i fought the law: How a Three-Chord Teen Rebellion Became the Planet’s Shared Operating System
i fought the law (and the law was wearing a bespoke Brioni suit)
Geneva, 03:14 a.m. local—While most of the planet was doom-scrolling or pretending to sleep, a small army of negotiators in Hall 7 of the Palais des Nations quietly rewrote the operating system of global order. The phrase on everyone’s encrypted lips was the same adolescent taunt you last heard screamed from a skateboard in 1983: i fought the law. The difference is that now the law fights back with algorithmic precision, offshore shell companies, and the full faith and credit of everyone’s pension fund.
For the uninitiated, the slogan began life as a three-chord tantrum by Sonny Curtis and the Crickets—an anthem for every teenager who discovered that the speed limit applies even to cool people. Fast-forward six decades and it has metastasized into the unofficial motto of 2024’s polycrisis: from Jakarta street protesters dodging water cannons with QR-coded helmets to Berlin crypto-utopians discovering that bankruptcy courts still use fax machines. Same energy, shinier toys, exponentially worse hangovers.
Take the view from Bogotá, where last month’s national strike looked like a live-action remake of Les Mis until the tear gas cleared and revealed President Petro on Instagram Live, crooning the chorus in self-deprecating Spanish. The message: Yes, I used to be you; now I sign the budgets that pay for the riot gear. The comment section—equal parts heart emojis and Molotov recipes—summed up the global mood: everyone’s nostalgic for a morality play in which the roles haven’t been pre-sold to Netflix.
Across the South China Sea, Hong Kong’s national-security courts have reduced “fighting the law” to a scheduling conflict. Protesters who once waved black flags now queue politely for plea bargains, while magistrates quote American pop lyrics back at them like disappointed substitute teachers. The irony is exquisite: a Cantonese rendition of “i fought the law” used as evidence of foreign collusion. Somewhere in Lubbock, Texas, Sonny Curtis chokes on his coffee.
Europe, never one to miss a moral panic, has turned the phrase into fiscal policy. Brussels’ new Digital Services Act fines platforms up to 6 % of global turnover for hosting “law-fighting content,” a category so elastic it currently includes everything from Kurdish protest videos to unboxing tutorials for 3-D-printed bump stocks. Meanwhile, French farmers dump manure on parliament and win instant subsidies, proving that the secret to beating the law is owning a tractor the size of a suburban bungalow.
In the Global South, the fight has become a literal arms race. Kenyan Gen-Z organizers recently crowdsourced enough cryptocurrency to buy second-hand drones, then used them to drop leaflets over police lines—only to discover the leaflets advertised a fintech startup offering 19 % APR on bail bonds. Late-stage capitalism, unlike the law, never sleeps. Over in Lagos, the Endsars generation has pivoted from street barricades to building VPNs that moonlight as mutual-aid networks. Their motto: “We still fight the law, but now the law pays us in data credits.”
Even the multinational conglomerates have joined the chorus. At Davos this year, a fossil-fuel CEO quoted the song during a panel on “voluntary carbon offsets,” earning a standing ovation from delegates whose private jets were idling on the tarmac. The cognitive dissonance was so pure it could have been bottled and sold as a lifestyle fragrance—Eau de Irony, top notes of tear gas and truffle oil.
So what does it mean, this planetary karaoke of adolescent rage? Simply that the law has learned to monetize rebellion better than the rebels ever could. Every hashtagged protest, every NFT of a riot cop, every Spotify stream of the original track feeds the same beast we claim to be fighting. The algorithm doesn’t care about your side; it profits from the friction.
And yet—here’s the punchline we keep forgetting—the song ends with the narrator losing. Every. Single. Time. Perhaps that’s the real international consensus: we fight, the law wins, we queue up to stream our own defeat. Curtain falls, credits roll, next verse same as the first. Encore sponsored by a neobank offering “revolutionary” savings rates.
Until further notice, keep your receipts and your VPN on. The law is accepting new challengers, but the house always gets a cut.
