Do you know what ‘linkup’ means in colloquial usage? No, neither did I, until the papers put the word on their front pages.
It means mobs of feral, utterly dehumanised youngsters running riot through high streets, having organised the fun by ‘linking up’ on social media.
On Saturday and Tuesday hundreds of young humanoids, their minds addled by cannabis and up-to-date advances in electronic communications, created mayhem in Clapham, Birmingham and elsewhere, looting and trashing shops, terrorising the locals, fighting police and one another.
For those unfamiliar with London’s geography, Clapham is an up and coming borough just south of the river, where serious efforts at gentrification started some forty years ago. By the looks of it, the work isn’t quite done yet.
The youngsters had to entertain themselves as best they could during the half-term, what with school playgrounds closed. Not to worry: stores like Marks & Spencer or Sainsbury’s could be easily turned into improvised playgrounds or even battlegrounds.
Police were as helpful as they always are in such situations. They arrested a few hooded youths for old times’ sake, but nostalgia quickly wore off. To reflect the ethos of new times, they advised families either to barricade themselves in or to slip out the back and make themselves scarce.
Ever wonder where the cops are when we need them? There they are, offering invaluable community advice.
As for the looted and trashed shops, they received their own police advice: close early, wherever you are. With teenagers across the country on half-term, ‘linkups’ may create similar rioting all over the country.
Marks & Sparks, for one, knew good advice when they saw it. The store did close early, wisely wary of having its aisles devastated again. Boots and Waitrose prudently followed that example, having suffered their share of mayhem.
Those slower on the uptake, such as Sainsbury’s and McDonald’s, had to initiate their own emergency procedures. They barricaded their customers in, as balaclava-clad teenagers on half-term were turning the high street into a battle zone. Lord of the Flies reenacted: it was children’s time, and there were no rules.
Multiple videos were shot, with people’s phones obviously at full charge. One such video showed that our youngsters aren’t alien to team work. One teenage girl was filmed running out of a Sainsbury’s, while another covered her retreat by hitting a police officer.
I wonder if any of the yahoos felt uncomfortable acting like that during Holy Week. Do they even know what Holy Week is or what it means? Probably not: their schools stay off the subject for fear of offending Muslims, and their parents probably went to the same schools when they were young.
Anyway, who cares about those outdated relics of our racist, colonial past, when we have social media to fill all the cultural, intellectual and social gaps? Children spend all their time glued to the displays of their phones and laptops. These devices promote social cohesion, bringing people together, turning individuals into a community.
The community thus formed can then come together in the flesh, smoke a spliff or two and then have some innocent fun in high streets. Terrorised pedestrians and employees of trashed and looted shops or fast-food outlets may not think the fun all that innocent, but they are helpless to stop the rampage.
More worrying, so are the police. Just a few decades ago, cops would have arrived in force, ploughing into the feral mobs with truncheons and making multiple arrests. Judges would then have passed stiff sentences, sending dozens of young thugs to the ‘juvie’.
The parents of those still at large would have administered their own punishment, possibly of a corporal nature. All in all, should such ‘linkups’ have happened then, a repeat performance would have been strongly discouraged.
However, now we’ve become so much more sensitive and progressive, the situation has changed. Parents have been turned into an irrelevance and police into an extension of social services and counselling. Old-fashioned policing is reserved for ‘hate crimes’, such as racial slurs (real or imaginary), transphobia, misogyny and so forth, all the way down the list.
And old-fashioned parenting has been replaced by those flickering displays. Children stay out of their busy parents’ hair for hours on end, mastering the art of animalistic, practically non-verbal communications. When they grow up big and strong enough to take swings at cops, they link up and go out on the town.
Even the authorities are aware of the irreversible damage caused by that addiction to social media. Children grow up unable to speak properly, if at all. They don’t read books or even newspapers. They are helpless in social situations (other than cannabis-fuelled linkups). And they are a menace to others even in the most immediate sense, not to mention the long-term danger they present to national survival.
Half-hearted attempts are made to shut the stable door of social media, but the horse of savagery has already bolted. Measures that are likely to be effective aren’t even contemplated anyway, such as making it illegal for anyone under, say, age 18 to own a computer or have access to one.
Even if introduced, such measures probably wouldn’t work. What’s required is a civilisational about-face, but I’m not holding my breath. Such things don’t really happen.
P.S. Every time one cracks a joke about Trump, he throws it back in one’s face.
Just yesterday I wrote: “I wouldn’t put it past Trump to improve Mount Rushmore by adding his gilded bas-relief to those of his presidential inferiors: Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln.”
And what do you know, I read in today’s paper that stonemasons in South Dakota are already at work, busily carving Trump’s bas-relief next to the other four. The article didn’t make the gilded part clear, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Turns out Trump ordered the work on the first day of his second term. That was an advance on his future – and guaranteed – achievements. Verily I say unto you, the Donald proves yet again that truth is stranger than fiction. Also more insane, I’m tempted to add.
Clinging on to the remnants of optimism, I hope that article is the paper’s idea of an April Fool joke. Reclaiming some realism, I fear it might not be.
Your reference to Lord of the Flies was spot on. It may have been children’s time, but these children were not stranded on an island (well…), there were adults present. How did we turn from police actually policing and punishing criminals to offering useless advice to potential victims? (What barricade would keep out the rampaging mob? Leave their homes to be destroyed? Thanks, Sir Mark.) It is time for responsible citizens to rise up and confront law enforcement. I suppose the only language they’ll listen to is money, so perhaps what is needed is what we call here in the States a “class action lawsuit”, demanding money for reimbursement of property damage, stolen or damaged goods, lost income due to enforced closures, doctor and hospital bills, and emotional distress for all the victims.
I have a friend who is a police officer for the city of Los Angeles. During and after the summer of George Floyd, he told me about the gangs of protestors they encountered. He said he felt sorry for all of them. They had no respect for property or authority and when confronting them, he said their eyes were just blank, like there was nothing inside. He said they all seemed so lost. Of course, it was pointless to arrest any of them, as the Office of the District Attorney (Crown Prosecution Service) would not prosecute, just release them back into the wild. A side note on my friend. His wife did not feel safe with him on the streets, so he joined the bomb squad! Imagine feeler safer on the bomb squad rather than on patrol.
As in an allegorical Elizabethan “emblem”, the activity in the foreground is framed by some of its causes. On the right we have some neo-brutalist buildings of concrete and glass. Bottom left is an invitation to “win [£1000]000 cash”. Behind is a waste land without trees or grass, and in the distance a tower block from which the Boschian hordes presumably emerged.
At the top left is some sort of Gothic building, but it seems to be toppling over, and is likely to be demolished soon if it’s not suitable for conversion into a mosque or tattoo parlour. (There are no reports of mosques or tattoo parlours being sacked. I wonder why?)
A friend of mine made an interesting observation once. One Birmingham building, a modern concrete abomination, was densely covered with graffiti. Yet there wasn’t a single graffito on the adjacent Georgian building. There exists a definite link between asocial behaviour and atrocious architecture — the latter encourages the former.
Perhaps the owners of the Georgian building paid to have it cleaned, or perhaps the Banksies of the time preferred a smooth surface for their immeasurably valuable Street Art. I resist the idea that vandals intentionally or instinctively attack ugliness and leave beauty unharmed: how could they know the difference?
By the way, there’s an obvious fact about all but one of the visible faces in your photograph, but if either of us suggested that it had any significance we’d probably be put in prison.