A couple of weeks back the UK was rocked by a series of far right/racist riots, mainly across towns in England – the pretext being the murder of three young girls in Southport, but widely stirred up by the likes of Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage and other populist figures who spread misinformation on and offline.

As I watched the videos of these mobs attacking housing asylum seekers, targeting mosques and marauding through town and city neighbourhoods, several things struck me. One was how many people had brought their kids along for the ride – even in Rotherham where they broke into and tried to burn down one of the hotels.

The other was how many of the crowd appeared to be filming what was going on, streaming it to social media. It reminds me of the streamer-agitators who follow the weekly pro-Palestine marches, goading attendees in the hope of getting a rise – which in turn would generate more clicks and engagement. The more extreme the better; it becomes a self-reinforcing doom loop.

In both of these cases it’s about attention and clicks – there is little attempt to engage with the issues, it’s simply theatre for its own sake. It really made me think of a clever animated clip which I saw years ago and which still sticks in my mind, so I went looking for it: