I mean no disrespect whatsoever to the victorious Boston Bruins or the host Canucks in stating last night’s post-Game 7 riot scenes from Downtown Vancouver made for more compelling car-crash TV than sitting around waiting for Roberto Luongo’s comeuppance. And while I’m sure he’d never condone the violence, the vandalism or the callous disregard for well, anything other than being a shithead, SB Nation’s Andrew Sharp has a rather simple explanation for what would cause an otherwise world-class city to morph into “into a end-of-days dystopia that looks like the set from ‘Escape From LA'”
1) Everybody’s really drunk.
2) Nobody thinks they’re going to get caught in a group of a thousand people.
3) Rioting–burning stuff down, breaking windows, jumping on cars, etc–is really fun. Nobody will admit to it, but if someone said you could set a car on fire with absolutely no consequences, you’d probably give it a whirl. Especially if you’re really drunk, and surrounded by thousands of people doing the same thing.
The same way anonymity on the internet brings out the most hateful, ignorant side of people, being among a crowd of 10,000 drunk people who are all breaking stuff seems to bring out the most barbaric, morally ambivalent side of us all. Especially if we’re piss drunk at the time.