Fight! Fight! Fight!
That monosyllabic word used to send kids scurrying from all corners of the playground, craning to see whose skull was about to be deployed as a football. These days, however, we’re a more advanced society – which is why we announce our fights using hashtags.
When a full-scale riot kicked off in Glasgow last Thursday, it seemed like just another run-of-the-mill rumble. After all, when Weegie-on-Weegie violence is perpetrated, the usual culprits are – that’s right – Weegies. Not Facebook or Twitter.
According to Strathclyde Police however, the blame for the ruckus falls squarely on the internet’s shoulders. As the Daily Record reports, “Police suspect that the mob organised the melee using social media such as Facebook and Twitter – where hashtags such as #riot are used to identify subjects.”
So let’s get this straight: a bunch of pissed freshers spill out of a club at 4am, start spontaneously brawling and the police want to blame Twitter?
Seems legit.
Glancing over the footage below, one could be forgiven for thinking that the participants were too busy assaulting passing motorists to whip out their smartphones, fire up Twitter and get #riot trending within the G1 postcode, but hey, I’m just a social media blogger – what would I know about the workings of Twitter?
Back in the good old days, pre-social media, people didn’t need hashtags to cause mindless violence: they just smashed shit up and then relived the memories later – in their heads. From the cells.
These days, sadly, you can’t even casually slay a hooker without someone filming it on their iPhone and YouTubing the spaghetti for the world to fap over.
This is how freshers week is celebrated in the States; in Scotland they just break stuff.
While pigs and politicians were quick to condemn the violence, others have been reluctant to judge. As one YouTube commenter put it “None of you bawbags ever been young and pissed? great laugh, no cunt looks like they got hurt… ooo yeah eh eh.”
Here at Ed Uncovered, we can’t condone such feral behaviour because, well, it’s wrong, and because people and property were damaged, but fuck it: yeah we loled. Inside, we loled hard until a bit of wee came out. At least in Glasgow they know how to riot. Here in Edinburgh, the freshers are too busy quaffing raspberry Bulmers and eating frozen yoghurt to embark on social media-fuelled crime sprees. Wankers.
The footage starts four minutes in, because this is the internet where the average attention span is shorter than a micro-penis. That said, feel free to jump back to the start if you’d like to enjoy the full feature length riot over a tub of popcorn. For those who find tl;dr less an abbreviation and more a way of life, the highlights from the video commentary are printed below.
Happy viewing, and remember kids: rioting’s bad, m’kay?
0:45: After a bunch of rioters stomp on a car roof, a man gets driven down Queen Street clinging to the bonnet. Roflcopter.
0:58 “His car’s fucking dented…to fuck. Glaswegians are mental, aren’t they?” – A Glaswegian.
4:42 “Look at the hard man getting out the Ford car. Mate, there’s about fuckin’ 300 people out there. Get back in your car you fanny.”
8:00 “Look, you’re getting lifted, walk of shame son. Your mother will be very disheartened, ya wee rogue bastard.”
8:34 “What are the all bouncers doin’ – just sitting cupping their nuts? Sitting being little bitches, as per. ‘Sorry mate, I just get paid to look hard, not do anything.’”
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