All of us have little nuggets of advice passed down from elders that we hold on to and carry with us throughout the course of our lives. There’s one thing my paw-paw told me when I was but a wee Cajun lad that I’ve always remembered. As I recall, I was helping him weave a shrimping net in his backyard one day when he turned to me and said, “Boy, when you’ve lost the internet, you’ve lost the war.” Truer words have never been spoken.
With that said, the London rioters/looters, while their ranks seem to be spreading across England, have completely lost the internet.
This is no small achievement, mind you. The internet, after all, has traditionally been supportive of uprisings by the world’s oppressed underclass. The internet also loves to mock the ridiculous class system in place in Britain, what with the inbred Royal family and all. So to have, say, people like me openly calling for demonstrators there to be tear-gassed or tasered and firehosed down is saying a lot. It’s hard to sympathize with people who are turning their angst into an excuse to burn and steal sh*t, risking the lives of innocents in the process.
But I think that the ultimate web condemnation of these uprisings is the fact that the internet has taken to photoshopping the rioters/looters into hilarious and humiliating situations — a clear signal that they’ve eroded just about all respect and support for their cause. Sometime yesterday, the Tumblr “PhotoshopLooter” popped up, solely dedicated to the cause. Many of its reader submissions are LOL-worthy and a nice breath of fresh air in a maddening time. I’ve collected a few of my favorites in a gallery after the jump.
