Vancouver Riots Make For Compelling Social Media Content

Normally, wanton destruction in the face of a major championship comes from the winning city. In Vancouver, however, fans were obviously unhappy with the way the Canucks lost Game Seven of the Stanley Cup Finals at the hands of the Boston Bruins, and instead of, oh, going down to the local watering hole and drowning their sorrows in beers and shots, Vancouver Canucks fans decided to do the next best thing: Riot. It’s clear the Vancouver city proper was the reason the Canucks lost, so why not just destroy everything, right?

And that’s just what Canucks fans tried to do. Meanwhile, Roberto Luongo goes unpunished.

While the riots themselves are not necessarily web news-related, the reaction to the destruction certainly is. Naturally, social media was where the majority of the reaction took place, and while Twitter was indeed blowing up — in fact, there are still two active trends related to the Vancouver riots — there were also videos uploaded that provided a clear picture of just how raucous downtown Vancouver got after Canucks were summarily dismissed by the Bruins.

First off, some highlights from the Twitter nation.

As indicated, there are two trends focusing on the Vancouver fun, one titled “Dear Vancouver,” and “#canucksriot,” using the standard hashtag presentation. Although there are many posts for each topic, two of the more ones from the “#canucksriot” sums things up nicely:

Further trending topic fun:

Perhaps my favorite of them all:

The fun continues:

Then there are the tweets that contain actual information about the situation, while others chastise their fellow countrymen:

And then there are the tweets that link to additional user-generated content, like the following:

The picture Jane Daly is referring to, and yes, her use of the term “rocket scientist” is quite fitting:

Speaking of Facebook, Vancouver police created and are monitoring this particular page that invites Canucks fans to post their own riot pictures. Clearly, the hope is to catch some of the rocket scientists Daly mentioned, and judging by some of the submissions, the Facebook “trap” looks like it will bear some fruit.

The video in question shows just how out of hand these things can get when you mix alcohol, a mob mentality, and the disappointment of losing:

Naturally, there are additional videos as well:

Boston fans, on the other hand, were, by all accounts, fairly well behaved after their team snatched Lord Stanley’s cup from Canadian hands. Clearly, when it comes to winning professional sports championships, the city of Boston has been there before.

The lead image is courtesy of the Vancouver Sun, and quite a few of them do a great job of showing the absolute chaos Vancouver officials had to deal with.