Well, that was different.
Despite Vancouver’s best efforts to not repeat the last hockey riots of 1994, 2011 will go down not only as the time when the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup in seven games, bu the year we rioted yet again.
But technology has changed in that time frame, social networking has risen up, people with barely any web skills can make a website. So the response to the riot has changed dramatically. You can discuss mob mentality, whether it was black block, suburban yahoos or just drunk douches, till doomsday. The fact of the matter remains is that the web response changed things dramatically.
Twitter was burning, no pun intended. Play by play was incoming from the streets of downtown Vancouver. Those who chose to get their riot on were documented with a multitude of website going up to show their folly and their faults. Twelve hours after trying to set a cop car or fire or punch a fireman, some folks became Vancouver’s most wanted and names like Camille Cacino and Brock Anton common knowledge.
You can debate the riot causes and the response till kingdom come. But the biggest wave of all may be the web response and how it as in all likelihood changed how we deal with mass civic issues like this for now and time to come.