This troper has seen a ''biiiiiiig'' group of people inside a hallway at school when there was a fight going on at school. They didn't chant "Fight, fight, fight!" or anything...they just stood there. One person told a teacher. Guess what? The teacher did nothing - and then another teacher came over and yelled at ''all of us'' for doing ''nothing'' about the behaviour. However, it is important to note that this is in the same town as the Preston Jr. High school - you know, the Jr. High where several kids made plans to shoot up a bunch of seventh graders and the ''girls who told the authorities'' were the bad girls. Naturally, nobody wants to be called a "tattletale", do they?

There's actually a psychological explanation for this... they call it the bystander effect. It happens A LOT.

PsychoBabble. It's just an excuse for sucking as a human being.

Trust me on this, the chances are, if you are in the same situation, you would do the same.

Some of my friends took an XBOX to [=McDonalds=], set it up, and played COD 6 for three hours before anyone notice.

I would consider that as RefugeInAudacity. CrazyAwesome, by the way.

Dundee. 2007. Less than 100yds from the police station. Seven blokes were assaulting two young women, and whipping them with large pointy belt buckles. In full view of no less than ''three'' blocks of flats. The response was a very small number of complaints about the noise and threats of calling the police, until a small group of drunken geeks stumbled upon the scene during a pub crawl. The lesson? 1) Most people don't care enough to help. 2) Those that don't care what others think/care enough to help are probably too inebriated to be much help. 3) Plastic lightsabers are no use against whippy/flail-like weapons.

I know a girl who was being bullied by someone a lot bigger than her, and was hit in the face on a busy street, and not one person stopped to help.

I nearly got robbed once. I was commuting home when a bunch of annoying people (pickpockets) started amiably chatting with me (they pointed something out and I didn't want to be rude). They almost got me (I actually ended up lampshading the possibility while in conversation; why I didn't act on my suspicions was beyond me). Nobody called my attention to it, except maybe for this old lady who tried to warn me and nudged them enough to drop the item that they were trying to steal from me. The pickpockets hit her hard on the head as they fled.