Shame on you. You gullible cognitive troglodytes. Sure, you might suffer some of the consequence of your ignorance as you watch your children take ill with easily preventable diseases, but your children, and everyone else in society does not deserve to pay for your stupidity.
“But it’s not really that bad, people can’t be that stupid… can they?”
Well let’s see. Oklahoma just elected an Anti-Vaxxer to be their Governor. Texas has seen a 20% increase in children whose parents sought non-medical exemptions from vaccination so there are now over 57,000 of the little disease reservoirs running around, coughing on your kids and touching shit, including pre-vaccinated babies, pregnant women (rubella causes birth defects), the medically immunocompromised (you’re already fighting cancer? oops), and that elderly grandmother just trying to buy some fucking baking supplies at the grocery store without dying for them.
Let’s rustle up some dead kids, y’all!
“Babies and young children with malnutrition and weak immune systems are particularly vulnerable to complications and death…”
Here’s the link to the World Health Organization report showing that cases of Measles, an easily-goddamn-preventable disease that otherwise kills children, are increasing. You’re probably thinking “whatever, this is only happening in sub-Saharan Africa where health services are hard to come by, people are poorly-educated and easily scared by superstitions away from keeping their kids from dying in severe pain.” Sorry Becky, it’s happening here, where people have none of those excuses.
The Americas, the Eastern Mediterranean Region, and Europe experienced the greatest upsurges in cases in 2017, with the Western Pacific the only World Health Organization (WHO) region where measles incidence fell.
“The resurgence of measles is of serious concern, with extended outbreaks occurring across regions, and particularly in countries that had achieved, or were close to achieving measles elimination,” said Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Deputy Director General for Programmes at WHO. “Without urgent efforts to increase vaccination coverage and identify populations with unacceptable levels of under-, or unimmunized children, we risk losing decades of progress in protecting children and communities against this devastating, but entirely preventable disease.”
Measles is a serious and highly contagious disease. It can cause debilitating or fatal complications, including encephalitis (an infection that leads to swelling of the brain), severe diarrhoea and dehydration, pneumonia, ear infections and permanent vision loss. Babies and young children with malnutrition and weak immune systems are particularly vulnerable to complications and death.
The MMR vaccine (Measles, Mumps, Rubella), which is often the target of fearmongering, especially over the completely bullshit link to Autism, has been overwhelmingly demonstrated as safe by extensive research and meta-analysis. For those of you who aren’t the sharpest hammers in the drawer, that means more than a fucking Google search; way more. The person who started that myth, Andrew Wakefield, lost his medical license for being a fraud and faking his research.
This motherfucker…
As we’ve covered before, including an enraged Maori doctor doing the Haka to get the point across, anti-vaxxers kill babies. And unlike Ebola or terrorism or whatever else you’re probably much more afraid of, these threats are coming to a neighborhood near you. Think about that the next time some unsupervised kid at the grocery store wipes their snot on the frosted flakes.
Updated 3/17: National Geographic and the parent company for Tyson’s show “Cosmos” have released the following statement:
“The investigation is complete, and we are moving forward with both ‘StarTalk’ and ‘Cosmos,’” Fox Broadcasting and National Geographic said in a statement. “‘StarTalk’ will return to the air with the remaining 13 episodes in April on National Geographic, and both Fox and National Geographic are committed to finding an air date for ‘Cosmos.’ There will be no further comment.”
Previous article follows:
The Scientific community is not exempt from problems of predatory behavior, or out of the reach of the #MeToo movement; something that anyone not living under a rock would be aware of now. And for those of you in Geology who do live under rocks, someone in your field has probably been groped as well. We’ll find out about it as soon as the public remembers you exist.
In the past several years, accusations have been leveled at notable men including the founder of Skeptic magazine, Michael Shermer, and noted atheism and science spokesman, Professor Lawrence Krauss. Krauss was forced to retire after an investigation into the claims. But while both are notable, Tyson has effectively been the face of modern Science in the United States, filling the role left in the wake of Carl Sagan almost directly, by hosting the revival of Cosmos: A Spacetime Oddessy. Tyson’s presence as a science communicator is so ubiquitous that he was even parodied in an episode of Key and Peele (which we used above, to troll some of you into angrily clicking this article—we have to eat too, you know).
Message from Tchiya Amet accusing Neil Degrasse Tyson, obtained by Patheos.
The Atheist website Patheos has been detailing the ongoing, emerging accusations since 2017. So far it seems three accusers have come forward, one of which as accused Tyson of raping her when they were both grad students. And while the impulse to dismiss accusations seems to be strong in many in the community, given posts on social media when this story broke, Fox, the network producing Cosmos is taking them seriously and investigating.
…and as the saying goes, sometimes the reason is because you’re stupid and make bad decisions.
A recent study out of the University of Fribourg shows that people whose thought processes involve believing that everything has some sort of intrinsic purpose—teleological thinking—are more susceptible to irrational beliefs, including and especially conspiracy theories.
Here, we show that conspiracism — the proneness to explain socio-historical events in terms of secret and malevolent conspiracies — is also associated to a teleological bias. Across three correlational studies (N > 2000), we found robust evidence of a teleological link between conspiracism and creationism, which was partly independent from religion, politics, age, education, agency detection, analytical thinking and perception of randomness. As a resilient ‘default’ component of early cognition, teleological thinking is thus associated with creationist as well as conspiracist beliefs, which both entail the distant and hidden involvement of a purposeful and final cause to explain complex worldly events.
We especially appreciate that section in bold (our emphasis), because it’s a stinging jab at how childish this type of thinking really is.
Scientist stumbling into a conference of teleological thinkers
And if you suspect we’re exaggerating, here’s the first line of the main text:
Although teleological thinking has long been banned from scientific reasoning, it persists in childhood cognition, as well as in adult intuitions and beliefs.
Teleological Thinking
“It was just meant to be..”.
“There’s a purpose for everything…”
“The sun rises every morning to give us light and warmth.”
“A banana fits perfectly in the Human hand because it was designed by God to…”
These are examples of this kind of “thinking”, and if you noticed, they got progressively dumber, culminating in a steaming pile of… teleology that was presented by none other than 80’s teenage heartthrob Kirk Cameron in support of Creationism.
♫ Show me that smile, again… ♫ …although to be fair and balanced, atheists have a problem with bananas too. We’ll let you look that one up for yourself (hint: it’s “amazing”).
To be clear, we don’t normally fire shots across the bow of religion here on Bullshido, at least not directly. But we couldn’t avoid it in this case. Because the above study shows that same cracked cognitive foundation that leaves one susceptible to conspiracy theories, is also correlated with belief in that banana bullshit.
A banana as “designed” by God, or Nature, or whatever.
Why is that bullshit? Well if you grew up in a banana republic—for our purposes here both a literal one and the retail clothing store will work—you may be unaware that the modern banana shares very little in common with its original, natural form. People have been modifying it through selective breeding for hundreds of years. The above image is what a wild, “intelligently-designed” banana looks like; certainly not perfect for fitting in your hand, or… (AMAZING!)
Even Grandma knows better…
In short, the fact that everything happens for a reason doesn’t mean everything happens for a purpose, and the fact that a lot of people need for there to be a purpose to everything, doesn’t mean there actually is one; much less does that make it necessary to pull one, like a banana, out of your… erm… atheist.
The year was 1993. All jeans were “mom jeans”, and Saved By The Bell was still poisoning the minds of the young with its sanitized depictions of subversive teenage criminal activity.
Meanwhile, on the Internet, America Online’s hordes of troglodytes and child predators were finally granted access to the Usenet user groups—once a repository of highly-informed, academic-level discussions. So as many predicted, the quality of those discussions spiked strongly downward like sales of M.C. Hammer pants and Steven Seagal’s credibility as a martial artist.
A handful of us still remember when THESE people “ruined” the Internet…
This event was dubbed the “Eternal September”, referencing the recurring annual phenomenon of freshman college students degrading Usenet discussions for the first few months of every new school year. But the people who coined the term grossly overestimated how singular the effect would be, much in the same way World War I was referred to by some as “The War to End All Wars” until a genocidey little stache-boi named Adolf came along and told his bros to “halte mein bier”.
Things were about to get a lot worse. Enter: Smartphones, and Social Media.
Re-enactment of the Battle of the Usenet, 1993 (Colorized)
Nowadays it’s a cliche to say the Internet has revolutionized the way we interact with the media, especially about politics. Of course, not all revolutions are a step in the right direction (looking at you, Crystal Pepsi).
Still, one would assume that lowering the barriers to entry for media participation would naturally result in an improved media landscape. But more voices in a conversation does not mean better conversation just as more chefs in the kitchen does not make a better soup. And as anyone who’s been tricked into eating at Golden Corral certainly knows, more soup doesn’t mean better soup.
Nothing says “gourmet” like food by the shovel
…more voices in a conversation does not mean better conversation just as more chefs in the kitchen does not make a better soup.
Without belaboring the point any more in order to cram 90’s references into this article like a Trapper Keeper filled with pogs, here’s exactly how political coverage on Internet and politics in the Internet age went to shit (just like your Tamagotchi) in three stages (which we won’t turn into one of those god-awful, bullshit slideshows in a desperate attempt to squeeze more revenue out of your click. You’re welcome.):
1. Overchoice, Underthink
Assholes like Vani “Food Babe” Hari are part of an entire new industry of hucksters and quacks building profitable careers off exploiting people’s scientific illiteracy by providing ready-made, simplistic answers to difficult questions
The glut of choices for individual consumption of political information has created a situation Behavioral Economists describe as “Overchoice” (choice overload). This is associated with emotional discomfort and a breakdown of one’s decision making processes leading to an individual gravitating towards the least-distressing option.
2. Huehueheuristics
Common sense arguments
That least-distressing option tends also to be the one which requires the least mental effort, let alone critical thinking, so the phenomenon of Confirmation Bias further short-circuits one’s innate logic heuristics (sometimes described as “common sense”), much in the same way a morning-spanning argument between co-workers over where to go to lunch is unlikely to be decided in favor of the healthiest option rather than just getting fucking pizza delivered and I don’t care if you want vegan moon sprouts Janice, we’re getting bacon and pineapple.
3. Antisocial Media Disorder
Social Media services such as Facebook, from which as many as 62% of American Adults get their news, not only reinforce, but reward tribal in-group signalling for approval from one’s “team” in the form of “Likes”, rather than contentious discussion; and the native discussion formats themselves don’t easily lend themselves to citing sources to back up the flag-waving, “tastes great” vs. “less filling”, red vs. blue bullshit in the first place.
If you’ve been living in a hole, the Perry Bible Fellowship is one of the best things ever so all credit to them for explaining this phenomenon as simply and elegantly as fucking possible
Prior to the explosion of this kind of “new media” via the Internet, fewer sources meant both more scrutiny on those sources for accuracy and integrity, and fewer opportunities for confirmation bias to play a part in the public misinforming itself.
Furthermore, in the face of the new media takeover, as those traditional media sources continue to wither, Journalists have been pressured into abdicating traditional ethical duties in order to remain competitive. As a secondary consequence, members of the electorate who are sincerely interested in being informed voters are exposed to a higher volume of low-quality, biased information, drowning out the reasoned, astute voices in the national conversation.
There are millions of people that think this counts as journalism, and thousands of “journalists” willing to accommodate them. By the way, the green ones are strawberry-flavored. Consider your world destroyed, because words no longer mean anything.
Postmortem on the Modern World
Long gone are the days of prime time television featuring erudite policy debates between intellectual heavyweights like William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal. They’ve been replaced by sycophantic tribal cheerleaders like Sean Hannity and Cenk Uygur, Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow; each signalling to the bias of their audience above and beyond any commitment to the common good of deciding policy based on the objective realities of the world.
We just wanted to include this for no particular reason except how accurate it is
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a United States Senator and Ambassador from New York once said that everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Voters in today don’t seem to be aware of the difference, much less possess the cognitive toolkit needed to separate the two. And politicians in this political climate are more than happy to take advantage of this huge blind spot in the public’s critical thinking skills.
So nowadays it doesn’t really matter if a politician presents opinions as reality and lies as facts, as long as the media will repeat them to a public who can’t tell the difference. And that’s why we can’t fucking have nice fucking things.
Iyengar, S., & Lepper, M. (2000). When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 995-1006.
Nickerson, Raymond S. “Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises.” Review of General Psychology, vol. 2, no. 2, 1998, pp. 175–220., doi:10.1037//1089-2680.2.2.175.
Leonard Pozner is the father of a six year old named Noah. Noah was murdered in his classroom in 2012. Lucy Richards is a follower of Alex Jones. Leonard and his wife had to seek police help to stop Lucy from sending them repeated death threats because Alex Jones accused them of being “crisis actors”.
Lucy was sentenced to five months in prison. Noah’s mom and dad are now suing Alex Jones over the lies that prompted Lucy to attack his grieving parents.
Leonard Pozner and his murdered son Noah
Choosing your own reality these days is like selecting your lunch from the dollar menu of a fast food restaurant. When people have either weak critical thinking skills or weak willpower, they’ll almost always default to the most gratifying, least healthy things to shovel into themselves.
The lawsuit in this case, involves a specific claim that their interview with Anderson Cooper was faked, due to a graphics glitch that appeared during the broadcast. Latching on to tiny details and expanding them into broad conspiracies is Jones’ M.O., and his millions of followers who consider him not only a legitimate media outlet, but one of the few that actually tells the truth of what’s really going on, not only latch onto these conspiracy theories, but take violent action in the real world based on them.
In response to the suit, Jones’ attorneys argue that “no reasonable reader or listener would interpret Mr. Jones’ statements regarding the possibility of a ‘blue-screen’ being used as a verifiably false statement of fact, and even if it is verifiable as false, the entire context in which it was made discloses that the statements are mere opinions ‘masquerading as a fact.”
Recently, Jones defended himself in a custody battle by admitting his outrageous claims and unhinged conspiracies were all an act. This has done nothing to deter his followers, who seem to have no issue with lies as long as the lies involve things they want to believe are true.
When you cram junk food into yourself, you typically only harm yourself. Fortunately, there aren’t emotionally-unhinged people with grandiose delusions shooting up pizza places over their lack of willpower to seek better dietary options. The same can’t be said for media options.
Everyone hates those “One Simple Trick…!” articles. But some things really are simple. If you want to lose weight, you burn more calories than you consume. If you want to get stronger, you keep lifting heavier things. If you want to get better at fighting, you fight people that are better than you and learn from defeat.
And if you want to get better at both arguing, and ultimately coming closer to knowing what is actually true rather than what you want to believe is true, you stop giving a shit whether or not you “win” the argument, and start caring more about who’s actually correct.
But that’s the rub: most people’s egos are so fragile that they’re abjectly terrified someone else will even contradict them, much less disprove what they have to say. So they resort to rhetorical tricks, logical fallacies, gish galloping through forums and social media with shitposts like an incontinent racehorse headed towards a patch of carrots—those carrots, of course being “Likes” from someone on their “side” of the debate.
That’s because for people who are both morally, and cognitively weak, it’s a difficult temptation to resist, especially when sites like Facebook are deliberately set up to encourage that kind of of thumb-based behavioral reinforcement by in-group signalling for approval.
I said exactly what you want to hear about immigrants or climate change or Trump or homeopathy; please love me. At least look at me? Please? Somebody?
You’re not like those losers though, you, the person reading this. Right?
Oh shit, is that a Trump gif in the middle of a Bullshido article? Well, I never…
Stop.
Pause your brain. Freeze on the exact thought you’re having right now: the fact that seeing Trump’s face in the middle of the article almost certainly prompted some emotional reaction in you—be it disgust, or tingles in your naughty bits, whatever—proves that you’re just as prone to irrational nonsense as everyone else.
Sorry for the interruption, but we had to call bullshit on you too. Because as a regular reader of Bullshido, you really are more likely to understand the problem we’re dealing with, and consequently, more likely to help us spread the ideas to the rest of the world, and maybe even help us reduce the level of stupidity in it for everyone’s benefit.
Also, as a regular reader, you’re most likely that rare combination of critical thinking, high motivation, and huge fucking nerd. Not this guy:
Don’t be this guy…
So we’ll use an analogy you’ll understand:
Be Like Goku
[If you don’t know who Goku is the argument we’re making isn’t going to work as well, so since we already have your click, go make up for your stunted childhood and watch DBZ in a locked room where no one can judge you. We’ll still be here]
You’re familiar with the “Strawman” argument/fallacy—basically, pretending your opponent is saying one thing that’s easy to refute, and attacking that. It’s more common on the internet than pornography, and a huge pain in the ass for everyone.
The worst thing about a strawman argument is that it shuts down any productive communication so that nothing gets resolved, nobody walks away having learned anything, nobody is closer to the truth. Nothing changes; which really should be the point of arguing in the first place, assuming you really are one of those highly-driven critical thinkers we like around here.
And if you really are one of us, you don’t wade into arguments trying to impress others by signalling your virtue, looking for validation, or for some cringey, infantile kick of annoying the other person (no, U mad bro?). You argue for the same reasons you lift heavier weights, or spar with stronger people. You argue because you’re trying to get that much closer to empirical truth yourself, and hopefully, drag the other motherfucker along with you.
Be like Goku… No, seriously.
It’s one thing to spar with someone you completely outclass. Big deal, you’re better than they are. You goddamn well should be. Or even worse, to go 100% with someone who’s injured or asks you to go light. When you train for your ego rather than your skills, you might as well have not shown up in the first place.
So what would Goku do?
He’d want to fight his opponent at his strongest.
The Steelman Argument
Get out of here with those shitposts
The exact opposite of the Strawman is the Steelman. Yes, like Colossus. Sort of.
Think about it this way, if you’re going to have a battle royal of fictional characters, Colossus would totally fucking wreck the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. (I mean, so would just about anyone with a Zippo). You too, should want to fight Colossus, rather than derpy bag of hay. So, the point is that…
You want to argue against the BEST version of the point your opponent is trying to make. That’s it. That’s the “one simple trick”. Keep in mind, we said “simple”, not “easy”.
You want to argue against the BEST version of the point your opponent is trying to make.
How Do Argument
Here’s an example: you’re in an argument on a contentious subject… let’s say for the sake of avoiding offending anyone, it’s about arming transgender illegal immigrant fetuses with assault weapons. For our purposes, you’re going to take the con side of the argument, but we understand if that might be a stretch, so bear with us.
Instead of saying: “So you want to ensure more obstetricians die in delivery room shootings!?”
You respond more like: “So what you’re saying is that all human beings, even the unborn—which we haven’t established yet the point at which life starts, but I will grant you that for now so I can get your point—have a right to self defense, especially given their minority status, unconnected with their service in a militia. Is this correct?
Because of course there’s an image of a fetus with an assault rifle on the front page of a search for “fetus with assault rifle”. Of course there is. #America
Again we said, this is simple, but not easy. It’s actually really effing difficult, because you’re now carrying most of the weight of the argument on your own shoulders, effectively doubling your effort. TB;GG.
Here’s your prescription for not being another useless shitposter on social media.
Most people don’t have the cognitive, or character strength to use the steelman in their arguments. But then again, most arguments on the Internet are garbage.
But you’re not garbage, right? You’re made of fucking steel.
After 130 years, the state of Wyoming has decided to let boxers “knuckle up”, under the old school, but arguably safer rules for a sport where you punch the other guy in the head a lot.
…on Saturday night, 10 bouts of bare-knuckle boxing, including one involving female fighters, will take place at the Cheyenne Ice and Events Center.
The event, available on pay-per-view, is being promoted as the first legal, regulated and sanctioned bare-knuckle fight event in U.S. history. Back in Sullivan’s day, there were no sanctioning bodies and few if any regulations.
“I think it’s what the public wants to see. The public is begging for something new,” promoter David Feldman said, noting that it has been 25 years since the advent of UFC mixed martial arts. “We’re hopefully leading the way to a new era in combat sports.”
The boxers will be allowed wraps around their thumbs and wrists but will not wear any protection over their knuckles the way fighters normally do in traditional boxing, MMA or other combat sports where padded gloves of various thickness are used.
Each bout is scheduled for five, 2-minute rounds, fought in a ring with rounded ropes instead of the traditional square.
More Drama, Less Trauma
Experts have noted that while the addition of gloves to Boxing reduced the number of hand injuries and facial cuts, the extra padding only encouraged repetitive blows to the head that were unsustainable without such protection. This caused the sport to appear less brutal to spectators, while significantly increasing the neurological trauma behind the scenes.
Jim Corbett, John L. Sullivan and Jake Kilrain
While it remains to be seen whether this is a one-time curiosity or the start of a trend back to Boxing’s roots, Saturday’s event will certainly be watched by both fans and detractors of the sport alike. Tickets are apparently still on sale.
The 1984 movie The Karate Kid was a stereotypical coming-of-age story that was once embraced by a generation without question. 2018’s Cobra Kai television series has allowed the same franchise to be re-enter the arms of this now rather jaded generation without having to feign being ironic or claim their indulgence under an insincere “guilty pleasure” excuse. With both the director and the composer of the original Rocky film on board, the film was a commercial and critical success. In hindsight, the first film was a culmination of a century of Orientalism, pseudohistorical ideas about the philosophical roots of martial arts, simplistic romanticising about combative strategy and adolescent underdog wish fulfilment.
No apologies for spoilers here because the entire plot of Cobra Kai hinges on the ending of the 1984 movie and the series contains nods towards the fallout of its two direct sequels. However, if you are already familiar with the films, then you may want to skip the following re-cap section.
Re-Cap
The Karate Kid was story of a working-class teenager, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), who travelled from New Jersey with his single parent mother to California. A fish out of water, the movie’s alliterative title (borrowed from an unrelated DC Comics superhero) comes from a taunt our hero receives after his boasted prowess in karate fails to save from a beating administered by a WASPish bully called Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka). Lawrence is a black belt and top student at the aggressive Cobra Kai Karate dojo, where he and his gang are inspired by a cult of personality in the form of Vietnam veteran, Sensei John Kreese (Martin Kove). Kreese teaches his students the motto and philosophy of “Strike First, Strike Hard, No Mercy”.
After further tormenting and eventually a second, more severe beating – this time at the hands of the Johnny’s entire gang – Daniel is rescued by an Okinawan maintenance man, Mr Miyagi (Noriyuki “Pat” Morita). He reveals himself to be a karate master having defeated the entire gang singlehandedly. After trying to resolve Daniel’s dispute peacefully with Johnny via Kreese, Miyagi ends up agreeing to enter Daniel into the All-Valley under 18s Karate Championship, where Cobra Kai will be competing. This is on the condition the gang leave Daniel alone until the tournament. Miyagi teaches Daniel karate via a series of menial tasks designed to promote muscle memory and the value of balance both in combat and as a rule for life.
Despite suffering a foul to his knee, set up by Kreese and executed by a reluctant Cobra Kai member, Bobby (Ron Thomas), Daniel defeats Johnny in the finals using an unorthodox version of a jumping front kick, known as the “crane”. Johnny, who moments before had realised the lengths his teacher was willing to go to win, tearfully hands Daniel the winner’s trophy with the words, “You’re alright LaRusso”. Moments after the tournament, in a scene that was cut from the first film but added onto the beginning of its sequel, Johnny is berated by Kreese in the parking lot. The twisted instructor ends up breaking his runner-up trophy and when Johnny continues to argue back puts him in a choke. Mr Miyagi steps in, saves Johnny and avoids Kreese’s punches, which smash through two car windows. The bloodied Kreese is scared by the reality of being on the receiving end of an unmerciful opponent before being let off the hook. As revealed in the third movie, Johnny and the rest of Kreese’s students would leave Cobra Kai an empty dojo, but Kreese would remain unrepentant and vengeful. Daniel would travel to Okinawa, the birthplace of karate, with his teacher. They would also open up and run a bonsai tree shop upon their return. At the same time Cobra Kai would attempt a revival under the guidance of the dojo’s real owner and Kreese’s old wartime buddy, Terry Silver. The convoluted plot involved Daniel being temporarily tricked into joining Cobra Kai and getting persecuted by a one Mike Barnes. The plot failed, Cobra Kai was finished and Barnes was defeated by Daniel at the All-Valley tournament, making Daniel a two-time champion…
Plot Overview of the Series:
34 years after receiving the crane kick to the face at the All-Valley Karate tournament, Johnny Lawrence lives his life day-to-day as a handyman driving around in an old Pontiac Fire Bird, listening to tracks by Poison, Foreigner and Boston, whilst his nights are spent drinking himself into oblivion, reverently watching Iron Eagle. He is the stereotypical, alpha-male teenager whose best days were left in high school. Here and there he is reminded that he is no longer the popular 17 year old that seemingly had it all. He is a 50-something single-parent father, estranged from his only son who routinely gets into trouble, he works in a dead-end job, is regularly mistaken to be a vagrant and has no friends. Even his daydreams of the golden years are routinely ruined by the memory of being defeated by the kid who dethroned him and took away the love of his life. If the memory of that humiliating episode was not enough, the sight of the same kid’s success as an adult being pushed in his face via advertising billboards and TV commercials makes him feel like he is losing again every day. All of this has been Johnny’s life for a long time now, but now matters will escalate to breaking point. He will be forced to simultaneously handle the present era and dig deeper into the past.
Meanwhile, Daniel LaRusso appears to be living the perfect life. His car dealership is a huge success. He has a loving wife and two very bright children. Yet below the surface there are problems. Having lost his mentor, Mr Miyagi, seven years previously he is struggling to find a sense of balance. He has various problems with his family that he is feeling less and less able to manage. He is becoming increasingly distant from his daughter, Sam (Mary Mouser), who used to share his passion for karate and now is finding herself torn between schoolyard social politics. He has no connection with his overweight and game-addicted son. Loyalty to his mother has forced him to take on his disruptive and idiotic cousin (Bret Ernst) at the car dealership. His mother (Randee Heller) and his wife (Courtney Henggeler) clash. However, everything is about to come to a head in a way he could not have foreseen when a series of events leads his old school bully, Johnny Lawrence, to walk back into his life.
When bullied Miguel Diaz (Xolo Maridueña) is begrudgingly saved by Johnny, an unlikely mentorship is struck up. Miguel convinces Johnny when he is at his lowest ebb to teach him karate and to resurrect the old Cobra Kai dojo. The sight of the school rising again with its aggressive philosophy being preached to a new generation of teenagers is a shock for Daniel LaRusso who has twice been victim of the old Cobra Kai and feels he is doing his best put his past with Johnny behind him. The veneer of adulthood will soon be cracked as old rivalries resurface and many new players inherit a familiar legacy…
Review and Retrospective
“C’mon!” coerces Johnny Lawrence as he thrusts the can of beer into the hands of his adolescent protégé, Miguel Diaz, “It’ll put hair on your balls!” The reluctant teen looks back at his Karate sensei somewhat puzzled by the man’s metaphor, “Is that a good thing?” Everything about the aforementioned scene speaks of the jarring contrast between two generations. I am not just talking about the current ambiguity in pubic hair trends. The language and actions made by a much older adult in a position of authority (and adulation) to his student ticks a multitude of boxes in any self-respecting 2018 Child Safeguarding policy checklist that would indicate a cause for concern. This is the unashamed tone set for YouTube Red’s breakout 2018 hit series, Cobra Kai. By targeting the original Karate Kid audience, by using the dynamic appeal of online media and by putting the series in the “dramedy” genre that had been so successfully established by Netflix‘s Orange is the New Black, it would appear that Mr Miyagi’s fabled balance has been achieved. It is hard not to get caught up in the hype and yet, at the same time, question the substance of the appeal.
The landscape for The Karate Kid during the 2010s was not a favourable one. It’s not like the franchise had died a death, but its generation had grown up and out of the world of Daniel LaRusso. The original film is widely regarded as one of the greatest high school films of all time, coming across as the slightly younger brother of other well-known ‘80s teen classics, The Breakfast Club, Risky Business and Pretty in Pink. In a statement that now sounds like a slammed door in the less popular The Karate Kid Part III Daniel shouts at Mr Miyagi in exasperation “You know this is the ‘80s, Mr Miyagi, you can’t be so damn passive!” That film was released in 1989.
The Karate Kid cartoon series that was released the same year did not resonate with Saturday morning audiences of millennial children. They weren’t picking up their older siblings’ cast-offs. There was no enduring love for Remco’s range of The Karate Kid toys that had been released to coincide with the previous movie, The Karate Kid Part II in 1986, despite being technically superior action figures to Star Wars, G.I. Joe or Masters of the Universe.
The martial arts industry had enjoyed a big upsurge and interest thanks to the first two films. Despite targeting a notoriously difficult martial arts demographic – the teenager – the coming-of-age drama resonated with those who felt disempowered. This has long been the marketing gimmick for martial arts the world over when trying to sell their service. It can be traced back to the 19th century Health and Wellness movement, fantasized through the rise of the comic-book superhero and probably most memorably encapsulated by the Charles Atlas comic-strip adverts for his Dynamic Tension bodybuilding programme. The latter might have had a direct influence over The Karate Kid plot. Atlas’s original 1940s comic-strips started with skinny Joe being humiliated in front of his date at the fair by a big bully only to come back exacting revenge with a new muscular physique honed by the Dynamic Tension course. This advert was soon changed to the far more memorable beginning scene of skinny Mac getting sand kicked in his face whilst sitting on the beach with his girlfriend by a muscular bully. Daniel’s humiliating first encounter with his rival, Johnny, occurs on the beach in front the film’s love interest, Ali (Elizabeth Shue). This is where Daniel doesn’t so much get sand kicked in his face but gets his face kicked into the sand! Paying a certain degree of homage to this crude marketing device in Cobra Kai, Johnny haplessly tries recruiting adolescent male students with the line that karate will win them girls. It serves as yet another on-the-nose example of cultural shifts since the first film.
However, the martial arts subculture moved on from The Karate Kid in the same way that the swimmer sheds his water wings. Older Generation Xers, who had been caught up in the Kung Fu Boom of the ’70s, were often quick to point out the inferior level of fight choreography exhibited throughout the series. Only a few unnamed tournament fighters, Chad McQueen and most notably Ian Thomas Griffiths, who played the main antagonist from the third film, had previous martial arts experience. Soon those who had been drawn into martial arts through The Karate Kid discovered the actual moves on display weren’t very impressive. Good acting, direction, editing and cinematography covered up for the lack of skill on display. Johnny’s beat down of Daniel on the beach has a spiteful, visceral quality, but the actual combination he uses looks very awkward. Daniel’s fights are mainly reliant on the performance of his opponent and some clever camera angles.
Looking back, The Karate Kid sold some pretty slick martial arts snake oil. Daniel is taught a particular way to wax cars, paint fences, sand floors and paint a house until he is thoroughly pissed off. When this happens, it is revealed he has been training muscle memory for a series of blocks. This is taken to an even more ridiculous length when it is revealed that neither Daniel nor Mr Miyagi have a clue how the karate point-stop tournament system works, leaving Ali to explain just moments before the first fight. Despite this lack of rudimentary sporting knowledge and having not sparred once, Daniel somehow wins the tournament.
During the 1990s the rise of critical thinking in the martial arts subculture led many teachers to break the news to the deluded that actually striking first in a real self-defence situation is not only legal in certain contexts but often the best chance anyone has of being successful. These were the lessons coming back from karate black belts who had worked the night club door for any length of time (see “Watch My Back” by Geoff Thompson and “Working with Warriors” by Dennis Martin). Many progressive and revisionist traditional martial artists have done a lot to debunk the “always block first” interpretation that has been derived from Funakoshi Gichin’s quote that “There is no first attack in karate”. Finally, despite what we have been led to believe, the style of karate Daniel learns little resemble Goju-ryu/Goju-kan Karate-do. Miyagi takes his name from the school’s real-life founder Miyagi Chojin, but I don’t see Daniel knocking out tensho and sanchin katas. It’s a pity. Given that sanchin kata is all about dynamic tension this would have nicely looped Daniel back to the Charles Atlas! The actual style Daniel practises is the fictional art of Miyagi-do Karate, which is referenced in the first film and properly established in the Cobra Kai series.
Yet such generational confines have never been wholly respected by the holders of the franchise. Despite being a film firmly rooted in the ’80s there were certain aspects that must have seemed timeless to filmmakers. Martial arts films continued to be popular and The Karate Kid plot was continuously ripped off. The attempted soft reboot in the 1990s, The Next Karate Kid, starring future two-times Oscar winner Hilary Swank, bombed both commercially and with the critics. The 1990s and 2000s had reduced The Karate Kid memory to nostalgic parody. Billy “Tae Bo” Blanks was inserting “wax on, wax off” and Daryl Vidal’s fictional version of the jumping front kick, the “Crane”, in his 1990s workouts. In 2004 an unauthorised stage musical spoof, It’s the Karate Kid, claimed the original film as part of kitsch and camp culture. The show featured songs like “Way of the Fisting” and Johnny Lawrence’s gang was renamed “The Bitchkicks”. A drastic overhaul appeared to be the order of the day. The 2010 remake did well at the box office, but the critical response was lukewarm. Having reached the stage where it had become an obvious career vehicle for Jaden Smith, whose film star father had produced the film, it seemed safe to say that the book on Daniel LaRusso had been closed.
The creation of a remake usually signals the official end of a previous continuity. Cobra Kai was the sequel that no one had asked for and scepticism ran high that it would be any good. Yet there were signs that something like Cobra Kai might be exactly what its target audience wanted. In 2007 William Zabka directed and wrote his own spoof sequel to The Karate Kid. The film was a music video for No More Kings’ blatant tribute to the Johnny Lawrence character. The video saw a down on his luck adult Johnny Lawrence hanging out with all his old Cobra Kai buddies in a trailer in the desert, still tormented by his defeat by Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio). He gets another opportunity to win the All-Valley Karate tournament and succeeds before realising it is all a dream. The video ends with Daniel driving over Johnny in his car. Quite a few key ideas from this video and song would resurface at the core of Cobra Kai. Three years after the release of The Karate Kid remake, Zabka and Macchio would guest appear in the “Bro-Mitzvah” episode of the sit-com How I Met Your Mother. They would be playing themselves and their involvement centred on a character’s belief that the real hero of The Karate Kid was Johnny Lawrence. Two years later online video producer and self-proclaimed geek, J Matthew Turner, put forward a fan theory in his short, The Karate Kid: Daniel is the REAL Bully. The video might have only been half-serious at best but it proved popular in social media and a new, more favourable light was being shone on Johnny Lawrence.
Using Johnny’s point of view as a starting point for Cobra Kai was no sleight against the spirit of the first films. As Turner’s mock review had pointed out, there were certain redeemable qualities about Johnny’s character already present. However, the strength of the TV series is that it doesn’t just abruptly parody the original series by making Johnny the hero and Daniel the villain. A role reversal is certainly present, but the trajectories of the two characters are true to form and the overall plot is loyal to The Karate Kid brand. This is not a full realisation of Turner’s mock retrospective review. Miyagi is still venerated and respected, Kreese is still vilified and condemned. However, the jaded Generation X have become fans of anti-heroes. They like complexity and they like to post mortem their childhoods. If don’t believe me, count how many ‘70s and ‘80s franchises are still going strong today and how many more are being lined for yet another new reboot.
If the original series took its cue from Rocky, Cobra Kai has shades of Gran Torino. The middle-aged Johnny Lawrence shares many of Walt Kowalski’s traits. He is mentally tied to a perceived golden age, exhibits prejudicial world views that are representative of that age, is self-pitying and wishes to isolate himself from the current times, but underneath his grizzled and cantankerous exterior there is a genuine desire to do good. Discovering he has no connection to the current teenage popular crowd, Johnny begrudgingly becomes the champion of the misfits, nerds and geeks. It’s quite a believable symbiotic relationship: the jocks of yesteryear become the mentors of today’s outcasts.
When the crimes of his old karate school are put at his door, Johnny justifies his wish to re-enter Cobra Kai in the All-Valley tournament to Daniel with the simple statement that “I am not Kreese”. The series effectively explores the brilliant vulnerability and internal conflict Zabka displayed when Kreese gives him the infamous “sweep the leg” command. Johnny’s dubious teaching methods possibly took a degree of inspiration from some rather infamous characters in the martial arts world. For example, when he discovers that many of his students are flinchers because they have never received a punch to the face, he organises for them all to have that experience. There is genuine footage of schools that believe taking shots to the head is a great form of conditioning. However, amidst all the brutal training concepts that surprisingly don’t get Johnny into trouble with the local authorities (“I am not sure if I am allowed to be around children” he says early on in the show after doing his own version of a Mr Miyagi teenage gang beat down to protect Miguel), there are certain kernels of truth that would have been dismissed as part of the Cobra Kai evil in the original movie franchise. We can see why Johnny believes that “the way of the fist” is a pragmatic philosophy and “just the thing your pussy generation needs”.
Meanwhile, Daniel LaRusso has always been a feisty kid with a quick temper. Without Mr Miyagi as his mentor and in a position of power, we see forgivably human impulses rise in Daniel as he is faced with disruptions in his life. Early teasers for the show revealed the first scene where circumstances land Johnny in front of his old teenage rival. It appeared from the way the trailer was edited that Daniel was being cast as the heel, enjoying the benefits of his position over Johnny and unable to resist further rubbing his nose in the moment that still haunts his old bully’s life. However, the show is happily far too intelligent to give into such a base fan wish. Daniel’s slips to the dark side here and there are in line with the character we have known in the franchise and Cobra Kai does to pull him back. There are shades of Karate Kid Part III in this series, whether or not Macchio would like to admit this, and they serve the show well.
Although Generation X is squarely in the sights of this exercise in nostalgic art, the show is not purely held up by Zabka and Macchio’s performances. A cast of Post-Millennials hold their own in a way that echoes and surpasses the spirit of the first film. Taking the foreground is Mary Mouser as Samantha LaRusso, Xolo Maridueña as Miguel Diaz and Tanner Buchanan as Robby Keene, Johnny’s estranged son. Their individual stories are as interesting as their interaction, which is another key strength to Cobra Kai’s storytelling. Behind them we get a supporting cast that are reshuffles and expansions upon the tropes set up in the original film. Whereas the original film presented nuanced characteristics of Johnny’s gang, here we get the opportunity to watch the full evolution of Miguel’s school friends. Two teenagers help present a genuine problem in martial arts circles, going from being bullied to feeling empowered to being bullies in their own right. Another friend spots the faults in Johnny’s approach from the get-go, reminding everyone that the Nazis lost. The WASP element is concentrated into an entirely separate tribe of non-martial artists, presented as irredeemable bullies. Character development is at its weakest in this respect with all the alpha high-schoolers being transparent plot devices to represent all the evils of the current generation. Johnny even offers a critique on Cyberbullying, seeing it as an inferior form of teasing. The line is played for laughs, but the type of viewer who was concerned about the moral ambiguity of The Wolf of Wallstreet might think it is some sort of veneration of old school bullying.
The trio of Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg and Josh Heald have clearly made a departure from the broad comedy that brought them success with Cobra Kai. However, it is easy to see that they have an accurate understanding of working a franchise. What makes Cobra Kai compelling and entertaining is the fact that it didn’t see a need to depart from The Karate Kid world. No apologies are made for the original trilogy and the plot is resolutely loyal to the original storylines. It is a move that the original studios and creators would probably have never done. The work is fan-fiction of the highest order. It operates in a world of absurd make-believe martial arts, where kata is a focusing exercise comparable to qi-gong, where abstract muscle memory exercises will endow an individual with hidden fighting skills they can pull out in real fight without any real fight experience and teenage sport karate is a huge event in Reseda, Los Angeles. However, it is also a world where fan theories and previously untold origin stories can be discussed amongst the characters themselves. How did Johnny meet Ali? Was Ali really the villain of the first piece? Would Daniel stalk Ali on Facebook? What was Johnny’s home life really like? What led Johnny to join Cobra Kai? What happened to Daniel’s father? What were the physical repercussions of a Mr Miyagi beat down?
Cobra Kai has to be accepted and embraced on its own terms if it is to be enjoyed. The series opens up real possibilities for future dramas that could look more critically at the real world of martial arts, but that isn’t what this show is about. Don’t expect an effective satire on martial arts or a send up of the original films. At times it feels like it is in Foot Fist Way territory, but the creative team has enough discipline to pull back. Don’t expect cutting edge martial arts choreography either. In line with the standard of the times, the fight scenes are much more fluid, but there are no standout performances or scenes. This won’t stop the fans from happily lowering their standards. One reviewer marvels at the sight of a single tornado kick thrown by a character near the end credits. We live in a time when Jonathan Tuhu has knocked out an opponent in a live Muay Thai match with 540 degree spinning kick! There is undeniable corniness throughout the series, which is unashamed but not always ironic. Not only is the story worked around a nostalgic scaffold, featuring scenes of alcoholic infused pathos and the constant presence of cars, but virtually every punchline a direct homage to the films. We also regularly get flashbacks to the original footage (albeit sometimes with previously unseen camera angles) and the original soundtrack is regularly used, including the full epic Karate Kid Part III version of Bill Conti’s score over a montage. The season ending was totally predictable, but it was exactly what the fans wanted to see. Cobra Kai is a nostalgic tour de force, obeying fan-fiction conventions to letter and relying on contemporary observations for most of its humour. There is definitely an art to playing all these chords correctly and, looking at the competition presented by other revival shows, nothing is more in tune.
This story is developing and we will provide updates as they emerge.
At 9:30 PM EST tonight, Victor Guillermo “Willy” Hardoy, a Brazilian Jiujitsu black belt and instructor at ATT Cape Coral, was arrested and taken into custody for failing to appear on second degree felony charges stemming from a 2016 incident involving a “Lewd/Lascivious Act on a child older than 12”.
Willy Hardoy Arrest Record
Screenshot of the court records
The following post from Facebook, which is still public at the moment, is from an individual connected with the subject, according to some reports, the suspect’s wife (we are trying to confirm).
