Ever since we entered “the technology age” it has become increasingly apparent that the youth will always be ten steps ahead of the last generation. Never has there been a better example than last week, when hundreds of young people made a pre-emptive strike by practicing large scale smoke signals and communicating through semantically charged street theatre even before David Cameron publicly announced the possibility of a social media crackdown. Never mind the fact that Iran and Libya have already proved the futility of attempting to block modern communications and that David Cameron himself declared all that freedom of speech and the internet were “the entitlement of people everywhere; of people in Tahrir Square as much as Trafalgar Square” (although perhaps he meant this in the reverse of the sense we took it at the time) these admirable youngsters have taken things a step further by showing that they are prepared to organise themselves even if an EMP takes out all the electrical appliances in England.
For example, setting fire to car generates a particularly thick black plume that warns others that petrol has become too expensive to make personal car ownership a reasonable expectation. Stripping random people naked not only warns us about incoming hot weather (or possibly just warmth from nearby fires) but it suggests a recommendation for the removal of an unnatural, puritan modesty as forceful as its imposition; the deeper symbolic meaning suggesting that none of us should be ashamed of whom we are. Stealing large screen televisions is an outcry against our wasteful use of energy and its role to play in global warming; by hiding and stock piling these items Britain’s looters hope to save the planet. Or at the very least counter balance the green house effect of burning all those cars.
Dr. King is famously quoted as having said that the “riot is the language of the unheard”. Whilst throughout history acts of mass public disobedience have been read as powerful denouncements of oppressive regimes and demonstrations of a community’s refusal to accept injustice, I hope he’d agree that in any theoretical language the ransacking and burning a small local grocery store is a clear media attention grabbing method of informing the nation that you are a cunt.