Submitted 3 weeks ago by ILoveDurians@lemmy.cafe to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Again with this guy pushing a chav war. You’ve been doing this for weeks at least. You are the one claiming chavs aren’t real and that any use of the term is actually referring to all working class people when that is NOT how the term is used. I honestly feel like you must be a troll at this point for how hard you are pushing a false narrative.
Such wonderful evidence you’ve cited. So if I link sources showing that is not the majority use of the term you’ll let it go, right?
Aren’t chavs the tracksuit wearing shitheads, like the thugs working for Eggsy’s stepdad in the first Kingsman?
What is it with a bunch of bad takes being posted on this community recently
Because chavs existed. I saw them. My siblings saw them. There are various news reports. Not all working class people are chavs.
there is a grain of truth in this. chav culture certainly existed and still exists in the south of england but they came in around 2000-2010 or so for much greater demonisation than their northern (scally) or scottish (ned) counterparts, likely due to UK media being concentrated in the south
the great chav danger was blown wildly out of proportion and i’ve no doubt the term expanded beyond the original sense of a sort of tracksuit/burberry clad antisocial petty criminal youth to include just about any working class kid in the minds of home counties handbag clutchers
so to say they never existed is false, and to say they never caused anyone any bother is false. but the middle class media confected version of them never existed in any great number either
We called them "charvers" or "a charva" up north as long as i can remember in school , certainly well back into the mid 1990s.
I'd not say it was a middle class term at all though, more sub-cultural within lower classes. Probably the more vocal alt-types used it as an insult/provocation to the more obnoxious trev/sharon types. There's a lot of subcultures and just different people within the lower classes especially at school. Middle class kids at school would keep their heads down and keep out of it for the most part. Upper class kids didn't exist - i assume they were away off in posh schools suffering whatever abuse leads to people like michael gove..
I'd agree that charvers were a small, but obnoxiously vocal, minority of the lower classes. Much worse at school though with kids being kids and all. But its also something people could grow out of in a few years, or just after a bit of cold turkey, more behavioural/immaturity than class.
You could probably also trace it back to things like football hooliganism - a fairly easily avoided minority - but not imaginary.
Maybe the press latched on to it after most of the football firms were locked up and they needed to fill some column inches.
good points, the inter class rivalry in particular. i think it’s a reasonable guess that the term lost its more specific original sense when it escaped containment and got into the mouths of littlejohn et al but just saying middle class was reductive. sun/mirror hacks would have been in on the action too
i had heard of chav being derived from charva but never heard it said personally - i’m from the south though
re hooligans there’s definite similarities but chavs lack the same kind of rallying point so were more dispersed. maybe some chavs got promoted to casuals
Grew up in the era there were definitely chavs it wasn’t a class thing either as a lot of them tended to be role-playing middle class kids who wanted to look hard as usual.
Walking through local shops and being challenged about which part of town you lived in or getting called a “greebo” all a day in the life of the era.
What is your obsession with ‘chavs’?
I’ve always seen chavs as the tracksuit wearing, loads of kids, living off smokes, scratch cards and pot Noddles that sit around soaking up benefits. I know that nay not be the proper definition of chav but I’m not sure what else to call them
The commenter said ‘soaking up benefits’, I don’t think the working class people would be looking like ‘chavs’ because many of them are going to and from work in uniform. Plus, you’re essentially equating all working class people with chavs? So walking into a Tescos, every member of staff is a chav?
Of course they exist, ya dummie! I’m working class and they definitely exist.
Is this déjà-downvote I feel?
Not snobish at all. And even i was scared walking threw fratton Portsmouth
I Iived in London around then
Chavs were most certainly a real thing.
Roadmans are currently being made up. Kids wearing balaclavas wearing bomber jackets talking with a heavy London grime artist accent dont exist.
I see them
Back when roadman was just starting to become a term I had a friend who started calling himself one, he didn’t like it when I told him it was just another version of a chav
Nessie obviously be a 'ned' not a 'charva'.
While I disagree with identifying the working class with ‘chav’, the origin of the word did start very much in classism and stereotyping (hence my deep disagreement with the term). A pretty good analysis in this article: eathealthy365.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-chav-i…
HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
No… that culture of violence was very very real. The stories may sound ridiculous, but that’s just because of how extreme that culture was.
ILoveDurians@lemmy.cafe 3 weeks ago
HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Chav is not a term to describe a working class person - it’s a term to describe a subset of youths who are pretty much feral.
By feral I mean aggressive and “antisocial” in the “are you looking at me pal” kind of response to eye contact. In essence, a youth whose primary strategy is to escalate to conflict by the shortest possible route in the hopes of winning status.
What that has to do with coming from an honest working family is beyond me!
HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Reply to edited chart - violence against adult was not as common. Violence against other kids however…
Also, 1995–2002 was peak chav ;)
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
In my experience, Chav has never been used to describe a normal working class person. In Northern Ireland, we had our own variant “Spide” or “Smick” which were generally more tame. Less burberry more tracksuits
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Dirty tricks, MI6