Mommy, Where Do Yobs Come From?

Another basic question important in establishing a definition of Yobism and it's related terms is: Where do the yobs, thugs, and hooligans come from? How long has this cultural phenomenon existed and has it always been a problem? It seems that one might be tempted to say that Yobbism has grown steadily worse over time as we have seen outlined in various statements from English Newspapers posted on the main blog. However, this commonly held belief that seems at least somewhat to correlate with the larger "Good Old Days" mentality espoused by many people I believe to be largely false. Time and again I have experienced through my education in arts and literature, my knowledge of "history", and the stories of the multiplicity of people around me examples of what were certainly "the bad old days" or at least "the days that were in a lot of ways exactly the same then as they are now days".
Some things that, in the early explorations of Yobbism in the literature of modern Britain and discussions in class, I have come to associate with Yobbism and that I think most of our classmates would agree with are the following

• Class dynamics as well as prevalent attitudes and stereotypes of one class towards another.
• Money, and the lack thereof, which in turn can easily be related to class.
• Young men and aggression.

Are these issues ones that did not exist in the past? Have they just emerged as plagues on a modern sinful era, steadily growing worse since the collapse of the glorious British Empire? Do these things only exist in England, Britain, and the 20th and 21st centuries? I think we could all agree upon looking at any number of counter example that this is clearly not the case. Here are a few personal counter examples off the top of my head:

• The Crusades: At least partially an excuse to give a whole bunch of trouble making young European men, the second sons of noble families entitled to little more than their names, an opportunity to take out their idle aggression on something other than their countries, towns, and one other.
• Duelling and its subsequent banishment across Europe: Which arose, at least partly, out of yet another surplus of young men with nothing better to do than pick fights with one another.

Anyway I'm sure we can all think of better an more illustrative examples, however, this serves to illustrate the point that restless idle young men have been damaging things, hurting one another, and making general nuisances of themselves for a LONG time and Yobbism, which is certainly related to these issues has been around for far longer than just that span of one century, and the fall of one empire. So to establish what a "Yob" is and how to deal with them one must take into account these various historical and cultural factors rather than just relying on reactionary appeals to such dead-end cliches of the people crying for a return to "The good old days".

Origins and Objectives

Before we can fully evaluate thugs or yobs, it is important we understand their aims and objectives. To do this, we need look no farther than the words of thugs themselves. One of our generations most prolific “thug poets,” Nas, has told us exactly what we need to know in “I want to talk to you.”

The song explicitly tells us of the motives driving Nas, and those like him. The very name of the song foreshadows the nature of its artists discontent, as can be observed during the first lines of the song; Nas raps, “I wanna talk to the mayor, the governor, and the motherfuckin' president, / I wanna talk to the FBI, the CIA, and the motherfuckin’ congressmen.” Here we can begin to understand the nature of Nas’ discontent. The one thing he states he wants over and over is to talk to a figure of authority, and the overly repetitive nature of his demands make it clear that this desire is not being fulfilled. Herein lies the nature of Nas’ grievance; he is dissatisfied with the conditions he and those around him are subjected to, and he has no way to approach anyone in a position of real authority to draw attention to his plight.

Thus, he finds his own way to gain the attention of the powers that be; he resorts to violence. We can plainly see the link between violence and Nas’ frustration with his inability to talk to “the establishment” when Nas writes “I wanna talk to the man, understand? / Understand this motherfuckin’ G packed in my hand.” When his attempts to draw attention to how the “streets is upside down” fail, he uses his gun to force the attention of the authorities on to his problem. We can observe one of the major aims of yobs in Nas' words. Yobs and hooligans want to "make a change," and alter the way they are governed.

While we may find Nas’ solution overly aggressive, his issue with the state of representation in modern society bears much closer consideration. After all, if a citizen is truly dissatisfied with the way they find themselves being governed, what outlet do they have in today’s world? What if we do want to talk to the FBI? What if we do want to talk to the president? We simply cant, and that seems like a problem.