wired | Last year more than 500 people were murdered in Chicago, a greater
number than in far more populous cities such as New York and Los
Angeles. The prevalence of gun crimes in Chicago is due in large part to
a fragmentation of the gangs on its streets: There are now an estimated
70,000 members in the city, spread out among a mind-boggling 850
cliques, with many of these groupings formed around a couple of street
corners or a specific school or park. Young people in these areas are
like young people everywhere, using technology to coordinate with their
friends and chronicle their every move. But in neighborhoods where
shootings are common, the use of online tools has turned hazardous, as
gang violence is now openly advertised and instigated online.
We naturally associate criminal activity with secrecy, with
conspiracies hatched in alleyways or back rooms. Today, though, foolish
as it may be in practice, street gangs have adopted a level of
transparency that might impress even the most fervent Silicon Valley
futurist. Every day on Facebook and Twitter, on Instagram and YouTube,
you can find unabashed teens flashing hand signs, brandishing guns,
splaying out drugs and wads of cash. If we live in an era of openness,
no segment of the population is more surprisingly open than 21st-century
gang members, as they simultaneously document and roil the streets of
America’s toughest neighborhoods.
There’s a term sometimes used for a gangbanger who
stirs up trouble online: Facebook driller. He rolls out of bed in the
morning, rubs his eyes, picks up his phone. Then he gets on Facebook and
starts insulting some person he barely knows, someone in a rival crew.
It’s so much easier to do online than face-to-face. Soon someone else
takes a screenshot of the post and starts passing it around. It’s one
thing to get cursed out in front of four or five guys, but online the
whole neighborhood can see it—the whole city, even. So the target has to
retaliate just to save face. And at that point, the quarrel might be
with not just the Facebook driller a few blocks away but also haters 10
miles north or west who responded to the post. What started as a
provocation online winds up with someone getting drilled in real life. Fist tap Big Don.
