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The topic we're talking about today was inspired by my ruminations on Bullshido martial arts promo demonstration videos. These are the videos where a martial arts master shows off their skill in a patently fake demonstration, usually starting with breaking concrete slabs or wood and then progressing to a performance where they show how easily they can defeat all of their students who try and attack them.
The really bad ones will pretend to channel “chi” (a fake energy) and knock down their students without even trying! The thing is that often the teachers actually believe they can really DO this stuff because the reactions of their students make them believe that it's real. And the students believe it too because of motivated reasoning (they WANT to believe), and they are influenced by each other. It's all one self reinforcing bubble echo-chamber of belief.
There are two reasons I'm talking about this in terms of webcomics: 1. Bullshido is the origin of the amazing and silly martial arts and superhero moves and techniques in comics and animation and it's interesting to know where it comes from. and 2. this sort of stuff is why we have preconceived ideas about why a lot of pop-culture is good or bad: We fall for a sort of tribal thinking that's created by our tendency to follow the beliefs of others without examining them for ourselves. It's the sort of thing that results in cults, conspiracy belief, and our opinions on political figures. It's even why we believe that valve amps, Les Paul guitars, Stradivarius violins, and vinyl records sound magically better than the alternatives. It's a fascinating and fun topic and we go deep into it!
This week Gunwallace wasn't able to make a new theme so I re-issued the theme to Kirsha Brackets - A warm rush of frenetic activity! Modern, bright, shiny, new, fun, action, happening, moving, going, bouncing, bubbling, hopping, motivation!
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Jalek and the Starbook - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/sep/03/featured-comic-jalek-and-the-starbook/
Featured music:
Kirsha Brackets - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Kirsha_Brackets/ - by DrawingGenius, rated T.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Quackcast 704 - The Cultcast
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, Sept. 10, 2024
Banes,
Drunk duck,
Featured comic,
featured music,
Gunwallace,
Jalek and the Starbook,
Kawaiidaigakusei,
Ozoneocean,
Quackcast 704,
Tantz Aerine,
The Cultcast,
The Kirsha Brackets,
Webcomics hosting
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Ozoneocean at 5:48PM, Sept. 10, 2024
@marcorossi - granted! Non-weapon martial arts are a real thing and how been proven over and over. No question about that. This is more about the cukt-like fakers and how they elevate their fakery to non-realistic levels of pure fantasy. Definitely not about real fight techniques and the experts trained in them.
Ozoneocean at 5:45PM, Sept. 10, 2024
@PaulEberhardt - hmmm, I think it's more that they tend to use charisma and things we typically fall for as silly normal humans against us XD
PaulEberhardt at 5:04AM, Sept. 10, 2024
Every cult has a grain of truth that it somehow manages to make a cake of.
marcorossi at 1:58AM, Sept. 10, 2024
(2) many traditional martial arts have "kata" exercises (I use the term loosely), pre-coreographed fights where the opponent (uke) makes the exact movement so that the student (tori) can easily perform a "move" in the most perfect and linear way; while one can argue how useful these "kata" are for learning, when a gym makes a promotional show often the public will look at those katas, that make it look like if a perfect execution with no effort is the common case (it isn't). (2b) also some martial arts use stuff like wristloks that it is true can defeat a bigger opponent with comparatively small strenght, but are really really difficult to do in a real fight unless you are super good and the opponent is a moron because you have to grab him in a very specific way to make it work. These things are not pure "bullshido" because actually if you do a proper kote-gaeshi the opponent will fall, the problem is that it is extremely difficult to do a proper kote-gaeshi in reality.
marcorossi at 1:53AM, Sept. 10, 2024
As a long term dilettante pratictioner of martial arts (judo and Nippon kempo, that is a karate-like thing), while I agree that there is a cult-like mindset in this sort of things (look at any video of Yellow Bamboo to see the worst), there are IMHO also two other reasons: (1) in terms of media, often writers need an excuse to explain e.g. how James Bond can defeat 20 minions barehanded, or how Sherlock Holmes can survive a fall in a waterfall. Writers will just say that the hero is an expert in Jutsu-fu and rationalise everything (the more exotic jutsu-fu is the better, because readers can believe it more easily). This tends to create an unrealistic level of expectations about martial arts.