This is the modern way?

We recently acquired the Kaiser Chiefs album 'Employment' and I'm learning to like it very much. There's one tune in particular "I Predict A Riot" that I feel provides a quite precise viewpoint into a small town life in the UK. I'm about to engage in a minor analysis of how I feel about the things referred to in the song so please do not lynch me for becoming (once again) a grumpy old man.

Chavs - or as the song portraits: 'the man in the tracksuit attacks me'. This is a phenomenon that really seems to have lifted off in many towns in the UK during the past two or three years. Teenagers in sports clothes, caps, trainers and pierced with enough stainless steel to build an automobile. Cheapo jewellery, lager and cigarettes are also integral parts of a self-respecting chav and the real hardcore ones are decorated with an 'ASBO' - an Anti-Social Behavior Order.

As I recall, youth subcultures are often counterreactions to dominant society's changes but also ways of identifying oneself in relation to the others. The question burning in my mind is really all that simple: why? Why would you want to identify yourself with one of these thugs whose highest achievement ever was to scare their grannies' poodles. Beats me...

Another rather poignant line of the tune refers to girls wearing next to nothing on the streets and that 'without chip fat they'd be freezing'. Hear hear! I have nothing against nice looking young girls dressed up for the occasion but when the chip fat is, indeed, revealed to such extents that is impossible to see the belt-sized miniskirt under their out-hanging lard, it is not a sight that I wish to see, less pay any attention to at all. That must be the ultimate reason for such sense of dress as well - attention seeking as we all know...

Phew. This was much harder than I figured. Maybe deep inside I'm scared of the chavs and hence meet their expectations of people like me. Maybe I also secretly take a peek at the fat ladies showing their flesh and meet their expectations of me as well. Really, if that's what they want they can have it. I will not, let me repeat just to make sure, will not understand that these things need to be done for such purposes and I can assure you, I can not be so badly scared by the chav population and even less intrigued by the fat ladies' lard that it would give anyone any sense of achievement whatsoever. Period.

"This is the modern way, faking it everyday..."

Man, I really am turning into a grumpy old man and actually feel rather proud of it!