Folk Doing the Same Thing Doesn't Mean They Have a Common Purpose?

In the days since the death of Elizabeth II, the UK's newspapers and TV channels have been wall-to-wall with images of crowds lining routes or forming 5 mile long queue's to file past her coffin. Commentators uniformly explain this as people all 'wishing to pay their respects'. Stephen Reicher (St Andrews University), an expert of crowd behaviour, says this interpretation is much too simplistic (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/15/crowd-behaviour-london-mourning-queen). Some people do feel an affinity with the late Queen and might be mourning her. Others want to be 'part of history' and/or to remember their own dead family members on this very public ocassion. Some want to see and be seen (they apparently look for themselves later, on surprisingly popular, recorded videolink). Others simply want to gawp. Reicher thinks the events surrounding the funeral are being deliberately exploited and interpreted to push a viewpoint. I'm doing the Swansea Bay 10k this coming Sunday. Not all the runners will be covering the distance for the same reason. Nobody, however, has a vested interest in describing us as 'lemmings'.