NationStates Jolt Archive

What is the best description you can come up with to say what a chav, is.

These cool people who dress in track suits, sneakers and gold chains and prove how tough they are by getting together with their 10 best friends and beating up one guy.

What is the best description you can come up with to say what a chav, is.

Scotland already has it. A ned: Non educated Deliquant. :D

Main Entry: chav
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: the lower class; uneducated and ignorant people
Etymology: perh. Romany chav child
Usage: derogatory slang

Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English, Preview Edition (v 0.9.6)
Copyright © 2003-2005 Lexico Publishing Group, LLC

These cool people who dress in track suits, sneakers and gold chains and prove how tough they are by getting together with their 10 best friends and beating up one guy.
:D

The GLC (http://www.musikbase.de/images/groups/Goldie-Lookin-Chain.jpg) :p

So what your all saying is, a chav's nothing but a Pikey?

The GLC (http://www.musikbase.de/images/groups/Goldie-Lookin-Chain.jpg) :p
GLC are the only good chavs in the world:p

what are chavs? bastards.

my favourite chavs:
http://worldofwonder.net/images/june041-1-tm.jpg

are you a chav test http://www.skyone.co.uk/quiz/pgequiz.aspx?qid=9&pid=14

You knows it!

Chavs: Stumble out of pub as I'm walking past and threaten to hurt me. Also used to throw things at me in high school :(

:confused: :sniper: <(Evils!)

White Trash, UK style.

Chav is synonymous for pikey.

Young ignorant teenagers who idolise bling and think that gold chains and climafits are the height of fashion.

Theres an infestation over here in the UK.

The most famous wearer of Chav "fashions" is definately Collen "Moose" McLoughlin. Wayne Rooneys' bird, if my spelling is bad. If it is, I don't care. Moose is nothing more than a whore for the tabloids and magasines like "Closer", which no-one in their right mind reads unless they are in a dentists' waiting room.

I am angry. :sniper:

They're uber-townies...or just normal townies but a different name.

Anyway, people who go around in brand labels just for the label, with hoodies, peaked caps etc etc a norm.

Issues with drugs and violence etc are also thought to be the norm.

In other words 'those people we keep away from'

A touch of Ricer, a touch of Wigger, a touch of stupid.

Ta da.

These cool people who dress in track suits, sneakers and gold chains and prove how tough they are by getting together with their 10 best friends and beating up one guy.

Rappers?

Rappers?
Well, these rappers
www.youknowsit.co.uk

No because rappers pack heat. More accurately, rappers are OK people (GLC, Run DMC, D12...). The pseudo-rappers who essentially do nothing but brag about money and sex are the bad ones.

Well, these rappers
www.youknowsit.co.uk


Or that tupac shakur fellow. Either one.

No because rappers pack heat. More accurately, rappers are OK people (GLC, Run DMC, D12...). The pseudo-rappers who essentially do nothing but brag about money and sex are the bad ones.

I am sure that if gun laws were different in the UK, many chavs would also "pack heat."

And why are rappers OK people, when they do exactly the things that make you disapprove of chavs?

And why are rappers OK people, when they do exactly the things that make you disapprove of chavs?

Rappers don't kick footballs at your head?

Though I sure if I knew any rappers, they'd annoy me too. :)

Well, these rappers
www.youknowsit.co.uk
i love the soap bar song :p

glc rule...play the spliff rolling game on the site :D

God damn it not this again...

Chavs do not have purpose other than 'bling' and sex, it defines their existence to a massice extent. What defines rappers is that they give something. D12 and Run DMC made good records, they were defined by them. GLC are amusing and old-skool rappers, they define themselves in music.

Chavs on the street are purposeless, the live for their culture rather than create new culture.

From the New York Times Sunday Magazine:

Consumed: The Good, the Plaid and the Ugly
January 2, 2005
By ROB WALKER

In Elizabethan England, there were sumptuary laws to prevent members of the rabble from dressing above their station. This was never really effective, but to understand how truly futile it is these days for the upper classes to try keeping the masses in their sartorial place, you need to know what a chav is. ''Chav'' -- the champion buzzword of 2004 in Britain, according to one language maven there-- refers to something between a subculture and a social class. Experts disagree about the slang term's origins, but the unofficial definition sounds rather condescending or even cruel: a clueless suburbanite with appalling taste and a tendency toward track suits and loud jewelry. Still, as with ''redneck'' in America, a term that is imposed as a marker of scorn can be embraced as a marker of pride; at the very least, a certain humor and irony lace many of the discussions about chavs on Web sites and in books like ''Chav! A User's Guide to Britain's New Ruling Class.''

In any case, there's one aspect of chavness that almost every description mentions right away: Chavs love Burberry.

The recognizable plaid pattern that Burberry, the venerable English luxury brand, used to tuck away as the discreet lining of its famous raincoats has long since broken free to serve as a status signifier. Presumably it is status that chavs are looking for when they snap up anything and everything emblazoned with the plaid. The most popular element of the chav uniform is the Burberry plaid cap.

Of course, when a huge and decidedly not upper-crust class embraces such a signifier, its meaning is completely altered. In Britain, business-school professors and marketing professionals have debated the tarnishing of Burberry exclusivity. ''The amusing thing and the entertaining thing for many people is that because chavs are new money, they're kind of faintly ridiculous, spending their money on tawdry baubles,'' observes Lucian James of the San Francisco branding agency Agenda Inc., which has consulted for various luxury brands. James, who is English, points to David Beckham and his wife, Victoria (the former Posh Spice), as the reigning monarchs of celebrity chavdom, although when bad-taste transculturalist Britney Spears bought a Burberry-style plaid bed for her dog, the British tabloid press took note.

Sounding thoroughly unamused, Stacey Cartwright, a Burberry executive, argues that this chav business is just a trivial tabloid story. The international brand continues to thrive in chav-free North America and Asia, she says. Responding to reports that Burberry discontinued one of its plaid caps in the U.K., she says that the ''small'' British market was slow anyway. ''The chav issue won't have helped, but it's on top of what was already quite a sluggish market,'' she says. Besides, she continues, ''the caps that the so-called chavs wear are actually counterfeit products; they're not our products.'' Burberry still offers, for example, a $200 cashmere plaid cap in Britain. ''That's out of the price range of most of these individuals,'' Cartwright says.

It certainly seems that chav gear is often counterfeit, as Burberry plaid is both distinct and easy to copy. It's the distinctness, actually, that helps make it such a ripe target for adoption by someone other than the classic swells that Burberry apparently prefers -- after all, in the United States, Burberry is one of many luxury brands popular among rap artists. All of which shows how fluid brand meaning has become since the days of sumptuary laws, and how it's ultimately consumers who decide what that meaning is.

Chavs are also reported to have a fondness for Gucci, Nokia phones and Stella Artois beer, among others. Oakley Thump sunglasses (with a built-in MP3 player) were recently named ''chaviest gadget'' at an alternative tech-awards ceremony. Interestingly, James, the branding consultant, suggests that in some ways chav culture has parallels to punk culture. ''It's the same kind of slightly disenfranchised suburban kids,'' he says, but this time, instead of building a subculture around, say, anger and intoxicants, they've built one around consumerism. ''In the same way in the 70's they would sort of do glue, now they're all just sitting at McDonald's wearing Burberry hats.'' In chav culture, then, Burberry may be -- to tweak the slogan that CBS Records used to sell the Clash, long ago -- the only brand that matters.

The GLC (http://www.musikbase.de/images/groups/Goldie-Lookin-Chain.jpg) :p

They look like a bunch of cheesy white rappers from the 80s.

They look like a bunch of cheesy white rappers from the 80s.

That's sort of the point...

They look like a bunch of cheesy white rappers from the 80s.
their website
Well, these rappers
www.youknowsit.co.uk

just watch their 'half man half machine' vid:p

Chavs do not have purpose other than 'bling' and sex, it defines their existence to a massice extent. What defines rappers is that they give something. D12 and Run DMC made good records, they were defined by them. GLC are amusing and old-skool rappers, they define themselves in music.

Chavs on the street are purposeless, the live for their culture rather than create new culture.

Haha, chav culture = hip hop culture, and you know it.

That's sort of the point...

Didn't they catch on in the 80s with the rest of that they look like imbeciles? Or does pop culture take an additional 20 years to permeate their minds?

Haha, chav culture = hip hop culture, and you know it.

Chav=wannabe gangsta. I like hip-hop though so maybe it's just me trying to dissasociate.

Chav=wannabe gangsta.


Most people here who adopt the "gansta" style of dress &ct., are wannabe ganstas too. I am also sure that amongst those who are labelled as chavs, there are some hardcore criminals as well as petty troublemakers. The only thing that chavs lack, as yet, is a well defined gang culture. I'm sure that they will figure it out soon enough though.

I like hip-hop though so maybe it's just me trying to dissasociate.

Probably the case.

I cannot believe no one has pointed out this site (http://www.chavscum.co.uk)

I cannot believe no one has pointed out this site (http://www.chavscum.co.uk)

or this one (http://www.glasgowsurvival.co.uk)

Here we call them knackers/pikeys/scumbags.