hol and easy cell­phone video record­ing tech­nol­o­gy?

The herd the­o­ry:

dan­gers of the mob

Ac­cord­ing to some psy­chol­o­gists, when enough of us get to­geth­er, we may of­ten end up do­ing some re­al­ly non­sen­si­cal and down­right vi­o­lent things that we'd nev­er con­sid­er on our own. Psy­chol­o­gists re­fer to this phe­nom­e­non as herd or mob men­tal­i­ty, de­fined as unique be­hav­ioral char­ac­ter­is­tics that emerge when peo­ple are in large groups. A few peo­ple in­flu­ence the ma­jor­i­ty. Anonymi­ty in crowds fos­ters a feel­ing of a lack of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. This in turn can en­cour­age neg­a­tive be­hav­iours–such as the T&T crowd of "limers" lusti­ly en­cour­ag­ing the woman to mash up the man's car.

Re­searchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leeds in the UK dis­cov­ered in a 2007 study that it takes a mi­nor­i­ty of just five per cent of a large crowd (de­fined as 200 or more peo­ple) to in­flu­ence a crowd's di­rec­tion–and that the oth­er 95 per cent will fol­low with­out re­al­is­ing it. The 2007 pa­per re­lat­ing to this re­search, en­ti­tled Con­sen­sus De­ci­sion-mak­ing in Hu­man Crowds, was pub­lished in an is­sue of An­i­mal Be­hav­iour Jour­nal. It points to the tru­ism that all our ac­tions have an ef­fect: we in­flu­ence each oth­er's be­hav­iour.

There are many ex­am­ples of crowds mak­ing us stu­pid. Herd be­hav­iour in his­to­ry and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ranges from de­struc­tive foot­ball vi­o­lence in the UK, to the more pos­i­tive, ex­pres­sive herd be­hav­iour some­times ev­i­dent at the an­nu­al Burn­ing Man event in the Black Rock desert of Neva­da, to the vi­o­lent 2011 Stan­ley Cup ri­ots in Van­cou­ver af­ter los­ing a hock­ey match (see box).

The cul­tur­al view

Mean­while, Dr Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an, an an­thro­pol­o­gist who lec­tures at UWI in the De­part­ment of Be­hav­iour­al Sci­ences, com­ment­ed in a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion that what was shown on the lo­cal T&T vi­ral video post­ed to YouTube on March 29 may well say more about us as a "pea­cock" so­ci­ety, where a cul­ture which in­cludes car­ni­va­lesque ex­hi­bi­tion­ism (with some def­i­nite seedy as­pects to it) al­lows such pub­lic ex­pres­sions of pri­vate dra­mas.

Ker­ri­g­an em­pha­sised that all his com­ments were "pure spec­u­la­tion and should be treat­ed in that con­text." He then made in­ter­est­ing com­ments about our 'pea­cock so­ci­ety', our ap­petite for so­cial me­dia, and the roles of men and women on dis­play in the in­ci­dent.

"In cul­tur­al terms I think it was Mol­ly Ahye who de­scribed T&T as a 'pea­cock so­ci­ety'; a 'see me' so­ci­ety," said Ker­ri­g­an, ex­plain­ing:

"By this she meant many mem­bers of our so­ci­ety grow up and are so­cialised with­in a type of cul­ture where the so­cial recog­ni­tion of our peers and oth­er mem­bers of the so­ci­ety is im­por­tant to us.

"So in that sense, there is of­ten a blur­ring of the pri­vate sphere of peo­ple's lives and the pub­lic sphere of their lives–al­most like di­vi­sions be­tween the pub­lic street and the pri­vate home have be­come blurred and merge in­to each oth­er.

"Ahye was re­al­ly speak­ing about the adu­la­tion peo­ple crave at Car­ni­val time to be seen, but oth­ers have ex­tend­ed her metaphor of the 'pea­cock so­ci­ety' to lo­cal every­day life. And I sup­pose, to a point, this lo­cal cul­ture of vis­i­bil­i­ty per­haps played in­to peo­ple's fever over record­ing and watch­ing the in­ci­dent un­fold. A pri­vate ar­gu­ment is held in pub­lic, and as such it changes the so­cial rules about shar­ing and com­ment­ing on the in­ci­dent."

The 'pea­cock so­ci­ety' goes on­line Ker­ri­g­an al­so com­ment­ed on the mas­sive up­take of so­cial me­dia by T&T cit­i­zens. He said many peo­ple as­sume that Face­book is used the same all over the world; but it is not:

"Face­book is re­al­ly a bunch of servers in Cal­i­for­nia that is used in cul­tur­al­ly spe­cif­ic and cre­ative ways in dif­fer­ent ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tions.

"The an­thro­pol­o­gists Daniel Miller and Jolyan­na Sinanan have both pub­lished on this in T&T and de­scribe Face­book here (as lo­cals do) as 'Ma­co­book' and 'Fas­book.'

"The ar­gu­ment here is that the 'pea­cock so­ci­ety' might have once been sim­ply about the of­fline world, but now it has gone on­line and ex­plod­ed.

"What­sapp groups, for ex­am­ple, in T&T, are filled with peo­ple shar­ing videos of every­day in­ci­dents. So per­haps one rea­son for the hun­dreds of phones record­ing the in­ci­dent on the street is this de­sire to show and share with oth­ers. This is per­haps a way to think about how lo­cal cul­ture and ad­vances in tech­nol­o­gy col­lide lo­cal­ly."

On be­ing a man–or a woman

Ker­ri­g­an said per­haps the in­ci­dent re­vealed some of our gen­der nar­ra­tives. He asked some rel­e­vant ques­tions:

"How were women re­act­ing to the in­ci­dent? How were men re­act­ing? Was there any sol­i­dar­i­ty from the women and men to­ward the woman smash­ing the car, and if so, what ideas are the crowd tap­ping in­to for such sol­i­dar­i­ty? Is it ideas about in­fi­deli­ty, horn­ing, deputies, polyamory and cheat­ing?"

What about the male re­sponse? Did they see the in­ci­dent as some­thing about which to ridicule the woman? I know I have heard men dis­cussing the in­ci­dent speak­ing quite neg­a­tive­ly of the woman, with­out hav­ing any idea what she might have been re­act­ing to."

He not­ed that among the many fa­mil­iar gen­der ar­che­types in T&T, com­mon ones in­clude the woman scorned tak­ing back some ret­ri­bu­tion; and the man/boyfriend let­ting her get her pay­back: "...so the crowd could quite eas­i­ly lock in­to a nar­ra­tive of the events that made sense to them, and a nar­ra­tive with­in which they in­trin­si­cal­ly know how to re­act..."

He ob­served:

"I do think the gen­der com­po­nents of the in­ci­dent–what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a man in T&T–are at play on the street in this in­ci­dent."

Pos­si­ble crimes

Ellen Lewis, the di­rec­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, told the T&T Guardian in an email in­ter­view last week that five pos­si­ble of­fences could arise, but this would de­pend on the out­come of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The pos­si­ble of­fens­es are:

1. Throw­ing mis­siles (once this is ev­i­denced in the video record­ed or by way of wit­ness state­ments).

2. Ma­li­cious dam­age.

3. Aid­ing and abet­ting in the com­mis­sion of an of­fence–this would ap­ply to peo­ple al­leged­ly sup­ply­ing the per­pe­tra­tor with mis­siles to en­able the crime to be com­mit­ted.

4. Ob­struc­tion un­der the High­ways Act–if/where the free flow of traf­fic was im­ped­ed.

5. Dis­turb­ing the peace.

Asked whether she could re­call oth­er in­ci­dents like this, and what might cause them, Lewis replied:

"Of­ten times the po­lice are called up­on to in­ter­vene in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and re­la­tion­ship dis­putes. Po­lice of­fi­cers are re­quired to pro­vide coun­selling to the par­ties to the dis­pute through our Com­mu­ni­ty Polic­ing, Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit of the TTPS, and as nec­es­sary, re­fer­rals are made to such oth­er com­pe­tent agen­cies as Na­tion­al Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence."

On the pos­si­ble herd be­hav­iour ev­i­dent in the video, Lewis said:

"It is a sad re­flec­tion on us as a so­ci­ety when adults would seek to in­cite and en­cour­age an­oth­er to cause pos­si­ble phys­i­cal harm to peo­ple, and dam­age to prop­er­ty, in­stead of at­tempt­ing to defuse the sit­u­a­tion. We must con­sid­er: had the sit­u­a­tion been re­versed, what would have been the rea­son­able ex­pec­ta­tion?"

She said peo­ple's ed­u­ca­tion, and their val­ue sys­tems, all play a part. She con­demned be­hav­iour pro­mot­ing vi­o­lence and crim­i­nal be­hav­iour, not­ing:

"Some­times it on­ly takes one per­son to make a dif­fer­ence, even with­in a 'herd' en­vi­ron­ment."

?Mob be­hav­iour: A case study

On a much larg­er stage than T&T, and in dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances, herd be­hav­iour or mob men­tal­i­ty can take far more alarm­ing, es­ca­lat­ing forms, com­bin­ing with con­fu­sion, hys­te­ria and law­less­ness to lead to widescale de­struc­tive re­sults–such as the 2011 Stan­ley Cup ri­ots in Van­cou­ver, Cana­da. The Van­cou­ver Canucks ice hock­ey team were beat­en by the Boston Bru­ins, and the dis­ap­point­ed fans (many of them drunk) wrought hav­oc on Van­cou­ver just four years ago. They turned over cars, lit fires, threw garbage at po­lice, smashed glass store­fronts, and loot­ed busi­ness­es. At least 140 peo­ple were re­port­ed as in­jured, in­clud­ing nine po­lice of­fi­cers, and 101 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed that night. Many ri­ot­ers stood and posed for pho­tographs, with some even post­ing the pho­tos on their own so­cial me­dia ac­counts.

"On­line sham­ing cam­paigns re­sult­ed in some ri­ot par­tic­i­pants be­ing fired from their jobs and re­moved from ath­let­ic teams," record­ed a Wikipedia en­try: "In some cas­es, vi­o­lence was threat­ened against those iden­ti­fied as ri­ot­ers, prompt­ing one fam­i­ly to flee its home, and oth­ers to ex­press con­cern about the po­ten­tial of mob men­tal­i­ty on­line."

The Stan­ley Cup ex­am­ple in its scale and sever­i­ty bears lit­tle in com­mon with last week­end's St James in­ci­dent–ex­cept for the gener­ic as­pect of pub­lic in­cite­ment to vi­o­lence, and the use of in­ter­net me­dia as a form of in­stant ex­pres­sion: to shame, to boast, to doc­u­ment, to en­ter­tain, and per­haps, to do oth­er things. Lat­er, Van­cou­ver po­lice used the in­ter­net and Face­book pho­tos to help pros­e­cute many ri­ot­ers.