Investigations Editor Neil Mackay logs on

AT first glance it appears to be an underground website for Scotland's so-called Neds - a place visited by nearly 3 million people around the world which paints Scotland as a concrete jungle where out-of-control housing scheme kids live for gangs, drugs, Buckfast, casual sex, fighting, Irn-Bru, vandalism, happy-slapping and Burberry.

But look closer, say experts ranging from the police and web-masters to psychologists and even feminist experts in male violence, and what you will see is more than just an online gang and an embarrassment to Scotland - it's a virtual surrogate family created by angry young men who are rejecting everything to do with mainstream society.

These alienated teenagers from Scotland's toughest estates are using websites like wido.co.uk to post up videos of violent assaults, gang fights, drug taking, bullying and drunkenness. The wido site (the term 'wido' is slang for a street-smart young man) contains film clips of teens incapable after drug binges; youngsters tipping over cars; people drinking bottles of Buckfast down in one; a new form of happy-slapping called scantying where teens film each other pulling the trousers off unsuspecting adult members of the public; and kids trashing cars for flying the English flag.

Other films uploaded by users include CCTV footage and YouTube-type videos of gang fights, films of teens in tracksuits dancing to 'Chipmunk Techno' - speeded up hardcore music - and a brutal sequence entitled 'Bitch Fight' showing one girl beaten savagely in the street by a gang of other teenage girls.

Some content mockingly sends up so-called 'Ned culture' such as blackly comic audio files with fake ned characters including one called John Paul, a violent teen psychopath who lives to terrorise and assault soft members of the middle classes. Other films are created to celebrate 'Ned culture' including one video which starts: "This is what I do ... live for the weekend, surfing the net and getting loaded, goggle-eyed playing computer games, spending dole money on records and drugs. I can't stand this society ... I think the whole f***ing system sucks ... Earn money for the state? I live for the weekend."

However, it's the site's forums which are most likely to incur adult anger and disgust. Here kids celebrate gang culture in all its forms - from bragging about knives and fights to threatening to attack rivals. Pictures of teens disliked by other members are posted online with cruel claims that they were abused as children.

One member claims he is picking on another because the boy is "an Orange Prod bastard". Another describes Jews as "the scum of the earth". One kid threatened to "do a Kriss Donald" - a reference to the young boy from the southside of Glasgow who was brutally murdered. There are other threats to kill as well, with one member telling another that he is "getting plugged".

The forums also have a highly sexualised content, and sectarianism and racism is a frequent theme. One forum called FTP (standing for F*** The Pope) quotes the lyrics from the loyalist song 'The Billy Boys' with its infamous line 'we're up to our knees in fenian blood'. Another forum states that "all Pakis should die a painful death". Many posters on the site do, however, object to such language and attack those who use it.

A lot of the site is devoted to kids from one area of Glasgow taunting and threatening kids in gangs from other areas. One section sees youngsters from the Gorbals mocking gang members from Castlemilk and Townhead after winning a gang fight at a nightclub.

Many police, however - especially those at the sharp end of dealing with violent crime committed by alienated young men - believe that gangs, whether real or virtual, are tantamount to being replacement families for tearaway boys who never had a decent relationship with their mum and dad.

Detective Chief Superintendent John Carnochan, who heads Scotland's Violence Reduction Unit, said: "Young men from deprived backgrounds and with poor parental relationships can often find the support that they don't find with their families amongst other similar young men. The gang, therefore, can almost become their extended family."

Professor Cary Cooper, one of the UK's most celebrated psychologists based at Lancaster University, said: "The technology is just enabling ASBO behaviour to go global. The technology is not the cause of the ASBO behaviour. We have to ask why teens are engaging in this behaviour in the first place.

"It is partly due to deprivation. Real ASBO behaviour tends to come from kids who have experienced deprivation in their backgrounds - kids who don't spend any time with their parents either because of broken marriages or single parenting. They have inadequate stability and contact. They may come from a dysfunctional family as well, or one in which the norms are not for education. They have no route out of deprivation.

"These kids end up linking to a peer group from a similar background. This group or gang forms the norm for these unhappy and deprived boys. They take their anger out on symbols of society - like a nice car. They want to get back at a society they feel has failed them, and get their anger out on the establishment.

"Their new family becomes this peer group, or gang. The group provides what the real family didn't - camaraderie and togetherness. Technology allows these kids - who ironically could have great careers in IT - to share and spread their peer group. The web justifies what they are doing. It shows them that they are not the only ASBO kids. All this rationalises their behaviour as people are doing similar things all over the country. It's like a wider family, a wider peer group.

"What's 'bad' is not a rebellious group coalescing against society online, rather it's the reinforcing of the behaviour that worries me. They'll use the fact that others are on the web doing the same as them to justify their behaviour meaning that the behaviour will continue."

Mairead Tagg, a feminist psychologist and expert on male violence, said: "Children with no healthy adult attachments will make attachments to their peers as the basic unit of bonding. As a result, they have no need to sign up to society's norms as they are completely alienated from middle-class values such as going to university.

"Websites like these are like menshies (individual graffiti tags left by kids) on walls. We can't blame these children for what they do as, morally, they have nothing else in place. They are excluded from a society that gave them nothing. They grew up with no sense of protection, so it's no wonder that in a gang they feel invincible and would take on the Devil himself. Websites are just another way of emblazoning their gang colours."

Paul, the webmaster of wido.co.uk, wants to remain anonymous "due to some of the less than desirable types of people that the site tends to attract" so conducts his interview via email. When the Sunday Herald put up a posting on the wido site asking to interview members the responses were friendly and funny but negative. No-one wanted to take part, except for Paul, the young man who runs the site.

Paul, who bills his site as a portal to the "Scottish underground", says that wido has been visited by 2.6 million people from 33 different countries including Iran, Korea and China. However, the main group of visitors are young men from Scotland.

Most of the visitors, he claims, are not 'Neds' just "your normal young teen/adult who would never dream of carrying out any sort of anti-social behaviour. However, sometimes the site does attract your 'real-life anti-social Ned' who sees it as a chance to 'beat their virtual chest'."

Paul says he finds some of the content "genuinely funny and entertaining" and cites the 'scantying' mobile phone video which involves a teenager pulling the trousers off a man in a shop.

He defends the site saying: "The intention is definitely not to celebrate, condone or glorify anti-social behaviour. Yes, the bulk of the site's content is related to anti-social behaviour. What I am trying to do is showcase this anti-social behaviour for whatever use the site visitor can get from it ... As the site grew, it evolved into a 'Scottish underground' themed site where videos of anti-social behaviour were relevant ... I suppose the humourous theme plus the anti-social videos ... has the potential to be construed as celebrating anti-social behaviour."

Paul says he may add a disclaimer now to make clear that he isn't glorifying an ASBO lifestyle. He won't take down the content focussing on anti-social behaviour, however, as it "provides some sort of warped insight into what life is like for some people living in Scotland, which I believe has some value to it. I suppose it's a bit like videos from Palestine and Iraq regarding bombings ... They certainly provide some insight into what is actually happening.

"I would rather have the option to see them than not, regardless of how upsetting they are. Wido provides a raw reality check and the visitors should take it as it is."

Paul says he finds racism and sectarianism offensive and unacceptable. "Some people may genuinely be offended or affected by the racist remarks on the forums. For this reason, I have tried to police it as best as possible."

Regarding the video content, Paul accepts that "it does offend people", and says he was particularly worried about the 'Bitch Fight' film. However, he believes the mainstream media shows images just as offensive as the content on his site. Paul claims one uploaded film showing a boy high on drugs "is a great anti-drugs advert - better than any government-sponsored ad".

Another webmaster, John, who runs a site called scallycentral.com - which is similar to wido - says such sites enable "people to form communities and find people with similar outlooks and who share similar common ground. A great many people find powerful purpose in belonging to a group or a gang - it gives them a sense of identity. It's affirming. If you belong you don't feel isolated."

John, a well-spoken young man who appears highly educated and middle class, says he has got death threats for running the website - both from so-called 'Neds' for mocking them and from people who think he is an online thug. He tries to defend himself against accusations of 'class tourism', saying: "When you romanticise working-class life you are guilty of class tourism. I simply observe."