Ok, like theres 90% of men, once a girl passed over there (i supose that too) and all guys started to notice her and whistle her, so i dont know i wasent there but when i saw some guys looking over there, few minutes later all people were gathered there and i feel curiousity so i walked near there and there was it

the square

the square delimited before by the hall, benches, 2nd hall and squared area transform into a square delmited by a group of people... there was a giant square made of people, there was nothing to do there and still people where there doing nothing!!

well, there was times when someone crossed the square all people arround started to whistle (men or women) until an authority step there and with fewer whistles the squared disolved, but it lived like 1 hour there!, i think its like an amazing social phenomena xD

Moving forward a bit to crowd violence. There's also an idea that there is safety in numbers so (based on nothing but my own introspection and observations), violence would only erupt with a majority's vote for violence which would have to be ignited by a common insult or injustice. Now assuming the majority of our hypothetical crowd reacts to some unnamed situation with hostility, you would run into the issue of degrees of intensity. Depending on the act it may require one or more persons and varying amounts of destructive energy.

At THIS point you can visualize certain groups forming based on familiarity, kinship, and level of anger/aggression. Some individuals become anonymous, small 2-3 person groups are relatively anonymous in a swarm of 100+ participants. In crowds of 1,000+ group size can fluctuate even more.

There's also the possibility that individuals, or even groups within the original "anonymous angry crowd" could be LOOKING for attention or recognition.

I guess what my writing exercise here showed, if anything, was that anonymity is only as important to the crowd as it is to the individuals within it. =P

Crowds are suggestible to social proof. People follow what other people are doing. Numerous studies cited by Cialdini prove this.

Crowds are merely suggestible characters in a story and never the complicated cluster fuck that it really is.

I remember one time in a bar full of people, there were these two guys that started fighting. My immediate reaction was "sweet, let's watch a good ol bar fight.", then all of a sudden, the one guys girlfriend smoked the other guy with a beer bottle and blood started flowing everywhere.

I immediately wanted to help, but wasn't close enough so yelled, "someone stop it.", and heard someone nearby repeat what I said.

It was then that two different people grabbed the guys and separated them.

I felt guilty for the blood lust at first, to wanting to see some action outside of the movies. I think a lot of people get that feeling and it's the same one that escalates in to the horrifying things that human kind has done.

Maybe it just takes someone to speak up to snap others out of it. It's just one of the many complications of our dynamic human behavior.

As a whole I think it's very hard to study. Trying to understand one human brain is hard enough.

I'm interested in what people think about the involvement of alcohol as this was considered a major factor by the authorities in the Undie 500 riots. Police were called after fires were lit and fire engines weren't able to get to them due to the density of the crowd and apparently some bottle throwing. This then allowed riot police to show up and all of a sudden the whole crowd dynamic changed as everyone's psyche went from being a crowd to being a riot as "what else were we meant to think once they turned up with helmets and shields" (a quote from one of those arrested). The demographic is definitely a factor as in these riots it was virtually all students aged between 18-25.

Another interesting point is that mathematical algorithms are used by Fire engineers in buildings (to specify widths of corridors etc. for optimum evacuation times) and would be interesting to look at. They use assumptions about the way people behave which must be tied to some academic consensus about crowd mechanics. Perhaps they're simplified and don't consider the behavioural effects we're discussing as they would be difficult to define mathematically. I guess I'll have to ask someone about it...

Anyway a lot of good points people have raised and interesting reading but I'm with someone like Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker who believes behaviour is conditional. Therefore there's no such thing as a violent crowd or a suggestible crowd, only crowds that may have more of a tendency to behave a certain way but it still depends on the conditions.