IOl
composed messages, the initial electronic communication between new acquaintances
often took the form of humorous forwarded text, video, or images, again typically with
either overt or implicit anti-establishment meaning. This was and continues to be seen as
a way of establishing positive rapport without seeming too eager or interested: a play at
appearing connected (with popular culture and the youth Zeitgeist), and socially adept.
Thus portable caches index an important aspect of one’s identity during social
interactions107 while strengthening intersubjective bonds. It follows that the anti-
establishment messages, images, and actions portrayed by this material often inform
bonding activities within established groups such as attending particular concerts,
committing vandalism, cutting class, breaking the law, contravening certain social and
cultural conventions, etc.108 These bonding activities have become discursive spaces
where idiosyncratic identity negotiation take place, strengthening intersubjective bonds
and a sense of unity with other youth. Over time these micro-scale inter subjective
bonding activities have came to include more involved activities requiring a greater
degree of commitment and even some risk.
Today, young people from 10 years old and up talk openly and often act boldly
against the StateZestablishment and the “situation” (κατασταση), not only as a means of
protest but also as a way of bonding or showing solidarity with their friend groups and
peers, a local social category referred to as one’sparéa (παpεα). A dramatic example of
this occurred recently in an Athenian suburb where students acted collectively to trap
their teachers in a classroom, demanding the reinstatement of an expelled classmate in
107 Miller (2004; 2005) and others have noted the use of circulated electronic material in the formation of
specific and sometimes iconoclastic youth identities. The Greek example shows the formulation of specific
political identities.
los Of course, the degree and specific iterations of these actions depend on multiple factors like, for
example, context and the socioeconomic status of the friend group.