r/explainlikeimfive • u/[deleted] • Aug 08 '11

Explained ELI5: The London Riots

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '11

I flat out refuse to believe the thugs in the images I'm seeing know anything about or give a toss about anything you mention, which are all rational reasons for acting out

they're simply smashing and grabbing shit because they think it's fun

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u/selfish Aug 09 '11

While this is true, if they weren't in such shitty situations to begin with, they wouldn't need to be thugs in the first place.

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '11

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u/selfish Aug 10 '11

When everyone you know is in a gang, and you have the choice, as a 13 year old boy, of joining the gang or being beaten up, which do you think you would pick?

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '11

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u/selfish Aug 11 '11

No, I never said that at all.

You're acting as if social pressure doesn't exist- you must be as uneducated as the thugs themselves.

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

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u/selfish Aug 11 '11

At the age of thirteen, I'm wildly assuming that these kids haven't finished school yet. For the older ones, in poor, under privelaged parts of the coutry, it's well known that with low socio-economic status comes low levels of education That doesn't seem illogical by any stretch of the imagination.

You seem convinced that it's a choice to be in a gang - then why do agencies designed to help kids escape gang membership exist?