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Comment by raptrex | Hacker News Reader

"Nobody went to his aid at the very beginning when he first collapsed -- that just perplexed me beyond reason," USC senior Alastair Fairbanks said. "Instead, I saw students texting and updating their Twitter statuses. It was just all a very bizarre evening."

I fear for the future.

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It sounds horrid, but it's not entirely a new phenomenon. In First Aid training, I was taught never to yell "someone call an ambulance" when assisting a victim because people will just stand there like lemons looking at you. Instead, you are supposed to pick someone at random in the crowd, look them in the eye and yell "you, there, tall guy in the red shirt - call an ambulance" - and the person will jump right to it, or find someone who can.

That said, I agree that sitting around doing nothing but also recording the event does raise the unpleasantness of it.

I think you're jumping to conclusions. More likely people thought it was part of an act. Here's a comment from that page to support my conjecture:

I was there. Regarding the point of nobody helping him at first, it wasn't immediately clear that it wasn't part of the act.

And here's another one:

The reason as to why nobody went up to help him the first time is because everyone thought it was part of his act. Nobody had any idea that he had fainted. Everyone was just dumbfounded by what had happened and thought it was an odd twist to his show.

The second time around, when people did realize what was going on, those who planned the event rushed to the stage to help him. Food was brought backstage and his manager, agent, and local emergency medical services were immediately contacted.

This nonsense about nobody doing anything is absurd. And the commentary by others on social networking sites accusing staff and event planners of not acting is absolutely baseless. Staff were backstage to monitor and assist in his recuperation from the second he stepped behind the curtains.

Just clarifying.

As icegreentea said above, many comments from audience members present things somewhat differently. For example:

"When he first collapsed he was talking about gravity, and the audience believed it was part of his act. The instant he began wavering and fainted a second time he was instantly aided and given a chair and a water bottle."

Most likely it's because he was only out for a few seconds. People fall down all the time, so that's a few seconds of waiting just to see if something is actually wrong or if it's just an odd occurrence. Add a couple more seconds to decide the appropriate course of action, and by the time you're going to respond, Nye is back on his feet acting like everything is fine.

More disturbing to me is that nobody realized during the speech that he was obviously having a stroke.

Indeed, the whole description was very unnerving. It appears the fellow was having a stroke and nobody was inclined to do anything about it. Scary.

This is actually a well known phenomenon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect). It's why, in a crisis, you should always single people out to do tasks instead of saying "someone do this". Otherwise everyone will just assume that someone else will do it.

No. An entertaining was doing something people assumed was part of his act. Their are also conflicting reports, both here and in the actual comments of the article.

Suffice it to say, it's still too early to know what was going on. But it wasn't just some guy having a stroke and no one doing anything.

When we studying group psychology the first thing my professor said was, "You're about to loose a bit of confidence in humanity" basically what i took away from it, if i'm in a situation where I need help, and there's a group of people around you should "single" a person out.

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