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Sucker Punch: The art, the poetry, the idiocy of YouTube street fights.
November 27, 2007 1:16 PM Subscribe

Sucker Punch: The art, the poetry, the idiocy of YouTube street fights.
posted by chunking express (57 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite

*turns on cell cam*
posted by everichon at 1:22 PM on November 27, 2007 [4 favorites]

I read this article this morning and thought that it was pretty interesting and considered posting it. I was just loathe to send any traffic to the sites that host nothing but videos of these fights, on the off chance that it might encourage people to record more of them somehow. I think that young men and women should have an outlet for beating each other up without any rules (coliseums in every town for all-volunteer uncompensated gladiators maybe) but that fighting in public should result in mandatory prison time. When two douchebags start punching each other on some random VH1 or MTV reality show, the cops should show up the next day and take anybody who threw a punch to jail. I believe in zero-tolerance for fighting in public. It just has no place in a civilized society.
posted by ND¢ at 1:28 PM on November 27, 2007 [1 favorite]

This seemed way too ridiculous a story not to post. And I suspect stuff like this would make people less inclined to ~~fight~~ look like asses in public.
posted by chunking express at 1:31 PM on November 27, 2007

Oh my dark, secret shame. The first site I looked up when I downloaded the Internet Channel to my Wii was YouTube, and then I *sob* typed in 'knock out'.
posted by WinnipegDragon at 1:32 PM on November 27, 2007

I also saw this earlier today and noticed that it shares a trait with the very street fights it describes: as much as I wanted to turn away, I was unable to stop reading. When it was all over, I wanted my 5 minutes back, as well as the hits I had given to various knuckle-head fight-sites.
posted by dead_ at 1:33 PM on November 27, 2007

A single-link Slate post?

*punches chunking express*
posted by fandango_matt at 1:40 PM on November 27, 2007 [1 favorite]

A Slate article about YouTube no less. (I'm all about single link posts now.)
posted by chunking express at 1:43 PM on November 27, 2007

How long before people realise that being filmed doing this is a bad idea?
I foresee a lot of these vids ending with the filmer getting punched out.
posted by zingzangzung at 1:44 PM on November 27, 2007

ND¢: fighting in public should result in mandatory prison time. When two douchebags start punching each other on some random VH1 or MTV reality show, the cops should show up the next day and take anybody who threw a punch to jail. I believe in zero-tolerance for fighting in public. It just has no place in a civilized society.

I couldn't agree more. I recall one horrible on in particular where some white kids, maybe 13-15, are repeatedly hitting some black kid in the middle of a field, while the poor kid bleats "What did I do? What did I do?!" until someone's mother angrily intervenes. If those kids didn't spend a few months in juvie, it was a failure on every adult's part. However, my own experience is that public school and adolescent violence is encouraged and rarely punished at all; it's just "kid's being kids" and not, for example, setting the ground work for a nation of violent and aggressive adults.

Whenever I've had the misfortune of seeing one of these grotesque videos, the overriding, nauseated reaction is "Okay, so they should all be in jail. Jail the onlookers cheering them on, too. Overcrowd our prisons, let suckerpunching wusses spend a few days in hell". The older I get, the more I see these public school fights and things like the last video in the article, with the whole "nigger this, nigger that" from the suckerpunching black dude to the white guy like he was the second coming of Muhammed Ali, the more I think "A Clockwork Orange" is a useful, valuable manual on how to deal with criminals in our society. People who stand on the sidelines, cheering on fights, who engage in fights, who watch these videos and enjoy them, should be subjected to a strapped-down force-feeding of violent videos and personal beatings until the very sight of gorilla-like posturing makes them near to vomiting.

Fuck it. Humanity can't be saved. 99% of the world's population should be exterminated like the barbaric vermin that they are. Hitler was right- he just wasn't ambitious enough.
posted by hincandenza at 1:44 PM on November 27, 2007

That is so weird. I was walking back from the printer thinking "I sure do believe that there should be a lot of zero tolerance policies. I wonder if I am a closet fascist." and I get back and refresh and there is someone agreeing with me and saying Hitler was right in the same comment.

I think that it should be recognized that human beings have violence and aggression in their nature and there is no brain-washing that can cure us of that, nor would that be a good idea were it possible. I just think that a society should have healthy outlets for that aggression. Allowing people to randomly attack each other is not a healthy outlet. Bystanders can get hurt, the people minding their own business who are sucker punched can get hurt. It is not the violence that bothers me. If people consent to it, then let them kill each other for all I care. It is the harm that can come to those that do not consent to it that bothers me.
posted by ND¢ at 1:54 PM on November 27, 2007

Where's that one of the Welsh kid beating up some other kid and then getting knocked out by an ex-boxer? That one's great.
posted by chrismear at 1:56 PM on November 27, 2007

One punch can kill.
posted by Floydd at 1:59 PM on November 27, 2007

I witnessed an amazing fistfight between a very drunk French guy at Gare du Nord in Paris and about three police officers. Got the whole thing on video too, and it was brilliant. Then, out of nowhere, a policewoman grabbed my camera and started screaming at me in French, "video?! video?!" while pointing at the screen.

I apologized profusely and, in the heat of the moment, started to wonder if it was illegal to videotape police in France or something like that. So I deleted the video right in front of her, which only made her angrier. Finally, the guy started fighting with the police again and she stepped away for a second....at which point I quickly slipped into the crowd with my camera again.

It wasn't until later that I realized that she mostly likely grabbed my camera because it was "evidence" of the attack. Which led me to wonder....is it really hard to convict someone of assaulting multiple police officers in full view of dozens of strangers in a train station (that presumably has CCTV camera coverage)? Unless I'm reading the situation wrong, the answer in France is "apparently so."
posted by dhammond at 2:01 PM on November 27, 2007

I think that it should be recognized that human beings have violence and aggression in their nature and there is no brain-washing that can cure us of that, nor would that be a good idea were it possible. I just think that a society should have healthy outlets for that aggression. Allowing people to randomly attack each other is not a healthy outlet.

If you randomly attack someone, it's assault. It is a crime, and you can go to jail. What I don't get is the subculture norm at work here - if you are the victim of a sucker punch video, you aren't allowed to call the cops but must nonetheless suffer the indignity of a public humiliation.

Actually, I have a legitimate hypothetical to propose. Supposed the crowd shows up laughing with their cell phone cameras, a victim gets assaulted and the fight ends. The video goes up on youtube and everyone has a laugh. In particular, no one calls the cops on the attacker though. In my hypothetical, what if the victim after being attacked and in the middle of being beaten, produces a knife and stabs and seriously injures his attacker. He doesn't gloat, but runs off.

I wonder if the crowd would rat the victim out to the cops. I wonder if the subculture not only demands that the victim accept the humiliation but also that the victim accept the fight on the attackers (and their own) terms. By weilding a knife in self-defense, is that such a threat to the audience's subculture that they would run in the victim?

It's is one thing for people to fight, it is another thing entirely for the crowd to record it and participate in the humiliation. But it is more than that, right? These fights would not take place but for the audience. The audience's willingness to watch is what makes the fight possible, because the attacker is only doing it for the crowd present on the scene and the audience watching the video.

Also, I'm sending my kids to school with Glocks, FYI.
posted by Pastabagel at 2:11 PM on November 27, 2007 [4 favorites]

Here's the real lesson of the article:

As a general rule, if you pick a fight with someone who immediately assumes a relaxed but erect shuffle-stepping stance with his hands up and his chin tucked and a blandly businesslike expression on his face, you have probably just answered the question of the day wrong, even if you have him outnumbered.

posted by boo_radley at 2:15 PM on November 27, 2007

Bas Rutten

Bottom line: sound effects give you that extra edge.
posted by Brocktoon at 2:16 PM on November 27, 2007 [2 favorites]

"I just think that a society should have healthy outlets for that aggression."

The only problem with that, as I see it, is that there are some emotions for which there is no healthy outlet. How does someone who violently hates women get a healthy outlet for that? Rent alot of rape-porn? "Rape" his real-doll once in a while?

The YouTube violence is just a symptom of a culture where hurting and killing is entertainment an--

Oh fuck this. You've heard this all before. A million times. If we haven't got it figured out now then we never will. Drinks are on me, everybody.
posted by Avenger at 2:17 PM on November 27, 2007 [2 favorites]

It turns out that living in a surveillance society does not mean that the police are the only ones with cameras. I've been sucker punched a couple of times, so I don't think anything has changed since before we reached the cam-ubiquity singularity, but I do think it's weird that there's such a large audience for these videos. Adolescent boys hurt each other physically just like adolescent girls hurt each other emotionally; what's strange is the adult voyeurism for this sorts of pathetically immature cruelty.
posted by anotherpanacea at 2:20 PM on November 27, 2007

I have witnessed a few fights in my life (never have been in one), and they all (with one exception) fall into the "two drunks guys throw random punches, grab each other and fall down" variety. In one case, the guy on top repeatedly punched the asphalt because apparently he was so plastered he couldn't connect with the guy's head.

I did have a front row seat to a genuine Hollywood-style bar fight, which, as I imagine these mostly go, was quickly put to an end when someone who knew what they were doing stepped in and laid low the antagonist.

Sucker punching and that slap one where the two guys get their asses kicked are the most disturbing. The idea that anyone can be minding their own business and then be assaulted is hideous. That some cowardly little friend is lurking to catch the laffs on video is even worse.
posted by maxwelton at 2:22 PM on November 27, 2007

Link o' the day. I confess to a morbid fascination with street fights. Thanks for posting.
posted by vito90 at 2:23 PM on November 27, 2007

“Having just KO'd the big talker, he should spin on his heel, stalk back to his car, and depart, like some tutelary deity of street protocol making an instructional visit to Midgard. But he ruins a moment of gemlike concision by staying to rain follow-up blows on his helpless antagonist.”

If you’re Mohammad Ali, you can get away with not disturbing the poetry of the k.o. for the cameras. In real life, hit them when they’re down, otherwise, when they get up, they’re gonna hit you.
Of course, that’s predicated on the idea that you might actually be in serious danger. I’ve broken up a lot of these, most of the fights there, given the crowd, the posturing, etc., don’t look like they’re really all that dangerous (sounds counterintuitive, I know). But it’s just for show. It’s not business. It’s not real fury that is the precursor of murder. It is very much playing for the crowd. They’re gladiators, not fighters. Probably no one’s going to die or have a permanent disability (in part because of lack of skill, being drunk, etc, but mostly because that doesn’t seem to be the design).
But far from a concession, that adds to the argument about the uselessness of the violence there. Not that killing someone over some pharmaceuticals is exactly helpful, but it’s more understandable since there’s something tangible at stake other than ego satisfaction. And it’s avoidable. Don’t want to get shot in a drug deal? Don’t get into the Coca business.
This, in some ways, sure, isn’t. But again - someone beats the crap out of you and postures and posts it on the web for added humiliation, I’m not sure someone wouldn’t pick up a piece or a knife or fill a bottle with oily gas and go looking for payback. And who knows who else that might affect. Hell the Columbine shootings were done for less.

“By weilding a knife in self-defense, is that such a threat to the audience's subculture that they would run in the victim?”

It’s been my experiance that this is the case*. If someone sucker punches someone, that’s ok. And the victim is a pussy if he rats the guy out. But if you whip out a knife in response to the sucker punch - whoa! You’re a psycho.
Which, again, is the unstated subtext that, although the victim might take a beating, he’s not going to be really injured.
And of course, there are myriad tools - social and physical as well as skill sets - one can take to school that are far more useful than firearms.
Lately a lot of schools have been doing the anti-bullying thing. Hopefully it will start to sink in with the next generation.

* And indeed, even using skill in a fight, you can be thought of as a psycho. When I was in high school a guy pushed me at a party (blindsided me) when I got up he swung at me so I wrapped him up, put him in an arm bar and started breaking his fingers. So he’s crying, I’m dislocating his shoulder and everyone’s yelling at me to let him go, and suddenly I’m the asshole and I have to leave. Apparently everyone thought we’d have the wild haymaker/shoulder push kind of fight. No one knew I was training to fight. My gf at the time said “Smed, you really hurt him.” I completely missed the meaning of this at the time and said “Well...yeah.”
posted by Smedleyman at 2:29 PM on November 27, 2007 [8 favorites]

So why do most of these street fights and sucker punch videos disgust me while I still find Lady Punch enduringly hilarious?
posted by well_balanced at 2:36 PM on November 27, 2007

"There is a clear distinction between actual violence and posturing. Oxford social psychologist Peter Marsh notes that this is true in New York street gangs, it is true in "so-called primitive tribesmen and warriors," and it is true in almost any culture in the world. All have the same "patterns of aggression" and all have "very orchestrated, highly ritualized" patterns of posturing, mock battle, and submission. These rituals restrain and focus the violence on relatively harmless posturing and display. What is created is a "perfect illusion of violence." Aggression, yes. Competitiveness, yes. But only a "very tiny, tiny level" of actual violence.

-- Grossman, "On Killing"
posted by Comrade_robot at 2:39 PM on November 27, 2007 [1 favorite]

Our culture is doomed to being laughed at by much more advanced cultures.

The sucker punch is about as laudable as slipping a date rape drug into your blind date's drink.
posted by fenriq at 3:04 PM on November 27, 2007 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: Like Hitler, Just Not Ambitious Enough
posted by RockCorpse at 3:10 PM on November 27, 2007

Mmm. Toasted poltroons.
posted by StopMakingSense at 3:10 PM on November 27, 2007

But if you whip out a knife in response to the sucker punch - whoa! You’re a psycho.

I will gladly own this title. If someone is going to sucker-punch me, they should expect to see me react as if someone is making an attempt on my life, or the lives of those around me.

I don't know that it is 'all in fun' or that it wasn't a poorly executed initial attack with something more effective to follow, and I'm going to react as best and violently as I can.

Perhaps this is apparent in my demeanor, because despite being the skinny guy my whole life, I never have been sucker-punched (outside a sparring ring).
posted by quin at 3:28 PM on November 27, 2007 [1 favorite]

Don't miss People Getting Punched Just Before Eating.
posted by BeerFilter at 3:37 PM on November 27, 2007 [2 favorites]

My gf at the time said “Smed, you really hurt him.”

Did you really go by your Metafilter handle in high sch-I WAS KIDDING PLEASE DON'T HURT ME I BRUISE EASILY!
posted by JHarris at 3:37 PM on November 27, 2007

i know what you mean smedleyman. once that adrenalin kicks in its a whole different experience. you can't feel that when you are watching it on video, but when you are in it, you can become someone else entirely. and it can scare you and then even if you are in the right you can be in the wrong.

case in point...sun night i pushed/wrestled a guy out of a bar. he was drunk, and creepy, and wouldnt stop hitting on / bugging a friend of mine, so after a few people had talked to him, i was just sitting there and i see him get up to go over to her again and something in my head snapped, it was like an unconscious decision, next thing i know i grabbed him and basically running him out of the bar to lay him out on the street.

i realized at some point about 3 seconds into the thing that i had the upper hand. he couldnt have seen it coming, no way, didnt even get a chance to square off before he was off balance and being bustled out. and through the thing i knew that it wasnt my intention to hurt him bad, just scare him off. but it was really scary, because my heart is pounding and all of a sudden im feeling "justified" or righteous or whatever and there are points in there where i found myself making split second decisions that i shouldnt even be considering, like, do i throw him over the railing or walk him down these stairs. and its messed up for me to even be considering that, since he hasnt done anything besides be rude and an ass and he isnt even fighting me and is helpless and in my control. and then half the bar has poured out into the street and is begging me not to hurt him and ive instinctively maneuvered him into a choke and its like, whoah, shit, what am i doing, and then i let him up and he stumbles off. and then i turn around and go back in the bar to try to drink my beer and it took like half an hour for my body to calm down and my head to get back to normal, even though i knew that i meant him no real harm and just wanted to scare him.

thats what i mean, you almost need to get into a particular riled up mental state to initiate a real confrontation but once you are in control of that situation all sorts of moral issues arise and you end up making them on a time scale and in a mental state that its awful to be making them in.
posted by mano at 3:43 PM on November 27, 2007 [5 favorites]

PostIronyIsNotaMyth: Props to you sir. Best troll ever.

What troll? I was making a literary allusion!

What repulses me is that this fighting is glossed over. It's violence and barbarity, not theater- this is no Shakespeare in the Park! People can and do get seriously injured in a fight, and this unwritten notion that a gang of people can beat up one person so long as they aren't permanently crippled, they can humiliate and shame them because of some imagined slight to "teach them a lesson" but they're psycho if they reliate or seek a Columbine-justice... it's retarded. That last video, the suckerpunch- nothing in that black man's voice says "I'm just playing", it says "I'm borderline retarded and I'm extremely violent towards you".

As a post on the blue some time ago about street fighting noted, you have to treat each fight as very real; you can't just assume that if someone attacks you on a street that this is the "play" type of fighting where you should just take the punch, fall down, be embarassed, and go home. It could very well be the type of fighting where you end up dead as your head is stomped on repeatedly by a hyperagressive psychopath- which, disturbingly, are what some of these videos entail, where it's not just haymaker-shovey-fighting but "gang of thugs brutally beat a person into the asphalt long past them no longer even moving". When is the right time to find that out- while you're still upright, or when you're slipping into a coma?

That's why I agree with Smedleyman: if you're attacked, don't buy into this "Aw, we just playin'!" mentality. Strike back hard as if your life was at stake, which it just might be. People don't pick fights if the last one they were in resulted in the loss of vision in one eye and the complete shattering of their right arm bones from the shoulder on down.

I don't understand why people want to watch these videos, I don't understand the glee on the part of the bystanders who encourage it, or jump in to get involved when there's no cost to them (i.e., the sucker punch, or the N-against-1 odds). I suppose the shorter-than-average vito90 secretly thrills to the fantasy of being a badass, but if he was blacking out the way to death as his skull was fractured into the blacktop it wouldn't be much consolation that it'd at least be an entertaining youtube video.

Violence hurts, even "posturing" violence like in the linked videos, and it absolutely needs to be strongly discouraged from civilized society. These kinds of actions, or suburban kids driving around paintballing random strangers, reflect pure sociopathic tendencies latent in all of us to varying degrees, and it is something that needs to be struck down before it leads to more serious harm. You want to take out your aggression, go exercise, or go into a boxing ring with a sparring partner, or whatever acceptable and consensual way you have to burn off adrenaline. But if you provoke, or incite, street violence or even playground violence you should be severely punished.

maxwelton: Sucker punching and that slap one where the two guys get their asses kicked are the most disturbing. The idea that anyone can be minding their own business and then be assaulted is hideous.

That's why the one video of the two guys who slap that woman is at least satisfying from a morality-in-cinema way: they dragged some innocent stranger in, and were punished for it in a way that will likely discourage future such actions.
posted by hincandenza at 3:47 PM on November 27, 2007 [5 favorites]

I've been in a street fight exactly once. I interrupted a man who was beating his girlfriend. He took one quick look at me, went to his car, grabbed a hammer, and attacked me with it. I managed to catch his hands and hold him still, and we clutched each other for a few minutes, with me occasionally punching him in the head as hard as possible, attempting to knock him out. I did not, at that time, know how freakin' hard the head is, and he didn't seem bothered by it at all. Eventually, I managed to talk him down, or he got sick of just clutching a guy in the road, and went back to his car and drove off.

It was the most horrible, undignified, bizarre experience of my life, and I do not wish to revisit it. If someone attacks me again, I will go right for the groin, the knees, the shin, or the eyes. I will do everything I can to put the person down as fast as possible, and then I will go away. In fact, ordinarily, my first impulse would be to run, but, in this instance, I could not go until I was sure that the hammer guy was no longer beating his girlfriend.

As it turned out, he had just gotten out of jail. Some people are just hard-wired for a life in prison, I guess.
posted by Astro Zombie at 4:00 PM on November 27, 2007

someone who immediately assumes a relaxed but erect shuffle-stepping stance

Bojangles Robinson was a baad muthafucka.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:10 PM on November 27, 2007

or suburban kids driving around paintballing random strangers

In a particularly horrifying incident hereabouts a couple of years back, an innocent cyclist was pushed over by a shitheel in a car containing, from my read on it, three teenagers with a collective IQ of about 36. One of the reasons I don't have kids: If my kid did something like that, I would be very, very hard-pressed to not say "grab your clothes and hit the streets, I'm not having a fucking sub-human in the house."
posted by maxwelton at 4:27 PM on November 27, 2007 [1 favorite]

What the world needs is a video of what happens when someone sucker punches Bas Rutten. That video linked up stream is classic. That dude is a crazy motherfucker.
posted by chunking express at 4:33 PM on November 27, 2007

One of my roommate's friends once punked out an entire basketball team (we have numerous witnesses to this story) by just acting like a psycho badass. He had bumped into a guy, some words were exchanged, and it wasn't until the two were facing each other down and sizing each other up that he realized that all of the dude's teammates were surrounding him. Without putting down his drink, he made himself as big as he could and calmly stated:

There's no way I can take down all of you, but before I end up in the hospital, one of you fuckers is losing an eye.

I don't know whether or not he was serious, but he sold it well enough that a group of much larger, physically fit men decided it was best not to test him.

There's something to be said for letting people know that you're not the person with whom to fuck.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 4:51 PM on November 27, 2007 [4 favorites]

"grab your clothes and hit the streets, I'm not having a fucking sub-human in the house."

Since when did that become unacceptable parenting. Should we allow subhumans to live in our homes....
posted by Rubbstone at 5:13 PM on November 27, 2007

That's why I agree with Smedleyman: if you're attacked, don't buy into this "Aw, we just playin'!" mentality. Strike back hard as if your life was at stake, which it just might be.

i wonder what people here would say if you just tased them
posted by pyramid termite at 5:17 PM on November 27, 2007

Ok, quick; Someone needs to grab a thumping techno backbeat and remix that Bas Rutten video linked above.

Done correctly, we could have the newest and hottest of internet memes on our hands.
posted by quin at 5:19 PM on November 27, 2007

“Strike back hard as if your life was at stake, which it just might be.”

And indeed, at the very least it will save you future beatings. You’re supposed to be scary when you’re adrenalized.
(Yes, I have scared myself. It’s why I’m such a cuddly bastard today. Pretty much, still, the only thing I fear in the world is me. I enjoy violence. Not the posturing, not the rush, the skillful execution and delivery. 10 years ago, no, you wouldn’t have wanted to know me.) And that’s the rub. There is some tacit social acceptance here and a prejudice against the use of real (for lack of a better word) violence, even in self-defense. Best way to avoid initiation is to exude “I am not prey” in everything you say and do.
Bastard that I am, I’ve never harmed anyone unwilling or unable to fight me (not that my motives were entirely noble, I still don’t really feel anything wrong with killing someone. I think and know it’s wrong, but...) But there are people who look for others to beat on.
Still I doubt anyone initiates violence with anyone they don’t have some measure of (I believe the stats bear me out there, you tend to know your attacker). Unless it’s misguided.
(I remember watching some gangbangers (black) slowly sidling up to some bald guys sitting on a bench. Eventually they started going through the whole pantomime and ritual of initiating violence. The skinheads didn’t respond at all. Just kept minding their own business. So, perhaps thinking their 2 to 1 advantage was keeping the bald heads quiet, they stepped it up. Got more aggressive. Catcalling, crowding them, typical gang type stuff to feel the opposition out. They got nothing back. Nada. The bald guys didn’t respond, kept looking at their (oddly uniform) watches. Well, eventually the shoving started and about two seconds in the bald guys reacted as one and started severely and intently injuring the gangbangers. The story - told to me over lunch - was that the gangbangers presumed the bald guys were a skinhead gang looking for trouble. The bald guys, actually, were a unit of airborne rangers looking to avoid trouble. So the response patterns and communication were completely crossed. The circumspect reaction by the rangers was taken as weakness by the gang members while the gang members aggressiveness prompted further backing off to avoid trouble. None of them spoke the same language of violence - ergo violence ensued. Had the rangers known their bald heads was prompting the majority of the aggressiveness they could have diffused it. If the gang members knew the rangers were just some military dudes waiting for a bus, not skinheads moving in on their territory or looking to bust heads, there wouldn’t have been a problem.)
Learn the language and your body movement, words, etc. can speak volumes before anything occurs. And knowing the motivations, giving the “I’m not in your way, but I’m not worth messing with” sort of vibe, usually diffuses anything.
Of course, fight like it’s your first day in prison if anyone does mess with you. This kind of thing is, I fully agree, entirely unacceptable.
posted by Smedleyman at 5:27 PM on November 27, 2007 [1 favorite]

Fuck it. Humanity can't be saved. 99% of the world's population should be exterminated like the barbaric vermin that they are. Hitler was right- he just wasn't ambitious enough.

Thats' right, lets not do anything about fixing society, lets use eugenics or race to exterminate 99%.

I don't want to live in the world with the 1% who exterminated the 99%.

Man, I can't believe I just replied to such a moronic comment, buts seems a shame to exterminate the words I just typed.
posted by mattoxic at 5:30 PM on November 27, 2007

I told my sucker punch story before. And how I took revenge. So I won't recount it.

The problem with these kids is this - they are pussies. Throw most kids like that in a boxing ring and suddenly they ain't so brave when the deck isn't stacked.

Young men need a healthy outlet for this type aggression and it's shame that most people have just a dim of view of voluntary combat sports.

Supervised pugilism and wresting used to be something near every young man was taught and now it is near the sole property of the bullies. What a shame.
posted by tkchrist at 5:37 PM on November 27, 2007

The problem with these kids is this - they are pussies. Throw most kids like that in a boxing ring and suddenly they ain't so brave when the deck isn't stacked.

Oh yeah, bitch? Who the fuck you think you talkin' to here? You come over here, say that to my face!
posted by suckerpunch at 5:57 PM on November 27, 2007 [3 favorites]

(I'm so cool. Also, I'm not the average motherfucker. And whatever else the dude in the last video says. That too.)
posted by suckerpunch at 6:06 PM on November 27, 2007

That guy that fought off three guys is insanely impressive. That's a near impossibility, reserved for movies, usually.
posted by ignignokt at 6:06 PM on November 27, 2007

All about the movement, ignignokt - keep moving swiftly backwards forces them to come on to you, funnelling them such that they can really only attack one at a time. (Doesn't stop it being impressive, of course... - it looks like the guy is using some Crav Maga, so he knows what he's doing!)
posted by benzo8 at 7:06 PM on November 27, 2007

Which link is that? Is that one I'd need a youtube account for?
posted by ODiV at 8:18 PM on November 27, 2007

MeFi links to slate article about youtube. Truly, the web will eat itself.
posted by Eideteker at 8:50 PM on November 27, 2007

Once you really learn how to fight, you find yourself fighting much less.
(including fighting yourself)
posted by Bighappyfunhouse at 10:04 PM on November 27, 2007

"Nobody ever wins a fight."
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:28 PM on November 27, 2007

Rubbstone: Should we allow subhumans to live in our homes....

Not if...

Hitler was right- he just wasn't ambitious enough.
posted by vbfg at 1:55 AM on November 28, 2007

From this day forward, the world outside my door will be officially known as the land of a thousand asswhippings.
posted by primer_dimer at 3:03 AM on November 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

Thats' right, lets not do anything about fixing society, lets use eugenics or race to exterminate 99%.

DUDE. hincandenza was just channeling Bill Hicks in a bit of comedy hyperbole -- he even referenced the Wiki quote page for ya. Probably best to just watch the video. (NSFW language)

FREEBIRD!!
posted by LordSludge at 7:54 AM on November 28, 2007

Surprisingly interesting article. Now I have to wait to get home to watch the videos.
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 10:07 AM on November 28, 2007

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