London Riots, Media Narratives, "Scum"

I used to trust the media to tell me the truth, tell us the truth

But now I see the payoffs everywhere I look

Who do you trust when everyone's a crook?

Revolution calling...

--Queensrÿche, “Revolution Calling”

First of all, that is an awesome song off a seriously awesome record. Second of all, it is some cold hard TRUTH.

One of the things I love about social media is its ability to tell us what's really going on. The more I engage with the blogosphere, the more I understand how mainstream news sources are all skewed to a certain framework. It's not a great conspiracy; it's not even necessarily a bad thing – it's just that every part of the media has an agenda. Value-neutral example: earlier this year, when all the US news sources I follow were glued to the protests in Wisconsin, the only US-related item in the BBC evening news was coverage of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. That's because the BBC's agenda is to be the British Broadcasting Corporation, so it skews Britain-centric. What's important is to be aware of the skews and biases in the media you consume – and, ideally, to vary your news media diet enough that you can piece together a picture of the world by seeing it from different angles.

What's astonishing to me is how many people I know are uncritically consuming the mainstream media narrative of the London riots.

David Cameron has called them “criminality, pure and simple” and promised a tough response. An awful lot of people are being very vocal about their agreement with his rhetoric and his tactics.

For days now my Facebook feed has been flooded with snarling, reactionary calls for the protestors' blood. When I posted a request for people not to use the nasty, dehumanizing, highly prevalent term “scum”, I got a wealth of “but they ARE scum!” responses.

Now, I joined Facebook when I started university, so my Facebook friends are primarily people who are attending or have recently attended one of the world's highest-ranked universities – which is a nice way of saying that my friends are predominantly white and middle-class. And, as much as it sickens but doesn't really surprise me to see the awful violence spreading across England, I'm sickened but unsurprised to the same degree to see my Facebook friends spew hatred and violent rhetoric about the rioters.

I don't condone the violence. Obviously. But the braying self-righteousness of these responses is indicative of people who don't want to try to understand. They're not prepared to engage with the complexities at hand. They're not willing to examine the socioeconomic and political contributing factors. It seems to me that they just want to point the finger at looters and arsonists, declare their moral outrage, and sit back feeling smug that they would never act like those scum.

Well, how the fuck do you know that?

Youth unemployment is over 20%. Not everyone can get into a top university and rely on the mater and pater to support them financially (speaking, I hasten to add, as one who did and is doing exactly that). Not everyone can broadly trust the police to not kill them. Not everyone is white and middle-class. Who the hell are you to judge people “scum” when you haven't even tried to understand where they're coming from?

To you, it's just teenage hooligans embracing their greed and lust for violence. To you, it's just mindless criminality. Why not consider the decades of disenfranchisement and poverty, the long-term unemployment and feelings of hopelessness? Do those not factor in at all?

Read this article. Read the comments on this Shakesville piece. Try thinking critically about the narrative spoonfed you by the media-political complex. And chew on this for a second:

Though I'm a peace-loving, Jesus-loving, violence-condemning hippie radical of the far left, it's not the riots that are making me despair for humankind. It's you.

"Hitler shud hav finished em"

I wasn't going to write this post.

I was going to write a nice jolly light-hearted piece on my Top Five Films Of 2011 So Far. Maybe I still will.

But I just checked my Facebook news feed, and I saw that my friend S had linked to an article entitled “Israel killed 1,335 Palestinian kids”. One of S's friends, whom I do not know, commented on her link:

“Adolf Hitler shud hav jus finished em”.

S “liked” this comment.

S, I should point out, is not really a friend. We were at school together about twelve years ago, and it's been a decade since we were last on the same continent, let alone saw each other.

But it's still weird to see a sentiment like this coming from somebody I know.

We all know that the anonymity of the internet fosters the worst in people. We've all seen horrible, awful, hateful words on message boards and comment sections. The anonymity of these words makes it almost as easy to dismiss them as it is to write them.

When it's somebody you know, though; when it's somebody you used to play sports with, somebody with whom you once spent a happy afternoon exploring for secret pathways in the backyard – well, that's an altogether different experience.

Many of Israel's actions have been and are appalling, and the West's willingness to let them slide is even more egregious. Much as I loved the time I spent in Israel, whitewashing Israel's atrocities is mendacious and wicked. But... “Hitler shud hav finished em”?

Really, you're going there?

Maybe it's because I'm one of em who Hitler shud hav finished, but it seems to me you can be sickened at the thought of children being murdered without wishing 13 million people dead. In fact, it seems to me that, if you're sickened at the thought of children being murdered, wishing people dead (children included) is an unsustainable contradiction.

Like I said, I know the same sentiment is expressed daily all across the internet. Whoever you are, you can find a community of people online wishing for your death. I know I should be used to it. It's just that this time, it feels more personal.

"Facebook-rape" No More!

We've all done it: your friend forgets to log out of Facebook and leaves you unsupervised, and within moments you are declaring to all the internet your friend's unusual sexual predilections or Justin Bieber fandom. I myself did it to a good friend just a few hours ago. It was, and is, very funny.

What's not so funny is the popular name for this practice: “Facebook-rape”, or “frape” for short. People, this is not a cool thing to say. I know that if I tell you this kind of language trivializes rape and perpetuates rape culture, some of you will roll your eyes and tell me to get a sense of humor; but spare a thought for this statistic:

One in six women have been sexually assaulted.

One in six.

Do you know more than five women? Then, statistically, one of them has been sexually assaulted. Your friends and relatives are not exempt. You may not be aware of it, but you know people who have been raped.

And it's just possible that, when you are explaining your sudden linkspam to Justin Bieber fanvids, one of them will see the word “frape” and be triggered into reliving the worst thing that ever happened to them.

I agree that “I left Facebook logged in and unattended, and one of my joker friends posted these things under my name” is a little long-winded, so, as an alternative, I propose that we refer to this phenomenon as “Facebook-pranking” – “franking” for short.

It's short, it's snappy, and it just might spare someone a traumatic flashback. If we change our language, we might change people's thinking, and our culture might stop seeing sexual assault as something to laugh about.

Don't frape your friends. Frank them.