01:10:09 CHICKEN JOCKEY AND HUMAN NATURE
By Twinkle Raut
Editors note:
The best ubique issue I have edited or read in a long time. Chicken jockey -J
1 hour, 10 minutes, and 9 seconds into A Minecraft Movie, Jack Black drops the line that sends shivers down the spines of the Hoyts minimum wage workers.
‘CHICKEN JOCKEY.’ His voice booms through the theater. It’s enticing, bold, direct, arousing. Popcorn flies from one end of the room to another as the audience surges from their seats, charging at one another in an explosive moment of vandalism and excitement. People yell, throw things, and leap over whole rows of seating. The aftermath is a theater floor completely covered in popcorn, spilled drinks, and sullied Minecraft paraphernalia. Broken chair armrests, stained walls, and even destruction to the main screen.
One would expect the culprits of the Chicken Jockey Riots to be six year olds, toddlers, yet in reality it is a movement that spans generations. Because of this, some theaters have required adult supervision for younger kids and other’s have restricted the entry for larger groups of unsupervised teenage boys.
This makes me wonder a few things. If the Minecraft Movie had been released a hundred years ago, would a "chicken jockey" still have sparked chaos and destruction? Is a “chicken jockey” inevitable? Is this kind of behavior specific to Gen Z, or is it something more universal? If it is unique to this generation, what does it say about us? What does it say about our future? On the other hand, if this isn't a problem inherent to Gen Z, what does it reveal about society as a whole?
Since the beginning of time, each generation has criticised the behaviour and work ethic of the younger generation. Currently, older generations insist that youth unruliness is a modern epidemic. That a new phenomenon, social media, is addling the brains or that it is the sole cause of irresponsible and reckless behaviour. While it may be easy to ignore these beliefs and write it off as how things have “always been”, the introduction of social media has had negative effects on the behaviour of young people. Gen Z has grown up surrounded by destructive viral stunts and prank challenges, along with a sea of online negative influences, these trends are undoubtedly contributing to a difference in behavior among today’s adolescents. A 2023 study found that viral stunts have caused a 35% increase in public disturbances in comparison to the 2010s. Furthermore, short-form content, only properly originating in 2013, has been proven to disrupt key developmental abilities when introduced at a young age, just by the sheer amount of time that young people spend on Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts. Along with this, studies by the Education Resources Information Center, show that the effects of short-form content on attention span and academic performance are undeniably negative. The gripe of oldies complaining about ‘kids these days’, while annoying and sometimes false and overly conservative is somewhat applicable when we look at the use of technology.
The shifts from Boomers to Gen X to Millennials were relatively incremental when it came to differences in childhood experiences. However, the rapid introduction of mobile phones, a content boom, and social media created a dramatic break in gradual technological advancement, one so significant that Gen Z’s upbringing simply cannot be compared to that of any previous generation. Thus, saying that old people have always complained about young people, so there’s nothing wrong, is not that valid because there has been a severe disruption in society’s young-old continuum. If childhood environments have changed on an unprecedented scale, it is unreasonable to claim that "youth has always been the same" or that Gen Z is just following in the tracks of generations before it. In fact, while a lot of it is untrue, there may be valid reasons behind the older generations’ criticisms of today’s youth. Supporting this idea, studies show a 15% drop in civic engagement activities, such as volunteering, among Gen Z in the U.S.
Despite the technological differences and fluctuations of statistics, is there really a significant difference in the actual behaviours and tendencies of the youths across time? Would Chicken Jockey Riots have happened in 1980? Well, if we chalk the riots up to purely ‘fan chaos’, then yes. During the Star Wars openings in 1977, teens were so excited to buy tickets that it caused mass stampedes and fights. Theatres had to change their ticketing systems and install crowd control barriers.
Even earlier, in 1969, the music festival Woodstock drew more of a crowd than expected, leading to massive property damage and broken fences. There were too many people for authorities to enforce meaningful action.
And, in the 60s, when the Beatles gained popularity, young adults would mob concerts and scream uncontrollably.
The pattern of youths being disruptive in large groups while consuming culturally relevant media has seemingly followed humanity forever. The media almost acts like a rallying point for youth, where its consumption is treated more like a spectacle than an experience, due to them being in a group.
But social media isn't the only difference. In historical cases, whether it was Beatles fans storming concerts or Woodstock attendees, the chaos was driven by passion, excitement, or even substance use. In contrast, the main driver behind something like the Chicken Jockey Riots is humor, specifically, ironic humor. People aren't rioting out of love for Minecraft or even genuine excitement. They're doing it because they find it funny. There’s no passion in ‘chicken jockey’, no love, no light in the "chicken jockey’s" eyes. It's not stupidity fueled by devotion, as teenage unruliness has been documented to be in the past; it's destruction and cynicism fueled by detachment.
This difference does matter. It’s not that Gen Z is inherently more poorly behaved than past generations, youth has always been a chaotic, uncontrollable force and a constant burden on minimum wage staff. Gen Z is definitely not that much worse than our older counterparts. In fact, youth crime rates have gone down in our generation, and so has youth drinking, smoking, and drug use. The real concern lies in the attitude behind it. Previous generations’ recklessness was often driven by misguided idealism; Gen Z’s is increasingly driven by irony, disconnection, and a deeper sense of meaninglessness.
The behaviors associated with events like the Chicken Jockey Riots can be understood as emblematic of a broader cultural shift toward cynicism and detachment. Unlike previous generations, whose disruptive actions, while terrible, had a goal (e.g. get a ticket, or see a Beatle) the individuals participating in these modern spectacles at a creeper riding a chicken are primarily motivated by a desire for attention paired with carelessness towards the people that need to clean up afterward. The actual purpose of a Chicken Jockey Riot isn’t existent, it’s not explainable the way Beatlemania and Woodstock were. This shift reflects a generational tendency to approach social interactions and cultural phenomena with a sense of disconnection, often laced with deeper feelings of nihilism. There is an eerie absence of sincerity in the act of destroying a theatre at two words for no particular reason at all. The humor derived from these events is not born out of genuine excitement or fandom, but rather from a sense of detachment, that it doesn’t mean anything, wherein the participants perform actions not for any meaningful cause, but as part of a broader, performative trend of disruption. The actual joke is the disruption. The lack of sincere investment in the object of their disruption, in this case, the event itself, points to a deeper cultural disillusionment, where the significance of actions is heavily obscured and augmented by a veneer of irony.
Ultimately the answer is yeah. The Chicken Jockey Riots could have happened in 1980, but without social media, they likely wouldn't have been as widespread, as anticipated, or as celebrated. This is much like all of Gen Z’s actual behaviour. The true issue isn’t about whether Gen Z is worse behaved. It's about whether the ironic, detached mindset that fuels much of Gen Z’s humor and actions is sustainable. We’ve seen the passionate stupidity of youth grow up to become a relatively well-functioning society each generation over.