6 crowd PHENOMENON
Some people in the crowd will probably attempt to act responsibly to call the police or stop the fight in some way.
Everyone in the crowd perhaps should be objective and morally responsible, but often are not.
Some may see the bottom girl as being weaker than they previously believed. They may lose respect for her. They may think that they can do disrespectful things to her since she can’t defend herself well, as evidenced by her loss of the fight.
The top girl has broken a previous social norm of respecting the bottom girl, and with that, allowed space for a new norm to surface: it is okay to hurt the bottom girl.
Alternatively, their respect for the top girl may rise because she has shown her power and what she is willing to do and the extent she will go to for sticking up for herself.
In these ways, the two girls fighting are attached to the surrounding crowd. Other types of attachment are discussed below.
Girls with low self-esteems may experience emotions vicariously through the dominant girl. In the past, they may have felt powerless against the bottom girl, threatened by her competitive beauty or talent, hurt by her actions and words. But when they see her dominated, they can envision her beneath them or that they are on top and in control at last.
At the least, they can envision the bottom girl as vulnerable and easily taken advantage of in this moment. They may spit at her, knowing she is too preoccupied to know where the spit came from. Or they may yell things at her that they wouldn't dare say at other times.
Guys with low self-esteems may also live vicariously through the dominant female. They can envision that they are on top. They may have repressed desires of dominating females. These feelings at last can be expressed secondhand through the girl on top.
Or the fact that the bottom girl is vulnerable may be seen as a step toward opportunity to take advantage of her, perhaps looking or taking pictures up her skirt, or at least allowing their imaginations to run wild with this girl's vulnerable position. Maybe they will try to make fun of her at a later time as an attempt to control her. This is really just an attempt to control their own feelings.
Dependent people can relate to the bottom girl. They have felt the same way, being dominated by people and life circumstances. Their hurt and anger over this powerlessness may be expressed at the top girl. They may yell at her and fight to get her off the bottom girl, despite the top girl simply wanting to end the fight by sitting on and controlling her enemy to stop fighting.
Some bystanders have been hurt in the past by a person being irresponsible, weak, indecisive, and ineffective.
Maybe they have an alcoholic parent with whom they can’t express their feelings, the parent being powerless against his addiction. As they watch the bottom girl’s weakness and ineffective struggling, they are reminded of their own parent struggling against addiction. They may transfer their angry feelings onto the bottom girl to feel empowered themselves. They might encourage the top girl to punch, control, and hurt the bottom girl more because they are so angry at their addicted parent’s weakness. Or they might physically help the top girl to sustain the pin or hurt the bottom girl.
We are all in daily struggles/conflicts in life in which we want to end up in the powerful position.
It is one of the cornerstones of good story writing: a conflict that escalates into a climax and resolution. As a novelist, I can vouch for this. People want this because it is relatable to their own struggles in their life. They can empathize, sink into the story, connect, get a little adrenaline rush, and maybe even heal a little and learn something.
The same is true in a fight.
This also explains that “unexplainable” phenomenon of gawking to observe a car crash on the freeway. People like a good conflict, a struggle between life and death, and an outcome. They want to see to process their own feelings.
Our own struggles may be to get social status, better jobs, better relationships, greater income, beauty, intelligence, compassion, physical health, strength, talent, independence, and power over our internal demons. It would be nice to just be dominant in these, winning, but often we fail to some degree because of a barrier that becomes a conflict.
It’s human nature to deny these feelings of failure to some degree as a way to protect ourselves. But whatever feelings are hidden cannot be released. Thus, many of us carry at least slight feelings of hurt and loss.
Simply watching a girl fight (or any sport for that matter), crowd members can displace these feelings onto the winner or loser as a means to feel more in control themselves.
Their feelings of powerlessness, hurt, and anger may be finally dealt with vicariously.
Recall some soccer games in which the crowd had inexplicably become violent to the players or referees.
This also explains serial killers actions to kill complete strangers. However, a serial killer’s denial is much more impenetrable in regards to his pain, and his pain is much greater and older than an average person’s. Yet the dynamic is the same: transferring old feelings onto a current situation to feel empowered.
Although this transference of feelings onto others may disturb some readers, it explains why even strangers become drawn into, excited about, and verbally involved in a girl fight. It allows the crowd members to come alive, feel more at one with themselves, and become pulled into the present moment because they are dealing with their own feelings—despite the displaced manner.
Who knew all these domination and submission dynamics, both inside and outside ourselves, could exist in girl fights?
But really that is the nature of a fight. A struggle between domination and submission.
This is the reason some people in the crowd exclaim, “It’s getting real!”
Being there in the moment, it is difficult to understand everything that transpires. Sometimes you will get caught up in your emotions. A number of psychological underlying forces occur simultaneously and so briefly that conscious awareness of them is difficult. But careful, objective mindfulness can be revealing.
Perhaps this book answers, at least in part, the dynamics of the struggle for dominance in girl fights.