Several times I have mentioned the increasing popularity of BlackBerrys among more rowdy elements. BlackBerrys were said to be at the heart of the “organisation” of last August’s flat-screen-tv riots in London.
Up to now, though, I cannot remember a stabbing at a BlackBerry event. Yesterday it happened. After the shindig, which attracted a host of technical journalists, there was a scramble for the cloakrooms and a man was stabbed in the neck by a broken bottle.
The telling paragraph from The Telegraph’s report:
People were crying and quite a lot were being sick, whether from the blood or the alcohol. A lot of people here were teen users of BlackBerry who don’t seem to have had a free drink before.
They sound just like the people I now see using BBs on a daily basis. With customers like these, who needs bad publicity? It’s a far cry from four years ago when BlackBerry ruled the serious enterprise market.
Seems to be simply an extension of the binge drinking culture that has made night life in most British city centres so unpleasant – I gather.
But not new. I remember well an evening in Swiss Cottage years ago (about 1969) when I was doing the sound for the Bonzo Dog Doo Da Band in a pub and I was introduced to how fast a beer bottle can become a weapon,and how fast such "incidents" are over…
Nothing new under the sun really….