An innocent photobomb, and now? A 23-year-old woman is dead.

Kim Pham was 23 years old.

She was a talented writer who had recently graduated from college. One day, she hoped to become a talk show host.

But last Tuesday, three days after she was beaten in a fight outside a nightclub in California, her family made the heartbreaking decision to turn off her life support.

It’s understood that Pham may have been attacked because she accidentally photobombed a group of youths who were posing for a shot near The Crosby lounge in Santa Ana in the early hours on Saturday morning. (For those who don’t know what a photobomb is, it’s where a person intentionally or accidentally appears in a picture right before it is taken).

Pham was unconscious on the ground when police arrived and never regained consciousness.

This from the LA Times:

As they waited in line outside, an argument broke out between Pham’s friends and another group. Police had few details but said the two groups did not know each other and that Pham was hit and stomped in the melee. An eight-second video of the incident shows one person kicking at something on the ground as a crowd gathers.

And that’s where this story becomes even more tragic. Because while Pham was lying on the ground being beaten senseless by a bunch of thugs, people around her stood around and watched.

Instead of stepping in to help the poor woman, they stood on the footpath and did nothing.

And instead of acting like heroes, they instead became leering spectators; some even record the incident on their smart phones.

The bystander effect is something that was highlighted by Mamamia a few years back when a Queensland mum was swept away by flood waters during the 2012 floods. As Jane Sheahan desperately clung to objects she could while rescuers made their way towards her, a group of bystanders stood by with their smart phones and filmed the entire even as it unfolded.

At the time, Mamamia News Editor Rick Morton wrote:

The issue is this: what compels anyone to film someone’s demise?

This isn’t just the bystander problem anymore. This is Bystander 2.0. The apathy of a digital generation whose phones are an extension of their body. Malcolm Gladwell explained the bystander problem as a passive response to an immediate problem. ‘

Oh, somebody else will help out. There’s plenty of people around’. That’s it in a nutshell. But this? This requires engagement with the tragedy beyond just hearing it or seeing it with your own ears and eyes.

These witnesses had to pull out their phones. Select the camera function. Press record.

Of course we will never know if those onlookers’ help would saved Jane Sheahan or Kim Pham. But at least it would have been comfort for the families of both women to know that they had tried.

US website Elite Daily – where Pham worked as a contributor – described them phenomenon further writing that bystanders are not just avoiding involvement when they stand back and film an incident but rather, they are “directly involving themselves in the incident, but not doing anything to stop it”.

They wrote:

It’s discouraging to think that we have become a culture that is more likely to record an incident, such as the beating of Kim Pham, rather than make any effort to prevent the worst possible outcome. But after all, we are a generation that chooses to stare emotionlessly through a screen. If the person next to you started dancing, you would probably instinctively reach for your phone.

If you turned around to notice a beautiful sunset, your hand would probably find it’s way to your pocket while you fumbled for the camera icon. And if a 23-year-old were being mercilessly beaten on the street, too many of us would once again reach for our phones, perhaps excited by the thought of uploading it online later on, or texting it to a friend.

That doesn’t make us bad people, just products of a society that prides itself on capturing a moment and measuring its worthiness by the amount of likes and shares it receives on Facebook or other forms of social media.

So, as Elite Daily suggests, let’s learn from what happened to Kim Pham. “With her unfortunate passing it’s imperative that we reflect on what our actions really say when we don’t act at all,” they wrote.

Note: The footage of Pham being beaten has helped police identify suspects and Pham’s parents made the decision to donate her organs after they turned off her life support.