Do You Wanna Be In My Gang?

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Were you ever in a gang at school? How big was it? How tough was it? What was it called? What were its dread initiation rites?

― Tom, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

(as so often posting a question i have this suspicion it's been asked before...Nick?)

― Tom, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Don't think so. I always wanted to be in a gang when I was university. Not like a bicycle chain-wielding gang. More like a Bloomsbury set, I suppose.

― N., Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The only people I remember being in a gang at school were geeky first years with very few friends who, about a week in, tried to form a gang for two apparent reasons:

1. It made them feel important. 2. It happened quite a lot in Grange Hill, which was their only secondary school reference point.*

* This also applies to self imposed nicknames.

― Matt DC, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I was in a gang when I was about seven. We were called the Mafushwa Bushmen. We ran around naked a lot. The initiation was to scream the word "Flooch" with as much enthusiasm as could be mustered. No one got in, ever.

― Sam, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Only the So Solid Crew but they are a CREW not a GANG so it's not quite the same.

― Emma, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

It would be better if they were a CRU but sadly they are not.

― Nicole, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm getting a bit sick of this constant mob mentality when it comes to mob mentality.

― Tim, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

FLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Can I join can I join????

― Sarah IN THE NUDDY, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

My gang was made up of all the kids who didn't get invited to the meeting on the day before school started where the headmaster organised all the real peer groups.

There was five of us. A brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal.

― misterjones, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

oh we were the hardest gang in the school. initiation rites included typing in a hex coding of z80 code to make a 4K game WITHOUT CHECKSUMS -- that's how hard we were

wandering around the school corridors menacing people with our floppy disks. HOW THEY COWERED! IN PH34R. or maybe they were just avoiding us, hmm. now i think about it...

― Alan T, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I've never been in a gang, though I was in a clique.

Amusingly, I posted a thread with the exact same title to the Bowlie Boards, but that was an attempt to recruit people to Frank's APA.

― DV, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Me was in the Boys gang when I was 7-8. We were a gang primarily because we were the oldest boys in a school where the girls were up to 11. So we obviously needed to be on our toes when the enemy were so much more powerful than us (some of these girls were like a foot taller than us).

The last year of school was fantastic fun, esepcially when the weather was good. It was fantastic trying to out-think the girls, though obviously they were better than us at just about eveything. I was the "brains" figure (god knows how). I never got physically abused, but my friend Olly, our leader, once had his trousers pulled down and his willy twisted. Though it's possible this was just a tale of bravado.

We even got in trouble once, as we found this wicked tree camp thing in the park and didn't hear the whistle going off. We ran back to school, but only got there as the kids were going through the front door. They weren't best impressed.

Those were the days. Incidentally, I've just found one of said girls - the one I had a crush on - on Fiends reunited. Should I see if she remembers me?

― Mark C, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I met my old friend Captain Bluebeard on Fiends reunited.

― Ronan, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Jesus christ, the funniest thing I'll ever say and it's a complete thread assassin. ah well.

― Ronan, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Well, you see, we take it as read that you really would have a friend named Captain Bluebeard.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Not a friend! A FIEND!. gah.......

― Ronan, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Don't give me that guff, you clearly call him both a friend and a fiend in your sentence! Punk.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

More fighting please! Ronan, is your Fiends Reunited pseudonym Rear Admiral Oldliver?

― Tim, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

My liver is fine. It's my bladder I'm worried about these days. Would it be morally wrong to piss when you need to? OF COURSE NOT. And say perhaps you NEEDED to piss and happened to be in a public place, would THAT be so wrong? OF COURSE NOT. And say this place was a bus?????????? Why oh why must the bus take so long to get home all the time. I'm fearing tonights bladder pain already. That and the legion of older friday night people hassling me and asking can I roll their joints for them, "HA YOU LOOK LIKE YOU CAN WITH THAT HAIR, IS IT WINDY OUT YEAH I BET IT IS, HA".

Now you know what the Dublin Nitelinks are like.

― Ronan, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

No gang, but I remember at 13 having a new ('cooler') friend hold an (uncool)'ex-friend' so I could beat him up. As an adult, my reactions are 1) feel like crying, 2) what ever happened to ex- friend, he was so brilliant and interesting. He got me into Ozzy and Elvis Costello simultaneously?! He was so meta that I mostly didn't know wtf he was talking about. Yeah... he had it coming.

Fuck, between this thread and the one on I*M I feel about 100 years old. Can someone please wheel me over by the TV so I can forget this pain?

― Hunter, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I LIKE TO SUCK ON TOMS' EARLOBES UNTIL THEY PRODUCE BRAINMILK

― Mike Hanle y, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Grody.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

when I were a nipper (late '70s) we had a thang for fake cult religions which were like gans. One was thee worship of "P'NOD" (I thought ov this - I got the idea when I pix0red up a "Pernod" ad ashtray and my thumb blocked out thee "e" and thee "r") being a devotee of P'NOD basically wasn't very sophisticated. It involved going round in a gang and asking people if they feared the wrath of p'nod or something like that anyway. When they responded in a baffled manner we beat them up. WORSHIP P'NOD HERETIC!!! Then we tried it on some kids who were harder than us, & p'nod worship faded away. Poor p'nod. (BTW I am NOT making this up) earlier on (I was in 2nd year comprehensive so this will have been abt 1977) there was a religion based on IIRC a doctor who monster called agador (sp?) the key phrase was "agador wants your balls". No really. to join the cult of agador one had to be kicked in the stones by an already inducted member. Strangely enough no girls ever applied, so we never had to work out what to do in that instance. Anyway, agador bit the dust when a kid had to be taken to hospital, & the teachers cracked down hard. Aahh the formative days of my life THANK FUCK THEY'RE SO LONG AGO.

― Norman Phay, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

gans = gangs, obv.

― Norman Phay, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Grody? Ned, I thought you'd appreciate that an EC proselytizer got a bit of a knock?

― Hunter, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Scratch that, I think I see what you were responding to...

― Hunter, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

My gang memberships have all been of the cultish type, as well. The cult of Alchemy has given way to the cult of Froofiness, and undesirables simply do not bother us.

― Maria, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Back when I was a youngin' me and my neighbor decided we wanted a girl skateboarding posse called Ginger Snap! Um, it didn't really happen. But we were tough.

― Mandee, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

When I was around 8 years old, I joined the Naughty Gang, I tried to get them to go legit. I was only in the Naughty Gang for a day.

― jel --, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

what did the Naughty Gang actually do?

― rainy, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

There was a gang of 14-year-old in Cambridge MA ca. 1988 that we called the "Wesley Wackers" though I have no idea why and I don't think they called themselves that.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I was in the S.S.W (Secret Society of Withches. We made potions, out of felt tip pens and toothpaste, that would blow yr mind. We were tough.

― ducklingmonster, Friday, 1 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Rainy: I think they did stuff like steal milk and pencils.

― jel --, Saturday, 2 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I was in a pre-teen gang that woz just me and a few friends riding around aimlessly on our bikes occasionally knocking on people's doors then running away. A particularly idiotic member of this gang used to steal footballs whenever they got kicked off the school playground pitch, and I would laugh when the hard kids hunted him down and beat him up. Ah, wot larks!

― DG, Saturday, 2 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

DG, YOUR'E A BAD SEED. YOU DESERVE TO BE CUPPED A FART

― Mike Hanle y, Saturday, 2 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I was in the Warlord secret spy ring. Does that count as a gang?

― DV, Saturday, 2 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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