Scrolling through YouTube, I came across this video called “Jealous boyfriend harasses bartender girlfriend at work”. Bored, I clicked on the video and to my surprise, the video was actually entertaining. A woman was bartending at this bar, and her controlling boyfriend was sitting at the bar with her. Throughout the entire episode, he continued to harass her at work for the most arbitrary situations such as taking a guys order, and ‘flirting’ with a customer. In reality, she was just talking to a customer and being friendly, which is part of the job as anyone who works in a bar, restaurant or store. He then escalated and asked to see her phone to see if she was ‘hiding’ anything and told her to pull up her shirt because it was too revealing, all while she was still at work, and it was in public.
Luckily, they were both just actors. However, the situation was simple enough to be replicated in real life, and I am sure it has been multiple times. The show, What Would You Do, creates controversial scenarios with actors, and hidden cameras to see how random, unsuspecting people react to various moral and ethical dilemmas that come across in everyday life.
The show rolls a couple of times per scenario to catch different people at the bar to see the reactions of various groups of people. In the first take of the scene, the boyfriend asks his girlfriend if she's “flirting with that guy”. The guy says “excuse me?” and then another woman rolls her eyes and goes “oh, here we go”. Right from the start, the boyfriend has caught the attention of two people at the bar. The boyfriend continues to harass his girlfriend and then asks to see her phone. And then the woman from before who noticed the situation interjects. She goes up to the boyfriend and asks “can you please stop? You’re being rude and I’d like you to stop. You’re making me very upset, and you’re making her upset...that’s my last please”. This was just the first example of people standing up for the girlfriend. Left and right men and women either told her “you could do better” or told the boyfriend to stop harassing the woman and leave.
Watching this show makes me happy because it is relieving to see people stick up for strangers and to support one another. This show tests the bystander effect, and it is good to see people breaking the stereotype of people not helping when others are around. When’s the last time you stepped out of the role of being a bystander and helped someone?
Link to Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fi94Vqcahw
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I've been watching WWYD since middle school, always fascinated to see what people do in these uncomfortable situations. I sometimes even picture what me myself would do in these situations. The results of this show the truth to the bystander effect and even shows the reasons why people choose to or not to stand up for someone else. This show also inspires me to learn to stand up for someone when I come across situations like these.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting post, I think I watched a couple episodes of WWYD in AP Psych and it was surprising to see people's reactions. The incident in this WWYD episode is something some of my friends experience on the daily, they have customers who think if they're being nice to them that they must like them and they try to further something that doesn't exist. They end up feeling extremely uncomfortable while just trying to do their job and people rarely step in.
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