Love walls

I like those post-it walls.

For those of you who’ve not come across them yet, post-it or ‘Love’ walls are a response to the riots that hit London recently.

Areas affected by the riots now play host to walls on which locals have spontaneously stuck post-its, with simple heart-felt messages relating to the events.

As the BBC point out, there is generally nothing poetic or complex about these messages, just a simple ‘1 heart Croydon’ or ‘don’t burn my town’.

Some commentators have seen these walls as an analogue response to the way smart phones were used by the rioters – I think this is nonsense. To relate smart phones to rioting is like relating pagers to football hooligans. Sure these people used these channels, but they’re not somehow tools of evil. Smart phones were used in organising the clean up that followed the riots as well.

What is interesting, I think, is that people seem to be using post-its as a public way of communication. As a way of saying ‘I am a part of this community and I care’.

Over the years successive governments have legislated (explicitly an implicitly) to rip the hearts out of communities. As a result today, people feel alienated from public spaces and unempowered to connect with each other. Post-it walls are a way of reconnecting with community.

I gather that some libraries and museums are talking about preserving the love walls for the future. I think this is both lovely and amusing – there’s a part of me that finds the concept of putting short term outpourings on permanent display somehow artistic.

Mass influence, post riot political correctness and... yup communications.

I’m not for one minute defending them but...

I was chatting to a colleague of mine the other day and our conversation strayed, for a moment away from communications and on to the riots.

Over the past week of so I’ve noted that conversations of this type tend to follow a pattern:

·         What was your experience of the event (Experience).

·         Isn’t it awful (Empathy).

·         What’s your theory (Explanation).

Two people talking about things at work

Theories are then traded for a bit until a kind of nodding consensus descends on proceedings... Oh and empathy and experience often get switched around dependent on who you’re talking to and their connection to the event, (By the way, If I was trying to convince a client of something I’d probably re-order this type of chat, but there you go).

Anyway, once you get past the second (Empathy) bit of the conversation there is almost always a pause followed by one of two things; either an outright declamation against the rioters or (and here’s my point), this:

‘I’m not for one minute defending them, but...’

I think there are two reasons for this.

Firstly because, most right minded people aren’t actually defending the acts of the rioters in London, but (and importantly), because we all feel under a tremendous amount of unspoken pressure from everyone else to behave in a certain way. Being seen to in any way defend anything to do with the riots is, currently, a massive taboo in English society.

Now I’m not for one minute saying the riots are anything like the death of Princess Diana... but I do remember quite clearly how, for a certain period after her death, if you did anything other than praise her as the princess of hearts you were shouted down by the mob. Come to think of it the same was true of Jade Goody too.

This is interesting for all kinds of reasons.

·         Mob (herd) mentality governs the way we think a lot more than we ever admit to.

·         This kind of influence can if we’re not very very careful, lead to dangerous actions based on ulterior motives or just bad thinking (think about the reactions of the main political parties to the rioting...).

·         It may well be the same mechanism that leads to otherwise ‘respectable’ people committing reprehensible acts in mob situations, that guides our thinking in the wake of such events.

There’s loads to be explored here, and when I get the chance I’ll have a proper think about it and try to write something more useful.

 Next up - what the new Premier League Football Season can teach us about mob entrepreneurialism. or 'Kick it off...'