Further to Zalm's comment...

I grew up in a small city where "bush" parties were all the rage... we were 15 and 16 going to those parties, kids driving trucks into the river, everyone trashed, remarkably no on was ever hurt. The essence of being a teenager hasn't changed, but the outlets for that energy and angst? I just don't get it. All I can say is I'm sooooo glad digital cameras didn't exist when I was that age.

There is no accountability

They've all seen Loose Change.
We now live in a post-legal society.
Get used to it.

wee riot

a fine picture of having no faith in anything,
no respect for self or others, totally new outlets for that energy and angst,and the hopelessness of their existance goes on and sooner than later ends in extinction.

not a "generation me" problem

"And a lot of bystanders either didn't know or didn't care that their presence made it more difficult for the police to move in and break up the riot."
It's hard to blame this on generation me when one of Tyee's authors has the same problem acknowledging exactly this, and writing on the Tyee about his participation in the riots.
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2011/06/16/AskForIt/

And yes, there were a lot of younger people in the riots, but I don't think that they were represented in a greater proportion in the riots than in the outdoor events overall. Younger audiences clearly tend to be at greater numbers in outdoor events such as this to start off.

@elbillug

This article isn't about blaming them for causing the riot or even the majority of the destruction, but examining why so many people (many of whom are part of the generation both Ms Cruickshank and I belong to) decided to stick around and watch first hand and document it, even though it's a dangerous place to be.

zalm

I'll help you understand this generation and maybe even make you feel good.

The young folks these days, of which I am a fading example, are actually way less cool than previous generations. This has been said before by other generations about their priors, but there is a difference here: you're not supposed to try so hard to impress others, as it makes you look like you actually care, and I think has, only until this generation, been universally looked down on as distinctly lame. Remember "don't be such a tryhard?" Generation Me is Generation Tryhard.

And it's a shame, as the youth are no longer as vital. More and more these kids look the same, act the same, youth subcultures slowly twisting into an indistinct socialized commercial media slurry, everybody riding everybody else's dick, afraid to stand out other than for social gain, chronically, shamelessly, moment-by-moment and on record seeking validation, from anyone willing to listen or watch, anyone in the world. It's actually really sad. Only this generation could have such a dorky riot.

The flipside to being part

The flipside to being part of social media is this instant notoriety, or at least a presence which can have negative consequences later on. But now that we're seeing the reactions to the notoriety, the name and shame reaction, I feel that we are inexorably moving toward a society in which the public becomes co-opted into a nascent police state, not through any nefarious means, not by some overarching plot or conspiracy, but through our own acceptance of surveillance and instant publishing of our own photos online. This ties into something else recently in the news, which is that a pollster found himself very wrong about the federal election, and that this led him to understand there is a vast difference between what young people may believe, and what they may do about their beliefs: in this case, they may have stated their preference for one political party over another, but they did not get out to vote.

How does this tie in to the riot and the online backlash against it? We are retreating from taking RESPONSIBILITY for our own governance. We are handing power that should remain with the people in to the hands of the few, whether those few are a political party or a police state. I'm not suggesting that Vancouver is at this point...yet. When a citizenry reacts to events, either by rioting or shaming, or when it espouses a political stance but doesn't vote, it risks handing control to the few.

@KHyslop

Understood. My point was that this 'clueness/disregard' for the riot as it was unfolding wasn't a generational thing. I think a percentage of the people downtown got caught up in it. What I'm not sure that if you break down by age the percentage differs that much (i.e. the age proportion in the riot was somewhat similar to the age proportion in the outdoor festivities prior to it).
Blame was the wrong word. I meant to say that it is hard to say that the riot was over-represented by a sub-group of the festivity participants, such as generation me.
Though to the point of your article, they were more intent on sharing this online, but only because that is their primary means of communication in the first place. And yes, a number of them are clueless to the privacy ramifications of it, but is that so different than how gossip got spread through schools/colleges in the past ? The only difference here is that there is an outsider group that gets a glimpse into this sharing but as many teens/young adults attest, they tend to be oblivious to the interest of 'older folks'. Some of those 'older folks' are policemen though... I think the tools are different, but the attitudes aren't that different than past generations (as Fii said: the real difference is the lack of digital cameras - not in the attitude that some/many of us have around this age).
So, should we try to convince the current generation that their attitude is irresponsible given the ramifications of their social contacts ? Good luck ! Every generation has tried to convince the next one of this - if for nothing else to come to terms with their actions at that age...

PS: it is always nice to see on the Tyee that authors participate in the discussion that comes with some of their articles...

yep!

that's social media for ya!
i'm a senior and i have to restrain myself from overdoing fb
i was watching So You Think You Can Dance on that hockey game night when CTV rudely interrupted with their Breaking News , and they did it twice,,, i posted the interruption as my status

Plus ca change.....

If you read commentaries from thousands of years ago, you find pretty much the same comments about young people.

I find it difficult to see that anything has changed from one generation to the next, except the context.

Maturity is a blessing and a curse, as is the reverse.

KHyslop,

To many of the young people in that crowd, the excitement overode the sense of danger... when you're young you feel like nothing can hurt you- don't you? You should. It's one of the best things about being a teen! You're indestructible. The documentation was bizarre, but as Elbillug points out, "that is their primary means of communication in the first place". It just makes me wonder sometimes, if people are missing out on DOING things because they are so focused on documenting things. Pictures, pictures, pictures (not re: the riot, but in general). Just LIVE. It still happened if you don't have a photo of it.

Never mnd the riots; what about the Surrey Six?

Yet another RCMP scandal; how many more will it take to make British Columbians realise that their RCMP are crooks themselves? with this kind of story breaking weekly, is it any wonder that the youth have no respect for them? How many more people have to die at their hands before they are DISBANDED?

"RCMP officer's alleged girlfriend pregnant: sources

Last Updated: Thursday, January 28, 2010 | 8:29 PM PT

CBC News: Surrey Six allegation lowers RCMP morale. RCMP officer reassigned from Surrey 6 slayings. Dennis Karbovanec sentenced to life.

Photos of an aspiring model said to be involved in a relationship with an RCMP officer and a convicted murderer have been altered to protect her identity. (CBC)

The woman with whom an RCMP officer in the Surrey Six murder investigation was allegedly having an affair is pregnant with the officer's child, CBC News has learned.

Sgt. Derek Brassington was reassigned to desk duties at the beginning of December after senior RCMP officers learned of the alleged affair.

The woman is allegedly two months pregnant with Brassington's child, police sources close to the investigation have told CBC News.

On Thursday, the officer was not at his White Rock home, which he shares with his wife, who is also a police officer.

Brassington was one of several investigators of the October 2007 multiple murder in a Surrey highrise, which cost the lives of four people believed to be in the drug trade and two innocent bystanders.

Six men were charged in connection with the killings. One of them, Dennis Karbovanec, has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

The unidentified woman alleged to have had the affair with Brassington is an ex-girlfriend of Karbovanec and also had a relationship with Jamie Bacon, another of the men charged in the Surrey Six homicides, the anonymous sources have told CBC News.

The impropriety of the alleged affair with Brassington is based on the woman's role as a potential witness in the Surrey Six trials, scheduled to begin in 2011.

The woman was said to be an aspiring model who had posed for pictures found on the internet.

Police said they are concerned for the safety of both the woman and Brassington.

"There are some safety concerns," RCMP Sgt. Peter Thiessen told CBC News on Thursday.

Chief Supt. Janis Armstrong said the RCMP were taking the allegation against Brassington seriously and the professional standards unit is conducting an internal investigation.

"I would characterize him as a seasoned investigator, and should the allegations ring true, then yes, he should have known better," Armstrong said."

Rage

Status-rage is universal among youth, even where it isn't taken to violence. Some may
have been playing to the crowd, of which as many as 80% - easily quantified in some photos - held cameras. And many of those were gathering evidence. The video record is so massive it borders on completeness. Reverse engineering would likely allow accurate numbers on who: torched the cars; broke windows; looted buildings; assaulted those who sought protection of people and property. I can't see the totals being more than a few dozen. One is too many, but let's not simplify what happened - as did Rex Murphy and other class-warriors - by concocting a social-media-tsunami.

But why couldn't the core rioters able to resist violence? I have to admit that after viewing "Inside Job," I would have happily swung the smug-elitists who caused widespread economic misery, from lamp-posts. If 16 to 25s are perceiving widespread lawlessness among elites, then they are hardly myopic.

Let's not forge that cop's riot by means of impunity-driven crimes. It was not that long ago when 6 Vancouver cops crippled Michael Jacobsen in the City Lockup, and then covered it up. Then there was the Stanley Park 6 whitewash.

Now we get yet another commission study, which - given the orchestrations of Robertson, Jim Chu, Penny Ballem and Christy Clark - will surely raise cops to saintliness. That is an administrative-riot.

@perplexis

I take it you didn't read yesterday's Globe and Mail.

In fact, not only did observers record the events, they've also, apparently, been altering the 'record' to suit their own tastes and aims.

This stuff is, as you put it, way too easy to 'simplify'. It also may be pretty simple to exploit and manipulate.

Sometimes what appears to be documentary 'evidence' is simply photo-shopping.

G West

Good points, but you can't photoshop from all angles. Take the "kissing couple" capture. The entire incident - including the cop push-down - was videotaped from the rooftop. And...people are withholding captures, because they don't want to destroy young people's lives. I take the position that the riot-investigation should be evidence-based; VPD will use same to paint themselves as Duddley Do-Rights who faced "anarchists" and "social media brats." In fact, there is good foundation for believing that VPD herded the crowd towards Georgia and Granville, in a manner similar to Toronto's embarassing "kettling" atrocity at G20.

I hope we all agree that the investigation should be put in the hands of a Special Prosecutor, and that all evidence be under their exclusive control. As it is, Jim Chu - whose co-dependent relationship with Ballem and Robertson, led to wholesale Police Act contraventions - will cop-photoshop all evidence, while withholding key police audio records.

Citing the "Michael Jacobsen" and "Mountain" atrocities at VPD, that police service allowed their own to escape justice, until budget politics leveraged one Sgt Nixon to take the heat (Nixon was the last cop to serve jail time in BC). At long last, we can have a complete, multi-angle video-narrative of an entire riot. We can have that if VPD is allowed to cop-photoshop, in order to point the finger at "anarchists" and "social mediacs." (FYI: anarchist groups target international meetings, like G20/G8/Olympics, etc, and not hockey finals; I believe they sat out this one).

@perplexis

Agreed. I posted links to a couple of G&M articles on the other current 'riot' story here at Tyee - if you haven't seen them you might find them interesting.

As for your point about due process and maintaining some respect for the rule of law and fundamental principles of justice (and the fact that VPD has often had problems with these concepts), I couldn't agree more.

As I've written in a couple of other comments about this mess the actual behavior of individual police officers (for the most part) doesn't seem to be part of this incident - the pre-party planning and command and control certainly ought to be.

I agree that the relationship between Chu and Robertson seems problematic and Chu's statements (and reluctance to actually engage in anything other than demonizing) are troubling.

From everything I've read and seen about the incident it's hard to escape the conclusion that better planning and a lot more VISIBLE boots on the ground before the game ended wouldn't have prevented the worst of the destruction. Paying closer attention to the lessons of 1994 wouldn't have been a bad idea either.

In the long run though, when you get a lot of people drunk over an extended period of time and when a lot of them are young men, the potential for trouble is always going to be an issue.

I think, on balance, that the fact the Olympics celebrations went off without a major incident is the exception rather than the rule.

Vancouver has a 'strong' tradition of sports riots - including a short but nasty one in 1966 after the Grey Cup Parade.

If the Canucks ever get into the finals again one hopes the authorities might finally get that message too.

The BS about anarchists and backpacks full of Molotov cocktails is pretty obviously a quasi-official attempt to shift the public's attention.

Given the largely disengaged and clueless attitude of a great many citizens it is not surprising that the authorities decided to try it on for size.

Cheers.

One other point

I hope you're right that some of these young people who got caught up in this collective 'madness' won't have their lives too adversely affected. There's a story about one kid who was identified in Maclean's Magazine online edition that illustrates pretty clearly how this whole 'shaming' thing can get out of hand.

I'll see if I can find the link....

hope this works

http://tinyurl.com/6k62qhk

A good lynchin'

It appears mob mentality works both ways. Seems people are always lookin' for a good lynchin'.

Oh, that applies to the 'lets dump all over the cops' crowd as well.

Vancouver tourism reputation?

If the tourism board is so worried about our national and international reputation then why have I not read or heard a word about our illustrious media, in particular the CBC. Why did our so objectively careful journalists forget and use every possible shaming adjective to further denigrate the rioters? Not even the fleecing of Canadian small investors by our own Canadian banks warranted such verbal malice. At least Canadians now know just what the media thinks about which type of wrongdoing is really important and I'm sure those debasing adjective helped paint a even more negative opinion internationally.

Great comment, margsview:

"Not even the fleecing of Canadian small investors by our own Canadian banks warranted such verbal malice. At least Canadians now know just what the media thinks about which type of wrongdoing is really important and I'm sure those debasing adjective helped paint a even more negative opinion internationally."

Right on. Keep'em coming.

Evidence

Wrote fii: "All I can say is I'm sooooo glad digital cameras didn't exist when I was that age."

Ack! Me, too!