History
Happy Slapping is known to have started in the South London Borough of Lewisham, in a format known as "Slap Happy TV", where a happy-slapping video would be recorded, and then watched by dozens of people like a TV show. The first newspaper article to use the phrase "happy slapping" was "Bullies film fights by phone", published in The Times Educational Supplement on 21 January 2005, in which reporter Michael Shaw described teachers' accounts of the craze in London schools.
The Phrase Finder describes the phenomenon thus:
| “ | Meaning:
Unprovoked attacks on individuals made in order to record the event, and especially the victim's shock and surprise, on video phones. Origin: Happy slapping ... began as a youth craze in the UK in late 2004. Children or passers by are slapped or otherwise mugged by one or more of a gang while others record the event on video and then distribute it by phone or Internet. Initially the attacks were, as the phrase would have us believe, fairly minor pranks ... As the craze spread the attacks became more vicious – often serious assaults known in legal circles as grievous bodily harm. |
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Read more about this topic: Happy Slapping
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