Australia has lost the plot. For the breakdancing competition at the Olympics they put this woman with a PhD in breakdancing up as a competitor. She admits that she barely ever trains and complains that she doesn’t fit into the hierarchy of merit, which she considers to be a form… pic.twitter.com/zrmIhPZLjt
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) August 10, 2024
I'd seen the video yesterday and believed — though it's hard to believe — that this is a real Olympic performance in what is the sport/"sport" of breakdancing. But what about the rest of that — the PhD in breakdancing and the critique of hierarchy? It's too good as satire. True?!
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62 comments:
"Rachael Gunn is a lecturer at Sydney’s Macquarie University with a PhD with her thesis focusing on the intersection of gender and Sydney’s breaking culture."
Marxism can be hilarious.
Honest question.
If some serious Ph.D’s started bullying other Ph.D’s, or at least laughing at them, would it nip stuff like this in the bud? Or would they just get fired for harassment?
My favorite breakdancing athlete is Ron Swanson
She’s eminently qualified to know just how unqualified she is.
Look. If we're going to allow breakdancing as an Olympic sport than we should expect people that will break dancing. Today's What-The-Fuck could be 3100's Charleston. I'm not yet 50 and this whole fucking century feels like a horror show already.
Absolutely. I totally get it. I felt the same exact way with the burgeoning popularity of fake wrestling conducted by steroid freaks with big mouths and tiny little penises. What kind of pathetic insecure little man watches that deck? My only hope for humanity is that it has not yet become an Olympic sport
Ukraine hits a military airfield. Russia hits a supermarket. You can not win a war when your troops are told to stop at the border. Hitting Russia in Russia is the only way to settle this.
Russia is now the second best army in Russia.
Howitzer Howie:
1) It’s not fake princess.
2) Soon.
"Lost the plot" is one of my favorite phrases. Three words explain the situation so succinctly that more details are unnecessary.
I recall discussing what I might study in college with my parents oh so many years ago. Never would it have occurred in my wildest dreams to say, "Dad, I'm going for a PhD in the twist".
One certainly hopes the Australians are so progressive that they paid for this woman's education.
Two points:
1) What a rich society/world that can afford the luxury of the option for a "PhD in cultural studies". This is the greatest example of the "global" plenty (in wealth and time) in history. It is not "evenly dispersed" through out the world but it is also not severely restricted as it was in centuries past. All on the back of that boogieman "capitalism". Under no other system could so many parasites benefit from such riches.
2) Had a conversation with my wife just the other day on the "dilution" of the Olympics from it founding based on quantifiable and objectively determinable activities (sports) to the mass of much more subjectively judged activities that exist within the realm of the Olympics. It used to be based on "clear" winning vs. judging. You either threw the spear the farthest or you didn't. You either ran the fastest (and came in first) or you didn't. Now it is full of events that are judged and the winner is chosen by a [judged] lead of 0.1 points. As well as including such "edge condition" sports(?) as brake dancing and artistic (previously known as synchronized) swimming that would more reasonably be categorized as activities instead of "sports".
It is 2024. No city has had a "breakdancing culture" in 40 years.
I agree with Todd. If your choice of music plays a role in your score, it isn't a sport.
I watched about 20 seconds of this, which is the sum total of my Olympic viewing this year. If you don’t believe our culture is circling the drain, you haven’t been paying attention.
Perfect encapsulation of the DEI at the Olympics. A middle age white woman that studies the “culture of breaking” took a spot that an actual dancer could have have, and she did it to show she cares and woke to the culture. Everyone else see’s it as mockery.
Another suicidal maniac intent on nuclear war with Russia. Watch the old anti-war movie “The King of Hearts.” Billions of dead and nuclear winter don’t scare you none, huh?
I have tried to avoid buying into the premise that a lot of society's ills these days are caused by the attitudes and expectations of liberal white women but I read this and think, well maybe so.
I don't know if breakdancing is a sport, exactly, but done correctly it takes athletic ability. She's in there with the fat Jesus from the opening ceremony, part of the celebration of the unfit, the untalented, the morbidly obese. The Paris Olympics, are the French just having us all on?
If your job description includes the word “intersection” then you really aren’t in it to do anything except agitate.
Snoop Dogg kicked off the event. It's rumored that he is being paid half a million dollars per day to attend Olympic events. The Guardian article about the breaking event has this tidbit:
"But with competition stretching five-and-a-half hours even Snoop, the unofficial Games mascot, had seen enough and made his departure midway through the competition."
The Olympics were going broke before we even knew what woke was and as many have pointed out it coincided with the events shifting focus from athletic excellence to artistic expression and “style” points. This mirrors the overall cultural shift from common agreement on objective facts to everything being subjective and dependent on one’s POV. Which has inevitably led to the elite taking it upon themselves to declare that some points of view are more valid than others because of immutable characteristics such as race and sex and ethnicity. Then the ever-destructive post-modernists started in on the new “reality” that said as a first step that sex is not in fact an immutable characteristic and one can change.
Oh what wonderful improvement on the road to chaos will they think of next!
Take away Australias sharp utensils and give them sporks. Is there some comfort in knowing another nation is farther gone than us or does it make it worse?
Australia, eh? Another glorious chapter in the history of the English speaking peoples.
Just give her the Gold. She has turned in the perfect performance for our post-competence world.
Laff-A-Lympics
These Olympics and World events are proving once more that civilization is cyclical not linear as we were taught in the boom times of the post-WW2 era and into the early seventies. As soon as someone made the t-shirt showing evolution as a progression of homo sapiens ending with the ironic man carrying a briefcase my reaction started evolving. At first it was funny. Then it seemed ominous as i realized every “civilization” throughout history had assumed that they were the peak, the summit of enlightenment. That t-shirt started to look more like hubris than irony. Now it just seems ominous.
I predict under dictator Kamala - some shiny new events at the Olympics:
Shoplifting
Border crossing
Arson
Looting
How is she not mocking the competitors who take their performance seriously? Seems like she's basically telling them they are Uncle Toms for competing.
I’m sure the average 20-something has no idea what breakdancing is. Now they know, I guess?
Those who can’t, teach.
I can’t help but feel ashamed knowing that all those
alien spacecraft sent to explore the planet earth will be reporting
back breaking as one of earthling’s sports. I know that makes me sound like a Terrestrial Nationalist, but that’s how it makes me feel.
It's a clear sign the next stage will be "The Hunger Games", for real.
I think that is the point. What isn't clear is why the Australians let her participate. Surely there were other competitors who tried out.
I weep for my grandkids.
Here Raygun describes her PhD thesis:
"breakdancing might be the space to displace and deterritorialise gender. I use analytic autoetthnography ... [to] locate the potentiality for moments of transgression. In other words, I conceptualize the breaking body as not a 'body' constituted through regulations and assumptions, but as an assemblage open to new rhizomatic connections. ... the rituals of the dance not only augment its capacity to deterritorialize the body, but also facilitate new possibilities for performativities beyond the confines of dominant modes of thought and normative gender construction."
If you want to see "new possibilities for performativities beyond the confines of dominant modes of thought" watch Cole Hocker win the 1500 meter race.
He was so unexpected that when the camera pans across the lineup of runners before the start of the race it doesn't show him.
https://youtu.be/MBRH_fZhLF4
I have tried to avoid buying into the premise that a lot of society's ills these days are caused by the attitudes and expectations of liberal white women but I read this and think, well maybe so.
Oh dear God, me too. I hate when I find myself agreeing with rhhardin and my lamented friend Gahrie about the 19th Amendment.
Are we not amused?
alien spacecraft sent to explore the planet earth will be reporting
back breaking as one of earthling’s sports.
Take comfort in the knowledge that the reply from Alien HQ will be: Abduct and Probe.
Why not Olympic ballet?
PhD thesis subjects are just Mad Libs these days. Fill in the blanks randomly: "The intersectionality of __________ with ________ .
That display of whatever it was that she was doing was very painful to watch. Good break dancing is amazing; she just embarrassed herself and her country. I thought there was a certain level of skill that one had to display to qualify for an Olympic event - how did she even make it to Paris based on that performance?
Oh - and Olympics Committee: it's 'break dancing' or 'breakdancing''. 'Breaking' is for eggs, wind, waves and 'bad'.
Larry Elder did a show on this one time. He talked about the Korean kids in the local library studying with mothers watching while outside black kids were break dancing. Of course he is "the black face of White Supremacy."
I turned on a few Olympic events after waking up this morning. For a little while, I watched the ping pong players. They played a quick moving game and exhibited astonishing reflexes. Still, it was kind of boring, and I moved. The other event was an equestrian event. This consisted of watching some rich person ride a horse that jumped a fence. Again, kind of boring, and it seemed to me that the horse was the one who showed the athleticism. I next saw some "breaking". I watched two girls. They were far more accomplished than the Australian woman. It was definitely more interesting to watch than ping pong or the equestrian event. The girls wore extremely loose fitting clothes and, as they transitioned between moves, they would scowl. I don't know. Maybe if the girls wore leotards and smiled more, the sport would capture more attention from patriarchs like Snoop Dog.
In the comments to this X post, somebody posted a clip of the three stooges with Curly writhing around on the floor. Gold Medal.
I'm assuming she had to win some competition in Australia to secure the spot. Either way, what a stupid 'sport' to have in the Olympics. Dungeons and Dragons next?
Sure, Ukraine will march straight into the Kremlin. Then watch how fast those battlefield nukes come out. Last I checked Ukraine doesn't have any. Whoops!
"In what is a young person's sport"
Isn't break dancing about 50 years old?
Do young people still do it in large numbers?
What kind of pathetic insecure little man watches that deck?
Based on folks I've met that enjoy those shows as adults, I think most like it for the drama of it all. It is high drama, like a soap opera. It has story beats that unfold over time with alliances forged as well as betrayals. Personally, not my cup of tea, but neither are soap operas.
I suppose I'm assisting in the dissolution of society, but the track events have been terrific. It helps to have them on DVR to skip the mush.
One of our local stations did a news segment just the other day, featuring the breakdancing classes that the ballet company allows to use their facilities.
The two people who demonstrated the style were a thirty-something white male hipster-doofus and a 20-something girl who moved from Japan to pursue her breakdancing dream.
Jeez, Rich. Without question, the dumbest thing you’ve ever posted here.
This is what happens when you get your understanding of history and geopolitics from your computer’s homepage.
Great contrast. I think the answer is that the IOC wants to be "hip and with it" and they want to be "down with the people". Hence the very hip and with it genderqueer Bacchanalian travesty to open the show, the she-male boxers, and the breakdancing. Ballet is too traditional, merit-based, and caucasian for an entity that has fully embraced the globalist anti-humanity agenda.
Gender is sex-correlated attributes: masculine and feminine. Cultureal judgments of diversity by the "color" of our skin seems progressive.
I can see why she rejects the concept of merit.
If you can't tell who won without a bunch of judges telling you, it's not a competitive sport. A lot of these exhibitions at the Olympics are fun to watch, but they are not legitimate competitions. I don't think they should be competitive. What's the point? Just enjoy the show.
Is this not why you are here?
Only if it's LARP.
Next. Olympic rap.
I'm waiting to hear back from the IOC about my suggestion that hatchet tossing & mumblety-peg be made official Olympic sports.
Rachel Gunn merely follows in the tradition of Michael (“Eddie the Eagle”) Edwards and the Jamaican bobsled team. In ski jumping Eddie scored 69 points, which might seem like a decent score until you learn that the next to last place finisher had 140 and the winner more than 220.
Still, it’s worth noting that by 1994, just 6 years after they first competed, the Jamaicans had improved to where they finished ahead of both American sleds in the final standings.
Considering that break dancing got its start among young black urban Americans, I find it noteworthy that the women’s gold and bronze medals went to citizens of Asian countries and the silver to a Northern European. On the men’s side the gold went to a Canadian named “Kim,” so probably of Asian descent, the silver to a Frenchman, and the bronze to an American of Hispanic descent.
That is Break the internet dancing.
See the things I miss when I ignore the Olympics?! OMG!
And yet, somehow she didn't know.
The university that granted her PhD should revoke it.
It’s funny that our host plays innocent in re: University Malfeasance.
Ms. Althouse, as a full tenured Professor either did not, could not, or would not speak Truth to the Left in her University.
When we seize University endowments, I nominate Ann Althouse the first to be Expropriated and Lustrated.
All in the name of “Cruel Neutrality.”
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