What were the feared teenage troublemaker types during your youth?

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EitherChannel4874@reddit

Street thugs and rude boys.

Street robbery and the risk of having to fight was an almost daily occurrence unfortunately which wasn't great.

A lot of crazy shit went on that resulted in death, jail, drug addiction or being banned completely from the area for being a menace.

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AverageCheap4990@reddit

Charvers but they weren't much of a problem.

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Flat_Fault_7802@reddit

Skinheads mods football hooligans street thugs

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tshirtguy2000@reddit (OP)

This is your reply to the previous thread?

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reclueso@reddit

Mopeds, even in the very early 90’s you’d regularly have to leg it away from a moped or two on a night out. Being chased down Dog Shit Alley on a Friday night was a right of passage.

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reclueso@reddit

Obviously, it was the rider that was the issue, they weren’t evil sentient mopeds… or I hope they weren’t.

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catschimeras@reddit

cackled so hard reading this that the neighbours' dog barked. sorry meggie, but in my defence it was funny...

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Flat_Fault_7802@reddit

Very few on the list are so called troublemakers.

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DenzLore@reddit

Not sure that ravers belong on that list. I don't remember them causing any problems other than talking bollocks & incessantly chewing gum.

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Sea-Claim3992@reddit

Or their own gums 😂 but to be fair, would you tell your young kids to be chill with people out their face on whatever it is they have taken.

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Remote_Development13@reddit

The moral panic over ravers/rave culture was massive and a key factor in the passage of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which significantly curtailed individual freedoms.

They may not have been feared by young people, but they certainly were feared by society at large

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fgspq@reddit

What a joke of a piece of legislation though.

Making "repetitive beats" a crime

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MttWhtly@reddit

I miss goths. Emos are alright but goths were better

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Kitchen_Part_882@reddit

I didn't cause any trouble back in the early 90s, unless you count talking bollocks and incessantly chewing gum...

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tshirtguy2000@reddit (OP)

Did parents tell their kids to stay away from them?

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You're getting downvoted, but you're absolutely right that there was a lot of panicky, chronically uninformed bollocks doing the rounds - when my little sister was at school, she was into fluorescent coloured bracelets and what you'd now term happy hardcore music. She brought a tape in as it was her turn at lunchtime, and one of the teachers - proper little old lady type - not only made her turn it off, but brought my parents in for an intervention about how her musical and fashion tastes meant she was at risk from drug dealers who were known to hang around the school with their "acid and bad Es".

(There were no drug dealers hanging around the school and I was never once offered any acid and bad Es, I feel cheated.)

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tshirtguy2000@reddit (OP)

Cheers

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DenzLore@reddit

There was a lot of drugs but that is par for the course for most youth subculture. They didn't cause fights though or were particularly antagonistic.

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KebabMonster001@reddit

I wouldn’t put this into the ‘teenage trouble maker’ bracket but back in the mid 80s there was the Satanic Panic.

Stemming from America - basically, anyone who played Dungeons & Dragons was a closet satanist and someone who played such, was a person to avoid or watch closely.

As a player at the time, I can confirm that the suspicion was real.

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geese_moe_howard@reddit

At school, a group of boys we called the 'I Want To Be Black Gang' who were extremely white but really into hip-hop music and fashion.

Later on, just plain old chavs.

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Marble-Boy@reddit

Travellers, and skin heads. My brother was suspended from school for shaving his head in 1993. Travellers have always had a reputation regardless of how true or not it is... but they can be hard work right across the board.

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tshirtguy2000@reddit (OP)

These were the children of adult travellers?

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HugsandHate@reddit

Whose else would they be?

It's a culture.

Non-traveller parents don't have traveller kids...

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tshirtguy2000@reddit (OP)

Where would you realistically encounter Traveller youths in everyday life? They tend to be off the grid in camp sites etc.

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TheLookingGlass-@reddit

Anywhere and everywhere youd come across any other teenagers? There are settled Traveller communities in lots of parts of England. Kent, Stockton on Tees, Leeds, New Forest to name but a few.

Although many of them locally to me tended not to attend school as frequently/at all once at secondary, they were definitely still 'about' and known locally. Some lived in houses and others in one of the several permanent caravan sites locally.

That being said, Travellers shouldnt have been mentioned at all as this thread is meant to be about 'groups' not ethnicity/heritage (I know you weren't the one to them bring up).

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HugsandHate@reddit

You kinda half answered your own question there.

Around places that are campsites and whatnot. Rural areas.

I bump in to them sometimes at the local pub. No idea where they come from, though.

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StillJustJones@reddit

Blimey, poor old Sharon and Tracey are being lumped in with skinheads?!

Essex girls down at Raquels or the Zero 6 nightclub did little to deserve that.

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Colossal_Squids@reddit

My nan worked at Raquels. She would respectfully disagree.

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StillJustJones@reddit

Okay ‘did little’ might be a stretch…. But getting leathered on snakebite (or if classier cinzano bianco) then getting railed by a bloke called Barry in the back of an xr3i does not cause the societal disruption of skinheads or chavs.

I still stand by my comment.

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Colossal_Squids@reddit

Xr3i? You’d be lucky if they made it out of the bar!

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surewhatever01@reddit

Chavs or their 90s predecessors Townies.

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Wonderful-Cow-9664@reddit

Scallys. The type who tucked their tracker bottoms into their socks.

Also, skinheads 🤣

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Insideout_Ink_Demon@reddit

Scallies here too. Have they now upgraded to being called chavs? Or are chavs separate?

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Wonderful-Cow-9664@reddit

I think chavs are different. I’m not entirely sure, I just know that scallys were the scourge of society in the 90s 🤣

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tshirtguy2000@reddit (OP)

Scallys are northern, Chavs southern

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MttWhtly@reddit

We had chavs in Yorkshire from about 2003. Of course there were groups that existed prior to that but it was around then that I recall the word chav being adopted.

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tshirtguy2000@reddit (OP)

Sally wags?

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Pizzagoessplat@reddit

The chavs/townies. But they where just hilariously laughed at back in the 90s

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Ok_Peanut_7672@reddit

...unless you were a goth/greebo. I was a jeans/t-shirt type, but my mate (a massive Slipknot fan) ran into a gang of them, who called him a 'fucking hippy mongoloid', broke his nose, and threw him in the river.

Then you had what happened to Sophie Lancaster a few years later.

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Admiral_Snackbar7@reddit

Raggamuffins. Pin rolls and Chippie jeans. kisses teef

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DivePotato@reddit

Townies

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NoSpring6@reddit

A "big girl" told some boys to push me into some stinging nettles once. She said my best friend was "alright", but I was "not alright". I'm a boy. That was my first taste of unfairness.

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Alternative-Fox-7255@reddit

young farmers

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thesaharadesert@reddit

And their mums

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FinneyontheWing@reddit

Is it true that there's a place in a man's head that if you shoot it, it will blow up?

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ta0029271@reddit

Barry boys and travellers

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SimpleManc88@reddit

Is that list just some suggestions? Because I’ve never in my life heard people having trouble with glam rockers, punks, and goths lol.

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tshirtguy2000@reddit (OP)

Whether they initiated trouble or not, their inclusion was based on the perception people had of them. And Goths certainly were associated with violence in the late 90s.

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SimpleManc88@reddit

They really weren’t lol. And who cares about ignorant people’s perceptions? I’m a Metalhead and it’s a scene of the friendliest, most kind people you could ever hope to meet. The ones with tattoos and piercings are typically decent, peaceful people. The most evil on Earth are wealthy and wear designer suits everyday.

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Kitchen_Part_882@reddit

Same misconception around metalheads as bikers.

I've had a pint or several with both groups, sometimes at the same time in a club I used to frequent and they're sound people. Bikers in particular tend to look after their own and don't go looking for trouble.

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tshirtguy2000@reddit (OP)

I don't disagree with you but it was based on perception from mainstream Britain.

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SimpleManc88@reddit

Ah. OK. Fair enough 🙂

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Unhappy_Clue701@reddit

Really? In the mid 90s I (then a teenager) worked in the only shoe shop for many miles that sold Doc Martens boots. The people who bought them were either massive bikers with long greasy hair, leather jackets and lots of tattoos, or black-haired, black-clothed, pallid-faced goths. Both sets of customers were just about the nicest customers we had, much nicer to deal with than very demanding old women, or stroppy Karen-types. When I was a student there were plenty of goth types about too, all very calm by nature - they just liked the look, the music, etc. Hard to imagine any violence being instigated by them - though maybe they could react in genuine self-defence as other ‘youth stereotypes’ were certainly prone to attacking them.

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Kitchen_Part_882@reddit

Glam rockers included one Paul Francis Gadd...

Fans of the genre though? Not that I know of.

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Raiob@reddit

We had this one guy called Sponge who used to come up from some rough area with his mates every so often and just punch people for absolutely no reason. Guy was a menace. Probably dead now.

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schluffschluff@reddit

Big Philip and his brothers. They would not hesitate to push you in nettles. Brambles, even. Sometimes they didn’t come to school, just stood outside fighting with each other. Best not even to make eye contact or you’d get a shove.

This was all in primary, never saw him after that.

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DiligentCockroach700@reddit

For my parents it was Teddy Boys. For me it was mods and rockers followed by skinheads.

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WorldIsYourOxter@reddit

Boot boys/bovver boys.

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Stinkinhippy@reddit

Hoodies.. was insane amounts of judgement for something that is now pretty much an everyday item for most folks.

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AstroChet@reddit

Chavs and roadmen for me

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tshirtguy2000@reddit (OP)

Roadmen?

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AstroChet@reddit

It comes from London gang culture, they were originally guys that knew the area really well, hence the name roadman, but it developed into a subculture of its own, black puffer jackets, tracksuits, Nike Air Forces or Huaraches for those that remember, a specific lingo derived from Jamaican and British slang.

It became popular with the rise of Drill music, which would glorify this type of culture, talk in explicit detail about crimes they committed etc. This then influenced a lot of people my age when I was a teenager, to the point where white kids from the suburbs were doing it too, acting fake hard and putting on the accent for popularity or 'clout'.

It is kind of dying out now but as someone who works in education, I can see it is still ever present.

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Background_Duck_1372@reddit

Wasteman...

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tshirtguy2000@reddit (OP)

Oh like Ali G types

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jodorthedwarf@reddit

Not really. Ali Gs more a Chav who styles himself after American gangland culture while a Roadman is more uniquely British. All black clothes with Adidas tracksuits and puffer jackets that they wear all year round. Also balaclavas and a general obsession with covering their face. They even have their own stand and dialect that's heavily influenced by Jamaican phrasing but they're not necessarily uniquely black Jamaican or even just black.

They started out in London but the style and associated gangland culture of it has been exported to other towns and cities across the UK.

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tshirtguy2000@reddit (OP)

Thx

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Ging3rNuts@reddit

Chavs were the main troublemakers when I was at school. Pink polo shirts and Burberry as far as the eye could see

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IcemanGeneMalenko@reddit

Chavs when I was younger. Epecially the summer of 2007 with Gary Newlove and Sophie Lancaster

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AlternativeSea8247@reddit

Football casuals mostly

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ThrustersToFull@reddit

So I was 14 when Columbine happened. I didn't even grow up in America, but the impact that had on our school was insane. Suddenly anyone interested in "goth stuff", wearing black long coats or expressing an interest in Marilyn Manson was viewed with suspicion. There was borderline hysteria if any student seemed to be "depressed" because that, of course, meant they were guaranteed to perpetrate a massacre. Creative writing essays were scrutinised for anything even vaguely incriminating. Internet use logs were scoured for activity that meant students might be "dangerous" - which resulted in one student being accused of manufacturing bombs because he was looking up info on explosives (for a chemistry paper he had to write, it was later revealed).

The hysteria around that time was really quite insane, and all the time the adults are wondering around frothing at the mouth about "protecting the young people".