7. Eight people treated for stab wounds. Were either of you there?
I wasn't, but your sanguine view of events hardly seems to be borne out by some of the reporting, including that from sources like the progressive TPM blog: http://media.talkingpointsmemo.com/slideshow/vancouver-riots?ref=fpblg . I suggest there was provocation from the police and from a few thugs taking the opportunity to brawl && the crowd swayed by events. When the crowd destroys property, the police are designed to intervene (it's a social priority). Not a good mix. Sure, people were performing for the camera. There is a networked culture that makes these events different. The same was probably true of "celebrations" of bin Laden's death, people performing what they thought were culturally endorsable scenes for instant documentation. Doesn't make the jingoism any less disturbing nor the burning cars and injured people in Vancouver just an over-the-top good time. Coyotes don't do this: to equate their "running wild" with that of humans seems a kind of willful romanticism grafted onto a rhetorical figure. But maybe that's not the intention. Even if, as a matter of degree, the merry trashing of Vancouver should not be called a "riot," the violence in riots is no less performed. Participants have described riots as parties from way back before the net. The issue of who gets to decide what to call "uncontrolled crowd events" strikes me as a more productive inquiry than casting them as one thing or another. -- Paul
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