Social media makes it more than just a fight between two women on a Muni bus in San Francisco (my thoughts on this whole crazy situation)

Posted By Hup | October 8, 2009

beavis-and-butt-head-fightingToday one of my co-workers IM’d me a video of two women that got into a fight on a Muni bus here in San Francisco yesterday morning. It’s funny because when I saw this video just a couple of hours ago I started wondering how long it would take before it took off virally through the interwebs. It has all of the elements of viral video gold: violence, undercover cams, no one helping out and to top it off some nice racial tension as one of the women in the video is Asian and one is African American. Put all of these together along with today’s connective technology and you get more than just another fight on a bus (yeah, it happens all the time), you get a newsworthy topic that will be seen by way more people than who were riding on that bus yesterday morning.

Check out the video below or over here on YouTube and then read some of my comments below to see what I think about this whole user-generated content fueled, crazy mess.

First, here is the original video that was shot:

Yeah, it was a pretty wild scene, but probably nothing that most of the people who were riding that day haven’t seen before. Even if you watch the video you see that the reason that the guy shooting the video didn’t want to break it up was because he was assaulted on the same bus just a couple weeks before.

Here are a few things that I have noticed thought about and picked up on since I first saw this video today:

  1. The video was only watched just over 1,000 times when I saw it around 4:30pm today and now at 7:30pm it’s been viewed over 111,000 times. Yeah, crazy news travels fast.
  2. It’s amazing that all of the people that were standing around these two women didn’t break this thing up way before it got to the point where they started throwing fists. Coming from Indiana, this is what blows me away about a big city. No one is willing to step out of their comfort zone to say hello, to help someone out or in this case to break up a fight.
  3. Just a couple of days ago I was talking to someone about Muni and they told me that Asian women are very particular about how they should be given an open seat if there’s one available and how any younger Asian people always get up and give up their seat when older Asians need somewhere to sit down. I guess they were right.
  4. This video was uploaded by a new iPhone 3Gs that had video, which shows you just how much more video is going to be uploaded now that they’re video capable (and how most people won’t even know that they’re being recorded). Big brother is definitely watching now.
  5. The video is already being teased for the 11 o’clock news here in San Francisco and it’s also already on their websites. Yeah, that was quick.
  6. The video has already been re-uploaded and translated so that we can all know what the Asian woman is saying the entire time. That particular video has already been viewed over 20,000 times. If you want to know what really was being said, check it out below or over here on YouTube.

All of this in just a matter of hours and from a guy with an iPhone. Pretty wild, huh?

Filed Under san francisco, video

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    3 Talkies! to “Social media makes it more than just a fight between two women on a Muni bus in San Francisco (my thoughts on this whole crazy situation)”

    1. Maddie on October 8th, 2009 8:29 pm

      This is a psychological phenomenon known as bystander apathy. It is certainly more prevalent in big cities, but it’s a part of human nature.

      See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_apathy

    2. Ringa on October 9th, 2009 6:39 pm

      They were fighting over Hup. He’s a dish ;-)

    3. Please remember, you’re rarely ever NOT on camera anymore (so please put away your gun) : Hup and Steph on December 21st, 2009 10:41 am

      [...] Hey, that’s not a snowball….no fair! [...]

    What do you want to tell us, hmmm?