Top 10 Vancouver 2011 Stanley Cup Riot Reflections

I may not be the world’s best blogger, but I know how to collect links and make a top ten list.  I stayed up until sunrise on June 15th or more accurately the morning of June 16th, reading reports, and writing down my thoughts.  I also participated in the discussion going on simultaneously while people watched the riots unfold on TV.  I was actually in what used to be the centre of downtown Vancouver before it shifted West, I watched the game at the Alibi Room, but after the game was over, despite disappointment and the first car being lit on fire, I just headed on home up the hill to Mount Pleasant. Pretty ironic I watched the Vancouver Riots of 2011 from my apartment in Mount Pleasant.

Anyway without further ado here are the best ten links I’ve collected. Alas after many years several of them no longer are online but the Flickr photos are unlike in my original post:

1. Vancouver’s Human Flesh Search Engine
2. Social Media brings out the Snitch in all of us
3. After a Loss in Vancouver, Troubling Signals of Citizen Surveillance

No lessons were learned

I’ve spent too much time doom scrolling as it has been dubbed after the insurrection of January 6th 2021. As it was happening and people were live streaming and taking selfies I couldn’t help remember the last riots in Vancouver. It lead to a lot of consequences for a lot of people. The riot in Washington D.C. will lead to much bigger consequences for many more people. 

The fact the same toxic online communities that have been allowed to fester continue to cause death and destruction is also facing pushback. President Donald J. Trump had his personal social media accounts deleted or frozen, many lesser known people too. Some of the rioters have been doxed and some are already asking for pardons, the fact that I’ve personally seen this all happen before and blogged about it extensively tells me no lessons were learned by the wider Internet, even given the numerous links I collected and shared. Blogging and social media are not often the solution to real world problems, they often seem to make things worse.

Not a healthy or productive use of my time

This is my last post directly about the riots, at least until considerable time passes. There are bigger problems facing the world and me personally, than the damage done to the city where I was born, by a bunch of angry drunks.  Writing about them did increase my pageviews some, but I don’t even have any ads to display. I do have friends all over the world so I’ve been asked by people from Korea, Austria, and Wales how the city is doing after the chaos.

The windows can be fixed, the streets cleaned, the rioters arrested, but the damage done to the city’s image and the anger caused by the events of the last few days will take years and years to finally disappear.

More Thoughts on the Riots

Alexandra Samuel collected 10 different excerpts from 10 different individuals reflecting on the riots, some of which I’ve linked to previously, some of which are new to me. I’ve tried to move on, work on something positive instead of dwelling on the actions of idiots. I still don’t understand what the rioters were thinking or those that just hung out and cheered them on. Obvious crimes were being committed, deliberately in plain sight. The riot act had been read. I do think camera phones and internet celebrity producing sites like YouTube played a role in people staying to film the chaos, but individuals who took part in the rioting and looting, they made a choice and especially if they chose to consume large quantities of alcohol prior to heading downtown, they deserve to face the consequences of their actions. No one has a lot of sympathy for drunk drivers, why should rioting while drunk be any different? It is dangerous, reckless, and costs the public and truly innocent bystanders dearly.

After all these years many stories by the mainstream media have disappeared or moved behind paywalls but random blogs like mine have not forgotten names and faces. I’m all too aware of the dangers of social media. I’m once again looking for a new job and updating my website to try and make it more professional, trying to direct people to the highlights and remove and minimize the lowlights. If after all these years you still have thoughts on the Vancouver Stanley Cup riots or social media you can leave them below.

This entry was originaly posted on June 18th, 2011, it was last edited on April 21st, 2024 and is filed under: Rambles and tagged: Stanley Cup, Top 10, Vancouver.