I was there...from just before the game ended at around 8 pm until just before it got dark at around 9.30 pm (note that most of the pictures were taken just at the end of the game when there was still full early evening light.
I most certainly am not saying that it was just some good old boys and girls having a good time...and I most certainly would not condone the (media induced self-serving) jingoism or the violence -- although it should be put in perspective of probably somewhat similar levels of violence occuring on a typical summer Saturday night in the same area (but without the car burning and looting--much higher proportion and visibility of police on a typical Saturday night... What was different (and maybe you had to be there) was the omni-presence of cameras, people taking pictures, and people performing for people (including themselves) taking pictures. I've never seen anything like it at any public event I've ever attended in the past. Also, the numbers of women present, performing, taking pictures with guys or in groups of other women... My wife was on a bus coming into town just as the game started and reports hearing a couple of young women asking to be let off "where the chaos is" (and I saw an independent account of another person overhearing essentially the same remark from another group of young women. Finally, the cheeriness of the whole thing... Much different from a demo or even a concert where there is a specific target for attention and activity--here folks were just milling around, not doing much except posing barefaced in front of or with whatever seemed to be at hand--which in a number of instances were acts of vandalism--as I think can be seen from most of the daytime pictures. The "riot" in Vancouver to my mind is a signal that the (still) largely privileged young people in N Am, along with the young folks (and others) demonstrating in the Middle East and elsewhere are disengaged from an older paradigm of actions/consequences (posing with faces exposed for widely distributed pictures committing criminal acts). If I was pressed to answer I would argue that the new paradigm is perhaps something similar to the "we are no longer afraid" (strength in social networked numbers) paradigm of the young people in the Middle East but this time without any evident political content. M -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Paul Hertz Sent: Friday, June 17, 2011 10:42 AM To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Riot as Performance Art 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 _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
