IIt is dark, a garbage can light illuminates the closed front of a Franprix. A gang of teenagers is forcing the shutter. “Take me a Yop, take me a Yop”, shouts a young man in the middle of the street who backfires. Among the videos that have flooded social networks since the start of the riots following the death of Nahel M. on June 27, many images, shot by the rioters themselves, show scenes of looting inside these shops gutted in the streets of Marseilles, Grenoble or Paris. We hear hilarious young people, carried by a kind of collective enjoyment inherent in transgression, who fill up on Pépito, packets of rice, or overpriced sneakers.
Two other short videos met with great success: that of a hooded man in black, who crosses a street playing an electric guitar in the middle of a riot, another showing a gentleman quietly enjoying his sandwich on a bench in the midst of clashes between young people and police. The incongruous in the midst of chaos. Like this deadpool dancing who surrounded the cordons of CRS during the demonstrations against the pension reform.
As denounced by the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, on Saturday 1er July, social networks play a role of sounding board in these dramatic events and accelerate the effect of mimicry. But they also serve as a valve and allow us to take a step back from these violent, sometimes grotesque images, by diverting them. “Smile since it’s serious”, sang Alain Chamfort. An old “ref”.
On TikTok, other “refs” are the subject of montages, which compile the best punchlines heard in videos of looting that have gone viral. “Get me a Yop! » SO, “Did you have fries? »in a McDo, “Is there any laundry? » at Lidl, or “Take some mascarpone for the tiramisu!” » were thus among the most popular on the social network. In an article of The Conversationpublished on Monday July 3, Romain Huët, lecturer in communication sciences and author of Riot vertigo (PUF, 2019), explains it as follows: “Instead of arousing repulsion in the witnesses or the participants, this violence is at the origin of amusement, of collective enthusiasm, of vertigo, even forms of drunkenness which produce in everyone a deep feeling of unreality. »
Sunday thief mocked
But it is another sequence which seems to have, for the moment, won the bet of the diversion. While CNews journalists were live in a devastated Foot Locker store in Sevran (Seine-Saint-Denis), Sunday morning, the viewer could see a man in the background, from behind, his arms loaded with boxes of shoes, walk calmly towards the exit. And find yourself facing three police officers who entered the store at the same time. “ Do you work here? Ah yes… So you use it, right? ! », asked the policewoman, before arresting the man in flagrante delicto in front of the dumbfounded gaze of the journalists. This is how dozens of people have had their backs photographed, in the same posture and with the same bags, with an inset comment: “Do you have the ref? »to make fun of the Sunday thief, who will never have lived up to his name so well.
You have 24.85% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.