What do you do when a mob brutally attacks someone in plain sight—and almost no one calls for help? Do you chalk it up to the bystander effect… or to a deeper societal numbness?
I taught these twin concepts in the classroom: psychological inertia in emergencies, and our collective numbing to violence. Hence the Cincinnati mob assault captured on video last month has stayed with me. Downtown, as a horrified bystander-hero named Holly—who bravely tried to intervene—was nearly killed, only one person out of a crowd of nearly 100 called 911. That isn’t just troubling—it’s a moral fever check:
Cincinnati Police Chief Theresa Theetge previously revealed that of the approximately 100 bystanders present for the fight, only one person called authorities to ask for help. “If somebody had called 911, then there’s no way that I would have needed to jump in,” Holly said. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing that I watched somebody die in front of me and I could have helped save them,” Holly told Fox News Digital. “So even though I’m enduring pain and possible issues [for the rest of my life], I still would do it again to protect someone and save their life.”
I invite you to read that entire August 7 article, even though you’ll want to remember it is a Mockingbird Yahoo piece.
So I ask you: was this simply the Bystander Effect—where everyone assumes someone else will act—or is it something darker: a culture so overstimulated we’ve lost our capacity for empathy?
According to social psychology, individuals are more likely to act alone—but in a group, responsibility is diluted. Add social media, and the urge to record kills the impulse to intervene. But when someone like Holly intervenes anyway—with all the cost—what does the urge to film say about us?
How many laughs and likes does it take before brutal violence becomes entertainment and “content”?
I guess it would be exactly that for anyone doing the filming. Clearly it wasn’t for Holly.
This is where the desensitization comes in. When audiences see brutality so often it barely nags the conscience, when electronic screens have replaced person-to-person interaction, the emotional alarm system fails. We’ve become spectators–scrolling past horror for the sake of staying in our lane, or something.
We’ve become oblivious to Reality, is what it is.
And we think elections every two years are going to fix things. How absurd are we exactly?
Between the drive to film and the lust for electronic validation, modern “bystanders” often choose content creation over the gift of simply being a good human. The result? Violence goes viral–while empathy fails to do the same.
So again, what is America revealing in a microcosm like this?
Is this a case of psychological bystander inertia, or mass numbness to the horror of evil?
Maybe that’s not a useful distinction, one that skirts around the root problem. And can we even differentiate between psychological paralysis and moral failure anyway? Because when a life hangs in the balance, “I thought someone else would help” and “I don’t care” lead to the same tragic outcome–
No one moves.
The challenge now isn’t naming the effect–it’s confronting it.
To snap the cycle, we need more than policy promises. We need more than trust in yet another rigged election. We need more than politicians using tragedies like this for a platform.
In fact we don’t need any of that. What makes anyone believe any of it will solve anything?
What we need is moral accountability at the soul level. We need a shift from watching horror as content to responding to it as crisis because that’s what Christ commands us to do.
We need our heart back.
We need our God back.
But none of that will happen as long as we keep Christ on the sidelines.
So in the end, whether it’s the Bystander Effect or collective desensitization doesn’t matter.
What matters is if we’ll act when the next person is being crucified in the street, or if we’ll just keep liking.