Here is a recent picture snipped from their website:

Now, it should be said that this image was gleaned from Facebook by the people behind CharlestonThugLife, the account was not hacked nor accessed by any means other than clicking onto the public profile.  One of the three in this picture was so proud of it that he posted it for any and all to see.

Below is a post [dated April 2, 2012] from the website explaining, in their words, why they began the blog and why they post what they do (reposted here with permission):

What an interesting evening. We knew Charleston Thug Life was popular with nearly seven-thousand hits during it’s three day lifespan. We just didn’t know how quickly and how far the word had been disseminated. After eating dinner we checked the email and found three inquiries from the press. Two were Lowcountry media, the third was national. We are truly humbled.

The media outlets wanted to set up meetings to discuss our aims, our goals, our motivations for starting the blog and what kind of feedback we are getting. We are suspicious of some of these requests simply because of the way they were phrased. We also researched the senders. After all, research is what we do here. We weren’t impressed. National media – not happening. Local media?

Let us put this very plainly. Having lived in Charleston all of our lives has made us privy to the bias, slant, agenda, whatever you want to call it, of most of the local outlets if not those of individual reporters. Even if we were inclined to put ourselves out there does anyone really think a politically incorrect (but truthful) blog like this would get a fair shot in the press? No, we didn’t think so.

We choose to answer some of the above questions here. If that doesn’t serve your purposes, too bad. You came to use, we didn’t seek you out.

What is our motivation?

As explained in the Welcome post we were motivated by the lack of balanced coverage in the media. The Pringle case was the final straw. Reporters know law enforcement can’t comment on an ongoing investigation, yet they fail to include that little tidbit in their stories. Citizens often wonder why departments don’t comment and it raises suspicion among those who are not familiar with those type of issues. Meanwhile, the media reports every nasty, baseless and racist proclamation made by the family of the thug and their race hustling representatives as if those statements were gospel.

For days Pringle was held forth in the media as a choirboy. Not one local journalist (and we use that term very loosely) bothered to do any research. Instead, they dutifully reported the fraudulent rantings of family members who KNEW Pringle was a thug and complained about that fact on readily available social media.

One of the Charleston Thug Life team studied journalism in high school and college and served as editor of a number of school newspapers. We are not unfamiliar with the tenets of journalism. We haven’t seen real journalism in the Lowcountry in a long, long time. That same conclusion should be glaringly obvious to any citizen who has watched local television news or read the local bird cage liners.

[SZ: Or, look at the media's handling of the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin for an example other than the one used by CharlestonThugLife.  Media slant, bias, inaccuracies and out and out manipulated information while all the officials have had to sit silently by without an ability to either tell their side or correct the inaccuracies (and lies).]

As we sat quietly on the sidelines we observed common citizens bringing the true facts to light on social media and on media outlet websites. We were amazed to see some of these people posting under their actual names in an effort to call the media out on their failure to perform their due diligence and report the whole truth.

As we sat around the fire pit one evening and discussed this issue we decided we had to do something to enlighten our fellow citizens. We aren’t quite as brave as the citizens mentioned above so we decided to inform and remain anonymous. Even if we were inclined to meet with the media, we don’t trust them to honor a confidentiality agreement. And let’s face it – how many of the thugs outed here would we have to gun down when some ‘journalist’ breached that agreement? While we are quite capable of doing so we really have no desire to. We would rather spill their digital blood and expose them for what they are. Public scrutiny can be bad for their business.

We don’t do this for recognition, or the potential for it. We don’t do it for personal gain. There is no money to be made in this endeavor. We simply found an information vacuum and chose to fill it. In doing so we assist our fellow law abiding citizens of the Lowcountry.

[SZ: These folk know the personal danger they have assumed.  Don't know about everyone but I'd not invite the ire of well armed young men for just any ol' trivial thing.  But, this is the South after all, lots of us Southerners are well armed.]

Aims and goals – synonyms. For the thugs reading this – da WRDs meen da sam fing.

We want to expose as many of these hidden thugs as we can; for as long as we can. This endeavor can be research intensive. We work hard for what we have. The day may come when this little project begins to excessively interfere with our families or our work. If that should happen we will abandon it. This effort also causes a lot of headaches. Spend a few hours trying to decipher the ghetto-speak on these pages and you will see what we mean. If the Advil budget grows too large, the project will be abandoned. If we feel our efforts are no longer needed we will go away.

What kind of feedback are we getting?

The feedback so far has all been great. Remember, we are only three days into this thing. Some folks post comments and they are appreciated, but not expected. The average citizen doesn’t need to invite the potential danger of a thug showing up on the front lawn in order to let us know they appreciate the effort. We can see that appreciation every day in the blog stats.

The true measure of the success and popularity of Charleston Thug Life is the number of citizens who are taking some time out of their busy lives to crawl the social media sites and ferret out the local thugs. We started with one or two who jumped in almost immediately. We won’t say how many are now participating, but the number is growing each day. This is quickly becoming a community project and we are thrilled with that.

Will there be negative feedback? No doubt. Sooner or later the thugs and their supporters from the NAACP will meander on over. When that happens we may have to move to moderated comments, but those diatribes will still be published to highlight the ignorance.

Are we picking on black thugs? For the time being. Let’s be honest – there isn’t an overabundance of white thugs dealing drugs on the street corners of Charleston or shooting up the community. When we find them, they too will be exposed.

Update: A couple of the journalists who contacted us also complimented us on our ability to find the content put forth on these pages. To this we say – it isn’t that hard. Try it. Bring some sorely needed honor back to your profession.

There was a time when there were a lot of folk willing to “stand up and do the tough stuff”, not so much in this modern era.  Agree with them or no, the people behind CharlestonThugLife are doing what they feel they need to do.  And, having lived in this world more than a <cough…> “few” years I have a full appreciation for “doing the wrong thing for all the right reasons” .  That’s no pronouncement on my believing what is being done is wrong (I don’t even know if I believe it’s right either) but at least they’ve decided to do some of the “tough stuff”.  What have most of us done lately to try to improve the little slice of the world we live in?

Oh, it’s  easy to find stuff on the net declaring these folk blatant racists, that’s one of the reasons I’m writing this post with their own words embedded.  There are always two sides of a story and ever the optimist am I, I believe there are one or three people still around that will give both sides their say before making up their mind.

Yesterday I found something on the net that I’m not sure how I feel about : Blog seeks to draw attention to purported thugs in Charleston area.  Charleston, SC happens to be my own backyard.

Here is the link for the blog referenced Charleston Thug Life.   And here is a link for on the incident referenced as the inspiration of the blog’s creation North Charleston Officer Shoots Teen.

As a supporter for our constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech I cannot logically say these folk (whoever they may be) don’t have a right to do this but I also think it loses a lot of standing by doing it anonymously, though I fully understand the “why” of why they do so.   As a one time “net activist” I look on this endeavor as nothing short of brilliant, much like I thought of WikiLeaks putting corporate and governmental bad behavior on display for all to see (if they chose to look).

However… Is there a downside to this?

No matter how hard I try I can’t come up with a logical counter to say “this is wrong because….”  Making me feel a bit uncomfortable isn’t reason enough.  Frankly, we are not made to feel uncomfortable nearly enough.  There are difficult things “out there” in the “real world” that we blissfully ignore as assiduously as we can.

Police officers learned the hard way that what they post on the internet can cost them court cases and sometimes their jobs.  Some ignore the lessons of the unthinking and fool hardy that came before them and walk unseeing into the ramifications of stupidity.  Now, I guess it’s the “thugs” and the “wanna bes” turn to learn.

In the end, I’ll just tell these anonymous folk  “let’s be careful out there“.

I have no idea whether the Tulsa shootings are in any way connected to the Trayvon Martin shooting hype.  Yes, in my private thoughts I entertain the idea that it probably is, but that’s one great big huge assumption on my part – and not one I’m “married to”.  It might turn out that this is so completely mundane (in today’s reality) as to be drug related or some personal vendetta wholly unrelated to anything outside of Tulsa.  Or, even, just some genuine crazy hater who woke up yesterday and decided his cat just told him to go out and shoot black men.

At this point any theory is just that – a theory. But human beings always do try to make sense of their world.  As thinking human beings we need to remember that just because we may believe something that “something” isn’t necessarily true.  After all, people once believed the earth was the center of the heavens – and flat.  Or, that tossing children down a really deep hole in the ground would bring rain.  Or, that owning another human being was somehow OK.

I close this troubling post with a suggesting that everyone who is inclined to believe they know enough to believe a theory is in fact, well, a fact, should read this: Incompetent People Too Ignorant to Know It.  And that gentle suggestion goes for the Treyvon Martin shooting as much as it does the Tulsa OK shootings.

The first of the batch was  Heineken’s “The Date” commercial.  Something about it never failed to instantly catch the attention of my mind, no matter what I was doing, and I would always stop and look to the TV while it aired.  I didn’t understand the words but it utterly enthralled me – each time.

The second one was Clint Eastwood’s Chrysler Superbowl commercial, “It’s Halftime in America“.   The political sniping and whining after it aside, the commercial was brilliant, moving, inspiring, starkly simple and humble all at the same time.

Finally, the third, and the reason for this blog post…

Cartier’s new commercial, ”L Odyssee” (full version).  Stunning.  There is just no other word or words for it.  The first time I saw it I was mesmerized, frozen in time and space where only the images from artists delighting my neurons existed.  I have an amateur’s appreciation of the artistry and talent of the computer graphics behind the beauty and that just added to my genuine stunned awe.

There can never be enough beauty in our lives, nor enough of whatever it is that truly delights us.

I’ve always refused to call myself a “prepper”, finding it easier to be a nutjob than to admit to being a nutjob.   The term “prepper” just carries a lot of baggage, at least for me.  Always too closely connected with “survivalist”, and we all know those folks are just plain whacked.  

But while survivalists are whacked the unprepared are roof-sitters.  You know the archetype: disaster strikes and they scramble to their rooftops waiting to be plucked to safety by the government.  Apparently it’s popular in the prepper community to call non-preppers “zombies” (something I just learned the other day and confirmed with a quick buzz of the net).

There is a mini theme going on here:  Labels.  Less than flattering labels.  It was not something I planned but something that jumped out at me as I finished the paragraph above.  Ironic when you know the reason I started this post was the NY Times piece (here) by Neil Genzlinger whining about the quality of programming suffering on the National Geographic and Discovery channels due to the airing of two new series, “Doomsday Preppers” and “Doomsday Bunkers” respectively.

In fairness, and before I get completely wound up in what might develop into a snarkfest, I sat and physically cringed when I watched the first to episodes of “Doomsday Preppers”.   My husband heard more than a few mutterings of “what a nutjob…” or, “Ack!  Are you kidding me!?”   Even with that though I nearly spit my coffee all over my laptop when I read the second to last sentence in the NY Times piece:

Hmm. Apparently “inspiring people to prepare a personal fortress and pray for cataclysm so they can start blasting away at their neighbors”

Genzlinger made his disdain for firearms quite clear in the piece as a whole but that sentence left no doubt of his obvious ignorance of the “prepper” phenomenon in the US.   I suspect Genzlinger just needed to feel superior to those who think differently.  Yet another glaring example of the lack of tolerance and mean spiritedness so frequently seen from the “Enlightened” Left.

Or maybe Genzlinger is a “roofsitter” and just wants as much company as he can possibly have.  Perhaps his version of equality, everyone should be equally hungry, equally miserable, equally at risk, equally dependent.  Taken to the extreme one could even say he believes everyone should be equally dead which these lines go a long way to suggest:

More seriously, what is the attraction of continuing to live in a world that forces people to cower in an underground box and spend all their time fending off those who want their freeze-dried apricots?

Even more seriously, what is the attraction of continuing to live in a world that will almost certainly not have television or the Internet, depriving doomsday types of the shows and Web sites that fuel their paranoia and sell products exploiting it?

Would it be safe to assume that he believes we should all very meekly just roll over and die?  If anyone expresses a complete lack of respect for life it is Genzlinger.

For a neutral article on the Prepper movement quietly going on in the US, hidden from most, MSNBC had this piece in the fall of 2008: ”Hard times have some flirting with survivalism: Economic angst has Americans stockpiling ‘beans, bullets and Band-Aids’” [link]

As rational thinking human beings we should try – real hard – not to paint all with the paintbrush of any extreme subset.   An example I’m rather fond of using: All eco-terrorists are environmentalists but not all environmentalists are eco-terrorists.   Did a few of the people shown on the show exhibit behaviors that strongly suggest mental health issues?  I’m no psychologist or psychiatrist but I would hazard the opinion that a few did.  No different than any of the other reality shows I’ve happened to catch here or there.  They kinda make for interesting viewing so they are sought after by the show’s producers.

And “Doomsday Preppers” has made for “interesting” viewing.  Thus far it is the highest ranked show in their history based on viewership numbers [here, here]

Sadly Neil Genzlinger took the easy shots of the intellectually lazy but ultimately those that feel it’s their personal responsibility to prepare to face those extremely rare outlier disasters so as not to be a burden on over strained resources will prepare anyway, or more likely, continue to prepare quietly.  And those that had no intention of doing so will take comfort in Genlinger’s words, perhaps even feeling smugly superior in their choice.

And that’s the crux of it all – it’s a personal choice.    Something we are regularly reminded to be respectful of.