Egg Boy: a hero to the younger generation

Fraser Anning’s supporters hold down Will Connolly, aka Egg Boy, after he smashed an egg over the senator’s head on March 16. Picture: AAP

If the recent phenomenon that is Egg Boy has taught us anything, it’s that Australia’s young people are crying out for heroes, new heroes, of their own kind; that there’s a void in their lives when it comes to the audacity of good deeds. We just don’t see a muscular sense of goodness enough, and publicly. From our politicians most of all.

Many of our kids have given up on this perceived self-interested, blinkered and damaging generation of leadership; and on a very vocal reactionary right that has hijacked the image of their country, nationally as well as internationally. The younger generation don’t witness disruption enough, for the sake of wresting change for the better upon us; the courage of Just Doing It. Disruption as a force for good, to embolden us to question as a nation who we are exactly and where we’re going.

It can be exhilarating to witness the calling out of the pale and stale racists among us who’ve veered the national conversation so damagingly. Enough, shouted Egg Boy’s gesture. Silently and extremely efficiently, and it was stunning. He knew he had a viral hit on his hands; his raised phone said it all.

And no, I do not condone the egging of a politician, or of anyone – but I applaud the sentiment behind the act. Its measured control. The kid wasn’t shouty, agitated, loud and abusive; he was calm and self-contained, even as violence was being inflicted upon him. He gave passive aggression an entirely new meaning, and he knew how instructive it was to witness.

My 16-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter both came to me independently with news of him at the time, not realising I’d heard. They wanted to spread the word of this wondrous insurrectionist from their world, with the generation they assumed was ignorant of him. The egging of Fraser Anning had spread like wildfire around their networks, beyond and behind the conventional media. The daughter wanted the Che Guevara-like T-shirt with the Melbourne teen’s screenprinted image, the son was fascinated by the cool music memes that had sprung up around him. As I looked online at an iconic Egg Boy T-shirt, I thought, wow, he’s being transformed into a hero for this young generation in the way Che Guevara was a few decades previously; it was all there in the seductive, poster boy image that was all about the cool aesthetics. There was something so innocent, brave and foolish about this kid, yet something so Aussie in his cheeky larrikin spirit.

Once this younger generation might have had male cricketing or rugby league heroes, as I did growing up. Yeah, that’s gone really well recently, in both sports. But now it’s Egg Boy, and Tayla Harris from the AFL women’s league with her glorious, empowering kick that went viral after the usual suspects piled in with their fragile misogyny. Can’t cope with the sight of a powerful woman, eh?

The perception among young people is that Australia can’t be trusted to be left in the hands of a lot of its calcified adults. They look at our Barrier Reef. Adani. Fish dying and rivers drying. They look at the divisiveness and hatred brewed by craven politicians, eager for power but not action for the good of the nation. They look at a Prime Minister who said on International Women’s Day that women shouldn’t get ahead at the expense of men; a man who’s the product of an exercise of naked, destructive self-interest inflicted upon their country.

Is it any wonder that there’s pride over Egg Boy? Someone who gives them hope. Because the politicians sure aren’t. In the wake of the Christchurch tragedy, he galvanised people to call out hate speech and division; it’s a sickness in this country and we’ve normalised it for too long. Despite the dubiousness of his action Egg Boy is a force for good, and the kids recognise that. Because it feels like they’re not getting it enough from their elders – not necessarily betters.