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The current violence perpetrated by the “microbes” appears to be a simple rewriting, although in a different albeit fragile context, of the violence formerly carried out by the “ziguéhis”—urban youth seeking social recognition in the Côte d’Ivoire of the 1970s. Through a historicization of social downgrading of young people and its translation into a phenomenon of social distinction/differentiation through violence, this contribution analyzes ruptures and continuities between what could be considered as two “generational” models. They differ contextually, but converge in terms of violent social processes through which urban young people relegated to the margins of society reinvent themselves.