Wrong on the Internet
Dec. 1st, 2015 03:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blimixOkay, I recently stayed up late because someone was wrong on the Internet. Samir Seif is a prolific creator of short instructional videos about martial arts techniques. He is an instructor with broad and deep experience, and I gladly subscribe to his YouTube channel. He recently started posting vlogs responding to comments on his videos, and I took issue with some things he said about Jeet Kune Do. He appreciated my comment, slightly misunderstood it, and posted his disagreeing response as a separate video. Whoa.
As I wrote my response to his unintentional straw man argument, I was actually nervous. Not because of what he might think of me (which might be an issue for me only in a conversation with "Weird Al" Yankovic), but because I was trying very hard to show complete respect for him and his point of view, while disagreeing. Also while a bit sleep deprived, which both makes that sort of thing harder, and brings emotions closer to the surface.
Reasons for the extra careful attention to respect:
1. He's a human being.
2. It's his channel; as a commenter, I'm a guest there.
3. He is tremendously more experienced in martial arts than I am.
4. The sad prevalence of "tough guy" martial arts commenters who cannot respect differing opinions engenders in me a certain revulsion, and a wish to be as much unlike them as possible.
On a barely related note, point 4 reminds me that I've noticed an unfortunate tendency in on-line martial arts communities to lean toward politics of ignorance, fear, and violence. It seems that people who get into martial arts because they want to feel tough in the face of unfounded fears outnumber people who get into it because they are passionate geeks who grew up loving kung fu movies. *cough* (Or maybe that's observation bias, and the former represent merely the loudest and most prolific commenters.) (And yes, I know that people have many other reasons.)
As I wrote my response to his unintentional straw man argument, I was actually nervous. Not because of what he might think of me (which might be an issue for me only in a conversation with "Weird Al" Yankovic), but because I was trying very hard to show complete respect for him and his point of view, while disagreeing. Also while a bit sleep deprived, which both makes that sort of thing harder, and brings emotions closer to the surface.
Reasons for the extra careful attention to respect:
1. He's a human being.
2. It's his channel; as a commenter, I'm a guest there.
3. He is tremendously more experienced in martial arts than I am.
4. The sad prevalence of "tough guy" martial arts commenters who cannot respect differing opinions engenders in me a certain revulsion, and a wish to be as much unlike them as possible.
On a barely related note, point 4 reminds me that I've noticed an unfortunate tendency in on-line martial arts communities to lean toward politics of ignorance, fear, and violence. It seems that people who get into martial arts because they want to feel tough in the face of unfounded fears outnumber people who get into it because they are passionate geeks who grew up loving kung fu movies. *cough* (Or maybe that's observation bias, and the former represent merely the loudest and most prolific commenters.) (And yes, I know that people have many other reasons.)
