It gets crowded at Disneyland, and of course I’d prefer less crowded. But it’s a happy crowd. So, I guess it annoys and bothers me a bit, but I dont hate it. It’s not a phobia.
Crowds are the reason flamethrowers were invented. Still if I have a good reason to be in one I’ll grin and bare it.
For me it’s a combination of the noise, the chaos, the interaction level, and the sense that I cannot get away. All of these are very abrasive to me. I can shut it out for a time, but eventually I will feel as though I’ve been tied down and attacked by hundreds of screaming rats. I’ve found that the experience of absolute sensory overwhelm is almost impossible for regular normal people to grasp.
It’s gotten a lot worse as I’ve gotten older.
To quote, well, you, true that! There are signs that it’s getting better, sometimes. Standing in line for train tickets is usually pretty orderly, at least where I go. One time when queuing to board a flight, someone actually reprimanded a line cutter! Heck, someone actually reprimanded me once, but they didn’t understand I was in the Elite Plus line.
I’m an introvert that likes crowds, strange I know.
Hate 'em. The crowd itself I don’t really mind–being on a crowded train, for instance. It’s the hive-mind atmosphere associated with many crowds, such as at sports arenas, religious events, protests, and so on. The sense that there is a “will of the crowd” over and above the behavior of the individuals is fairly frightening in a crowded environment, and reminds me of all the worst aspects of humanity.
Not that strange to enjoy crowd anonymity (or big city anonymity) as an introverted person. I don’t seek it out anymore, but I always liked going to concerts alone during my student days.
You said it much better than I could. My desire to be alone, and distaste for people even in small groups is probably a borderline disorder. When I see those pictures of huge crowds on New York sidewalks it causes a shudder of revulsion. To me, a setting like that is a vision of hell. Statistically, about 8-10% of the population are convicted felons, so a crowd that size (linked pic) likely contains hundreds of dangerous people. And as we’ve seen countless times during blackouts, riots, and other disasters, the veneer of civilization is frighteningly thin. Having been a victim of this, I know for a fact that the vicious and lawless will turn on you instantly once they sense anonymity or freedom from arrest.
Large venues with large crowds gives me a mild case of vertigo.
Which can be problematic when you are walking down a steep case of cement stairs with no handrail.
Rock concert crowd good…any other crowd bad. At least if I’m stuck in a crowd at a gig, I’m there for some entertainment and I know what I’m getting out of it. Other crowds don’t do anything for me!
I used to love crowds, especially concerts. These days I’m really uncomfortable if I’m alone but if I have my daughters with me it’s not really bad.
Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
Nope.
The less, the merrier.
mmm
It’s actually everybody else that worries me more. The criminal type is there anyway, crowds or no. But everybody else is still susceptible to just “going with the crowd”, even people who are completely non-violent in day-to-day life.
People deny that that they’re susceptible to this kind of behavior, but we know from the Stanford Prison Experiment and others that it’s just not true on average. It’s easy to turn normal people into monsters under the right conditions.
Occasionally I hear people talking positively about getting lost in a crowd or feeling the energy of the crowd or the like. I see this as people willingly turning off their brain’s executive functions to get this feeling and the corresponding loss of identity. I think part of the popularity of concerts and sports is that they’re a relatively safe venue for achieving the feeling, and so people seek them out for that reason. But of course crowds are fickle and they can turn violent easily no matter how innocuous the beginning.