Pana Marauders Guide - Part 1

12th Nov 2012

Would you like to be accepted as one of Patrick Street’s notorious teenage marauders? Then listen up and follow our two part guide to acting the langer in public….

CLOWZ

Before you even leave your gaf you’d better wise up and get yourself decked out in the proper marauder clothes. The idea is to appal stylish tourists from Europe by dressing in manky ubiquitous sports gear or to shock them by dressing like a scobe or a slapper.

Maraudettes can take two approaches to fashion – the slutty mother-of-God-does-that-even-qualify-as-a-skirt tack or just sports wear. The latter may give you the impression you’re going to be decked out in something appropriate for a race meeting at Mallow or a day in the country shooting foxes but it in fact requires you to dress in ill-fitting I-swear-I’m-not-fat cover-up tracksuits and shell suits that confuse tourists into thinking almost every teenage in Cork city centre is a budding athlete. 

The area around Patrick Street and Winthrop Street will be highly sympathetic to your frenetic social retardation

Feens should preferably dress in bright blue tracksuits with white baseball caps and white runners. If you haven’t already handed them into one of the cash for gold places to save up for a holiday in Santa Ponza then wear plenty gold rings to improve your hardshaw image. Rings d’be daycint.

COMMUNICATION
There are two main ways of communicating if you want to be a proper bona fides Pana marauder.

(1) Screaming.  This is the preferred method of interaction between teenagers who gather around the top of Winthrop Street. It also adds drama if you pointlessly run away from the group you are in without looking over your shoulder so you bump into a shopper and fall to the ground. Immediately twenty-seven other marauders are screaming with laughter and updating their Facebook status with photos of you laid out.  “LOLanger”.

(2) Faceboook messaging. Sometimes when you’re tired from growing pubic hair it is just as easy to text or FB somebody as to talk to them like normal humans. As a 21^st century child it almost takes as long and as much energy to actually speak what you want to communicate rather than tapping it out on a smartphone so why bother starting up your vocal box when you can use technology?

 Also when somebody speaks out loud in a group there are no like button floating in the air to allow you to react to what they’ve said.

Dress like this and you'll fit right in

AN OBESSION WITH THE WORD ‘GAY’
The definition of ‘gay’ has broadened to such an extent that almost everything in a young marauder’s life is considered to be ‘gay’ unless it is specifically approved by the ‘like’ button on Facebook. Everything from lampposts to hedgehogs, smartphones to buses are all ‘gay’ unless you have specifically un-gayed them. It is so removed from the common understanding of the word that it is regularly spelt ‘ghey’ online.

It is important to know what the most ‘ghey’ thing in the world is before you rock up to Winthrop Street to try out our tips. There’s nothing more ghey than your best friend scoring with someone of the opposition sex when you’ve got nobody to kiss yourself. They’re just being so ghey going off by themselves,  right?

OMG that is so, like, incredibly GAY

OH MY GODS
As a marauding teenage Pana resident your reaction to meeting people is inversely proportional to the amount of time you haven’t seen them for. This is the opposite to most humans: if you bump into someone you haven’t seen in a long time you give it a lot more gusto and if you sit down at your desk at work you just give a casual ‘story boy’ to your co-worker best-bud every morning.

This logic is unviable around Winthrop Street on a Saturday. If you haven’t seen someone since art class the previous Friday afternoon and it is now almost 2pm the following day then you must react as if they had been assumed lost-at-sea after a terrible shipping accident and have miraculously appeared months later. Generating an hysterical, hyperactive hullabulloo for each individual friend is compulsory. Preferred actions are frantic hugging, dancing on the spot and screeching ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!” repeatedly until the busker outside O’Brien’s Sandwiches gives up and leaves.


A TRIBE CALLED STRESSED

Where you stand on Winthrop Street is extremely important to indicate your social standing – certain schools or gangs prefer certain nooks but the crucial thing is to never be seen in a group of less than ten for longer than a minute or it can become a real stress. To do so would see a plethora of Facebook messages from friends nearby pinging your phone asking you what your problem is and why you are being odd with everyone else.

This inexcusable and selfish act could push you into over-reacting (an important trait of a Pana marauder) by posting aggressive messages on Facebook targeting the person four yards away sitting on the metal box by McDonald’s.