The F.A.T. Manual
196
The Instagram Riots of Gothenburg 2012
In an unexpected turn of events, the last pictures posted was screenshots of the inbox of the account where you could see who had submitted what “slut” – shaming the shamers. Somehow it was revealed who was behind the account – or at least someone was accused – and people decided to “take revenge”. A rumor started spreading that there would be “chaos” at this high school the morning after. And there was even a Facebook event called “World War 3 at Plusgymnasiet”. About 500 people showed up the day after (December 18) and tried to enter the school. I guess most to just watch THE CHAOS unfold. Some were there to beat up the girl that started it (among them people who had submitted to the account and had been exposed in the screenshots). Others to beat up the people who had submitted to the account. Some even might have been there to beat up someone for what they allegedly had done. And yet more just there to take the opportunity to start some fights. Let me show you what it looked like. [3] After this, the riots – for some reason, probably many reasons – started drifting to the nearby and centrally located mall, Nordstan. It continued with more fights among the christmas shoppers, who hid inside the stores, and people started jumping on cars and throwing rocks at the police. There was also continual crowds roaming the day after (December 19) at other high schools. I guess either to take more revenge on people involved or continue fights that was not finished the day before. Several high schools was shut down one or two days after to protect students. In conclusion: I don’t think there really was much of rioting going on, except some stones being thrown at the police. A riot has mostly externally directed energies, towards an outside enemy, or just the surrounding environment in general. This was more a big crowd roaming around looking for people (also in the same crowd) to beat up. So you had individual fights and beat downs within the crowd itself. In other words a very inward directed energy. I also think there was lots of different aggressions coming out. One could say that it was a noble cause, reacting against the public shaming of women, but it could just as well have been because people felt that *these particular* girls did not deserve to be humiliated this way or that *these particular* boys were not gays. So I don’t know what to think about that really. Was the reaction against public shaming or against false accusations of promiscuity (which is then still condemned)? What’s good is that most people have afterwards focused on violence, gender issues, culture around sexuality and bullying, and preventing this kind of behavior, rather than condemning “the internet” for what happened.