the Armchair of El Diablo

When is revolting, revolting?

What is a Good Revolution? We’ve spent the last year celebrating the democratic reforms of the ‘Arab Spring’. Iran, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Jordan have all had mass movements against unpleasant regimes.

The degree to which social media was ‘responsible’  has been debated, but you have to admit… the timing is pretty coincidental.

Who’s to say that a mass demonstration of violence against a prevailing system is less valid in London than in Egypt?

Well, the objective for a common good, I guess. There’s no purpose to the London riots, no desired outcome  for a better society.

But just because this is more mob than movement, we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss it as a type of revolution. A fairly scary one.

A massive change in social convention = Revolution

Iran and Egypt have shown that social media makes it easier for a group to act against repression.

London has shown that social media also makes it easy for people to mobilise on … what? Disgruntlement?

Usually you need to get a level of real common rage to fuel a group large enough to actually be unstoppable, or at least hard to contain.

Now, the cost of spreading that word is so low that when enough bored kids are crammed together, and economic conditions are low, they’ll hit the streets to rage about the lack of fizz in their Fantas.

Clay Shirky  was the first (I’d read) to suggest the internet’s main benefit to society is the lowered transaction costs of making a group. Failure is cheaper now, so audacious attempts are easier. We now see that this is irrespective of the group’s objective: be it democracy, or an armful of free jeans.

So perhaps this is a revolution - not of ideals, but as a massive change in convention. The tolerance threshold to action has been lowered: mass violence is suddenly as easy to do as apathy.

10 August 2011

• Tags
• Protest
• Riots
• London