“You become one with the crowd,” one Astroworld attendee told The New York Times, referring to the physical reality that a tightly packed audience can severely constrict movement. A variety of factors can create the conditions for such crushes. Astroworld’s “festival-style” layout, with no assigned seating, is understood to be a potentially dangerous configuration even though it has become popular because it accommodates more attendees. Earlier in the day, hundreds of people broke through the gates, likely contributing to a head count exceeding the 50,000 tickets sold and creating a greater density than expected…

A sense of mayhem is part of the fun of so much live music, but even the loudest musicians have been known to quiet things down when their followers get out of control. The history of rambunctious concerts is partly a history of artists setting norms and intervening—even Woodstock ’99 featured The Offspring’s Dexter Holland telling men to stop groping female crowd surfers. On Friday, Scott stopped the show momentarily when he spotted someone who needed assistance and when he noticed an ambulance in the crowd. But he quickly resumed both times, and kept performing for nearly 40 minutes after city officials declared a “mass casualty event.” At one point, he even chided the crowd, “Who asked me to stop?” before launching back into the music…

It is common to view crowds in that manner—as a big “nobody,” all undifferentiated bodies swaying as one. But the truth is that live-music audiences are temporary communities that are shaped by their circumstances and composed of people with free will. In the wrenching videos that have emerged from the ground at Astroworld, you see some heedless concertgoers climbing up on ambulances. You also see people helping the injured, pleading with concert staffers, and generally trying to raise alarm. In each case, individuals acted against the supposed single mind of the crowd.