[jeroen94704]

It may be partly "somebody else will fix this", but also largely "is this really what it seems"? It could be a genuine robbery, or a piece of improv street theatre, or a sociology experiment. And since nobody else is responding, maybe they see something I don't.

As an aside, apparently she pretty much did what you suggest (which is the standard advice to deal with the bystander effect) in that she asked one particular bystander to help her, but even that didn't work.

[blueskin_]

>It could be a genuine robbery, or a piece of improv street theatre, or a sociology experiment.

If so, irresponsible experiment/theatre, and they have only themselves to blame if someone did get tripped/punched/rugby tackled/hit with martial arts moves/arrested. The fact that nobody did any of those is the main problem - if someone did, many people would have felt more confident too, both at not being caught up in police issues around it, but also via a safety in numbers instinct.

[TheZenPsycho]

Yeah I'm a bit confused by that part. She got the guy's attention but didn't really say what happened with him after that.

[loup-vaillant]

The "is this really what it seems?" part is mostly a rationalization. It's hard to feel the full force of shame, when you have an easy escape like this.