Sunday, July 11, 2010

Anti Social Behaviour

I had two contrasting bus journeys yesterday.

The first trip of note was on my daily commute home from work. It was just after rush hour and the bus was relatively full, warm and wet from the downpour outside. As I was listening to music and reading a great roar emerged from the back of the bus. It did not take long to figure out that the noise was coming from a large group of young teenagers that had taken to shouting ridiculous quotes, singing clichéd songs (re: Journey on a bus journey) and bellowing obscenities.

On the other hand I was on a bus very late last night coming in from an evening of revelry. I, like many of my friends was quite drunk and likely to look for a bit of fun to take away the draining agony of such a journey. We had jokingly thrown out a few clichéd phrases to some other people that we were acquainted with on the bus and it very quickly snow-balled into a loud and hilarious shouting match. I had a vague thought for the few people on the bus that did not seem to be enjoying themselves. I justified it by thinking that this behaviour is obvious and even appropriate on this particular bus.

I suppose the difference between these bus journeys is that in one case I felt there was a huge level of anti-social behaviour as ordinary commuters were disrupted by unemployed teenagers. In the second case the revelry seemed like a case of bus-wide pro social behaviour. Perhaps there is a case to be made for myself here and some guilt could be assuaged. At the same time, it cannot be denied that my behaviour was in fact, disruptive and I should not have two standards for similar circumstances.

I still however, maintain that we were much funnier!

-The English Student

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