It occurs to us that we don’t read much anymore about outlaw motorcycle gangs. A few decades ago, when The Scrapbook was young, movies and television and newspapers teemed with fearful reports about the Hells Angels, the Outlaws, and the Pagans. We wonder what became of the original “1 percenters.” (The term originated from a claim by the American Motorcyclist Association that 99 percent of motorcyclists were law-abiding citizens—hence the “1%” patch on many of the outlaws’ vests.)
What happened to outlaw motorcycle gangs? We think we’ve found part of the answer: They discovered the Internet.
In March, the Marion Hotel in the Canadian province of Manitoba turned away members of the Hells Angels. When the president of the local Hells Angels chapter, the Manitoba Nomads, heard about it, he took decisive action.
You might have expected the hotel to end in smoldering ruins, the hotel owner to be roughed up, or worse. But no: When the Hells Angels across North America heard about it, they vented their rage on Facebook. The hotel soon took its Facebook page down, so overwhelmed was it with critical comments. At that point, the bikers turned their attention to the hotel’s restaurant, the Marion Street Eatery. According to a CBC report, “Within 24 hours hundreds of people, most of them from outside Canada, posted one-star reviews on the restaurant’s Facebook page, reducing its 4.5-star reputation to three stars overnight.”
Having obliterated the eatery’s Facebook page, the outlaws went on TripAdvisor to load the restaurant’s entry with hostile reviews. TripAdvisor deemed the online onslaught vandalism, and the negative reviews were quickly removed from the site.
Granted, the Facebook and TripAdvisor comments included some pretty rough language. Still, we prefer the newer, social media-savvy Hells Angels to the older ones.
