No... that culture of violence was very very real. The stories may sound ridiculous, but that's just because of how extreme that culture was.
this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2025
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Dirty tricks, MI6!
Aren't chavs the tracksuit wearing shitheads, like the thugs working for Eggsy's stepdad in the first Kingsman?
What is it with a bunch of bad takes being posted on this community recently
there is a grain of truth in this. chav culture certainly existed and still exists in the south of england but they came in around 2000-2010 or so for much greater demonisation than their northern (scally) or scottish (ned) counterparts, likely due to UK media being concentrated in the south
the great chav danger was blown wildly out of proportion and i've no doubt the term expanded beyond the original sense of a sort of tracksuit/burberry clad antisocial petty criminal youth to include just about any working class kid in the minds of home counties handbag clutchers
so to say they never existed is false, and to say they never caused anyone any bother is false. but the middle class media confected version of them never existed in any great proportion either
We called them "charvers" or "a charva" up north as long as i can remember in school , certainly well back into the mid 1990s. I'd not say it was a middle class term at all though, more sub-cultural within lower classes. Probably the more vocal alt-types used it as an insult/provocation to the more obnoxious trev/sharon types. There's a lot of subcultures and just different people within the lower classes especially at school. Middle class kids at school would keep their heads down and keep out of it for the most part. Upper class kids didn't exist - i assume they were away off in posh schools suffering whatever abuse leads to people like michael gove..
I'd agree that charvers were a small, but obnoxiously vocal, minority of the lower classes. Much worse at school though with kids being kids and all. But its also something people could grow out of in a few years, or just after a bit of cold turkey, more behavioural/immaturity than class.
You could probably also trace it back to things like football hooliganism - a fairly easily avoided minority - but not imaginary. Maybe the press latched on to it after most of the football firms were locked up and they needed to fill some column inches.
good points, the inter class rivalry in particular. i think it's a reasonable guess that the term lost its more specific original sense when it escaped containment and got into the mouths of littlejohn et al but just saying middle class was reductive. sun/mirror hacks would have been in on the action too
i read about chav being derived from charva but never heard it said personally - i'm from the south though
re hooligans there's definite similarities but chavs lack the same kind of rallying point so were more dispersed. maybe some chavs got promoted to casuals
Grew up in the era there were definitely chavs it wasn't a class thing either as a lot of them tended to be role-playing middle class kids who wanted to look hard as usual.
Walking through local shops and being challenged about which part of town you lived in or getting called a "greebo" all a day in the life of the era.
What is your obsession with 'chavs'?
Of course they exist, ya dummie! I'm working class and they definitely exist.
Is this déjà-downvote I feel?
I've always seen chavs as the tracksuit wearing, loads of kids, living off smokes, scratch cards and pot Noddles that sit around soaking up benefits. I know that nay not be the proper definition of chav but I'm not sure what else to call them
Not snobish at all. And even i was scared walking threw fratton Portsmouth
Roadmans are currently being made up. Kids wearing balaclavas wearing bomber jackets talking with a heavy London grime artist accent dont exist.
I see them
Back when roadman was just starting to become a term I had a friend who started calling himself one, he didn't like it when I told him it was just another version of a chav
Nessie obviously be a 'ned' not a 'charva'.
While I disagree with identifying the working class with 'chav', the origin of the word did start very much in classism and stereotyping (hence my deep disagreement with the term). A pretty good analysis in this article: https://eathealthy365.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-chav-in-british-culture/