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It’s 2024… ‘low them tings there
People, especially kids, will adopt what’s deemed to be fashionable. Thankfully, the ‘chav’ to ‘roadman’ arc appears to be on its last legs in England.
Growing up in south London in the noughties was incredibly fun. Your mates were always out after school on bikes or playing football. We’d knock on each other’s doors – and the odd stranger’s door – grab sweets, share a can of booze, and generally create harmless mischief until dinnertime.
There was a significant downside to wanting to be out all the time, however. Hoodlums were everywhere. Every postcode had a pathetic gang affiliation, and anyone who was a cousin of a member, a mate, or a mate of a mate claimed to be a member too.
Wherever we went, we became accustomed to sprinting and hopping fences to get away from groups of tracksuit-wearing teens. Let me tell you, cardio hits different with a dose of adrenaline.
In one instance, my brother called my dad while hidden in a tree, because a group of youths had set about 20 of our mates in a local park with air rifles, bats, and other bits from their parents’ garages. Thankfully, police sent the group scarpering before my brother could get a metal pellet in the arse, or my dad’s arrival in a towel – seriously.
We still managed to have a laugh and enjoy our childhoods, despite the fact our heads were always on a swivel and we would each have several physical altercations with hoodlums until our adolescent years.
For one, firework night doesn’t involve almost being blown up anymore, which is nice.
The roadman stuff has just largely gone out of fashion. There are folk who are, if you’ll excuse the phrase, really ‘about that life’, but the constant posturing from teens has died right off. There’s no validation to be gleaned from wearing cheap tracksuits, hovering outside shops, and harassing other kids for their shit. You look like a bellend.
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byu/mreal420 from discussion
inukdrill
If you offered a choice between instant notoriety in their neighbourhood, or 100K followers on Instagram/YouTube, 90% of kids will jump on the latter before you can say the word ‘chat.’
The change is undeniable. All of the areas that once reeked of danger for me are now empty bar the odd dogwalker, or have actual children in the playgrounds. I guess it’s no different to the ‘mods and rockers’ subculture clash that came decades before, but the ‘chav’ fad is easily up there with the dumbest eras of the last century in England.
While social media – today’s main teen battleground for validation – has significant vices of its own, I’m confident as a parent that I’ll be able to monitor and protect my daughter in her formative years. If that’s all there is to worry about, I’ll gladly take it.
Looking back and exchanging stories with my family members, I don’t even know how we were let out of the house tbh.
Lastly… to the former members of TZ who are either inside, or working the shelves at Tesco, I wish you well.
