Schools and parents across London are on red alert after it emerged that children were being enabled through a social media trend to film themselves violently attacking pupils from rival schools.
Posters inspired by notorious LA street gangs, the Bloods and the Crips, featuring men in red and blue balaclavas detailing which schools fall under which ‘side’ have been circulating on Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram this week.
Hackney, Islington, Redbridge and Croydon are amongst the boroughs included in the ‘Red vs Blue’ fights, with 26 schools in total listed and divided into teams.
However, parents in other areas of London have reported similar posts being shared for schools in their boroughs.
It is unknown how many boroughs and schools have been urged to fight at various events this month because many of the original messages have been removed.
Another post laying out the ‘rules’ of the school wars tells children to ‘jump’ anyone they see from the ‘opposite’ side, specifying they must ‘be violent’.
They are encouraged to use stationery from their pencil cases, such as compasses, scissors and rulers, as weapons, with some posters even depicting kitchen knives and fireworks.
Students are also asked to have someone ‘record’ their attacks and for the footage to be sent to the original organiser so they can be posted online and given extra ‘points’.
The scoring system awards 20 points to children who punch an ‘opp’, 10 points for chasing them, 15 points for ‘staining’ them (a slang term for stabbing), and 10 bonus points for ‘recording any of the above’.
Since the posts started circulating online last week, parents have received emails about the worrying calls to battle from their children’s headteachers, who reassured them they had notified the authorities, and police would be patrolling the areas.
Parents also warned others about the posts on their local community groups on Facebook.
Under one post about the Redbridge school wars, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and MP for Ilford North, Wes Streeting, commented: ‘Council and Police aware.
‘I’ve also raised this at highest levels in government.
‘Hope parents are clear with their children that we’ll come down on this sort of behaviour like a ton of bricks.’
A Met Police spokesperson today told the Daily Mail: ‘We’re aware of social media posts circulating, and we are in close contact with schools across various London boroughs to offer reassurance.
‘Officers will be visible around the schools named at the start and end of the day, and we will respond firmly to any reports of violence or disorder.’
TikTok reportedly removed the posts on its platform for breaching its community guidelines after the Met alerted them, according to the Islington Tribune.
Social media should definitely be prohibited, in my opinion!
Some may argue that parents should limit their kids’ access to specific websites, yet modern youngsters are so smart that they might quickly circumvent such restrictions. The true solution is to outlaw social media since its creators have unlocked a Pandora’s Box, and I’m willing wager that they wouldn’t allow their own children to use it.
It’s not ‘TikTok’, it’s ‘ThickTok’ – social media for morons.
All of this silliness is impossible to understand, and our government have taken a generation of children who have been left unbridled, violent and unpoliced.
What should happen now is that these kids should be loaded onto a bus and sent to boot camp – they can work off all their testosterone there.
They should really be taking these images off media sites because by putting it out there, they are spreading incitement to violence, and then children think it is acceptable behaviour and it’s not!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 