9/19/2023 0 Comments Slap happy game![]() ![]() Her mother, Georgina, told the press at the time: "The school should get rid of video phones, or are they going to wait until someone has been murdered before they take the phones off the kids?" The next day, the video started to circulate around her school, leaving her too scared to return. In May of 2005, Becky Smith – a GCSE student from Blackley, suburban Manchester – was attacked on her way home from school and left unconscious, ultimately spending two days at North Manchester General Hospital. Local papers began to report on isolated acts of violence, any that involved either young people or mobile phones, joining the dots, blaming the violence on this new craze. In the media's eyes, it was only a matter of time before somebody got really hurt – which, of course, they did. These people who think it is all a bit of a jape could end up in jail." Two years later, the headteacher of a Catholic boys school in Wimbledon went a step further, suggesting an ambitious ban on YouTube.Īll the while, the term "happy-slapping" was going nuclear in the press. The British Transport Police were also involved, responding to incidents on buses and trains, with then-Superintendent Mark Newton telling the Standard: "It is a cowardly form of attack – childish but also criminal. In April of 2005, a spokesperson for Lewisham council described the trend as a "London-wide problem", adding that police were working with head-teachers to investigate criminal behaviour. St-Martins-in-the-Field school in Lambeth were early adopters, but soon the majority of the capital’s schools were taking action. Tied to fears of phone thefts, head-teachers began banning mobile phones in school altogether. On the ground, schools immediately began grappling with how best to deal with this new breed of bad behaviour. Very few of the old slaps remain online, but the below video gives a flavour of the scene. The compilations – put together by bedroom "production companies", like Slap Happy TV, using Windows Movie-Maker – contained school-kid happy-slaps often alongside random (more brutal) attacks between adults. Videos were uploaded to Ebaumsworld or a just-launched Youtube, or simply sent over MSN as a Quicktime file. ![]() Instead, they tended to be the stuff of legend short clips huddled over in the minutes before a class started. When asked, some said they were bored, others blamed violent video games, others said they wanted to be famous in some small way.įor most people, first-hand experiences with happy-slapping were rare. Theories as to why kids did it ranged wildly. Videos would travel around schools and, possibly, if funny enough, to other schools further afield. Once the video was recorded, it was then shared between phones via Bluetooth, or Infrared, depending on how shit your phone was. ![]() If caught, the defence was always the same: it was only a joke. The video completed the act it was a vehicle for the component that made happy-slapping whole: the humiliation. Pixelated bursts of movement, soundtracked by clattering, indiscernible audio. Nokia 7600s, Motorola Razrs, the Sony Ericsson K750i, the Samsung D500, were all set to capturing videos that amounted to little more than people-shaped moving blocks. A happy-slap was just a slap if nobody caught it on camera. The heavy blow brought down out of nowhere, the gasp of silence, the plunge into screeching laughter. They normally occurred in the weird in-between places that break up the school day – the bus, the basketball courts, the top-floor corridor – where the act could go ahead suddenly and unnoticed. Happy-slaps often took place while the victim was sleeping, or facing the opposite direction. They were not attacks driven by anger or revenge the happy-slap was the motivation, and the less the victim was expecting it, the better. All that's obvious is that at some point in 2004, playground scraps and mobile video technology congealed into something more.įor those who experienced a happy-slap first-hand, the rules at tarmac-level were simple. Those who were at school during the mid-2000s will struggle to remember where they first heard about it – or how serious an issue it actually was. Happy-slapping was a buzzword, an idea, that tore through the playground at a faster rate than the videos themselves ever could. The difficulty comes, of course, from trying to locate something so notional. "The phrase 'happy-slapping' wasn’t always used," he adds, "they weren’t all aware of that."Īs with most trends, it's impossible to pinpoint the exact epicentre of happy-slapping – some reports say Lewisham, others blame St Albans. " Bullies film fights by phone" contained accounts from a small selection of schools which had witnessed the behaviour, outlining the basic patterns of behaviour. The teacher also mentioned what they were calling it, and on the 21st of January that year Michael published an article including the first mention of the term "happy-slapping" in the press. ![]()
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