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Techie Fight Clubs Springing Up
Browncoat writes "USAToday reports a new phenomenon hitting some of the cubicles of Silicon Valley. It seems that engineers and developers previously confined to sitting in front of their computers are getting their anger out the healthy way: by pummeling each other. From the article 'Inspired by the 1999 film Fight Club, starring Brad Pitt and Ed Norton, underground bare-knuckle brawling clubs have sprung up across the country as a way for desk jockeys and disgruntled youths to vent their frustrations and prove themselves. "This is as close as you can get to a real fight, even though I've never been in one," the soft-spoken Siou said.'"
Aside from which, I loved how they worked in this:
Earlier this month in Arlington, Texas, a high school student who didn't want to participate was beaten so badly that he suffered a brain hemorrhage and broken vertebrae. Six teenagers were arrested after DVDs of the fight appeared for sale online.
So exactly when did "getting your ass kicked by a bunch of jerks" turn into being "an unwilling Fight Club participant"? I suppose next we'll be hearing about how Ken Lay and company were actually just repeating what they learned by watching "Wall Street" at the executive team-building offsite? Or how the well-abused Zonk and ScuttleMonkey voodoo dolls on my desk are actually just a result of my having seen part of "The Craft" one time on HBO?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
The teams I've been on have always handled stress by Quake/Unreal Tournament/etc. deathmatching. What's the appeal of brawling? Same thrill of victory, longer-lasting agony of defeat.
Men involved in fight clubs often carry bottled-up violent impulses learned in childhood from video games, cartoons and movies, said Michael Messner, a University of Southern California sociology and gender studies professor.
Is this fact, or just poor reporting?
Registered Linux user #421033
Hitting someone with a frying pan? What fool would take that?
Using your fists on someone
But using a blunt object? If you're anything other than a spaz, you'll crush a few ribs the first time you connect. Then the fights over.
it's alot better to fight other nerds than get beat up in real life... At least that pocket protector will save you :)
They should try a moshing. At least you get to beat people to music.
Men involved in fight clubs often carry bottled-up violent impulses learned in childhood from video games, cartoons and movies, said Michael Messner, a University of Southern California sociology and gender studies professor.
Hopefully we can someday return to the world where none of thoseexisted, and men never fought each other.
Okay, I call shenanigans. This just sounds too ridiculous to be real.
How many times in the past have we see some tech story get reported on and posted on slashdot only to find out that it was all trumped up - like "toothing" - people in UK using bluetooth phones to look for sex partners? I say "nerd fight club" is the same thing.
Everyone knows that real dorks adverse to physical fitness - I mean, hey why go outside when you can spend more time in front of the computer? I'll exercise next week after I rebuild my second desktop system and finish upgrading my asterisk pbx...
Oh, and nerd *fighting*? Nerds are the last people who are going to want to blow off steam by real, painful, physical fighting... Everyone knows that. Nerds would invite others for a frag-fest, whomp on their mmorpg character, hack their coworker's/nemesis' home server, and fill their cubicle with styrofoam... but fight... and risk getting hurt?
If we liked to fight, we probably wouldn't have followed the path that made us nerds in the first place.
Yes, buy things like the Fight Club DVD, you sheep. Some people, if worried about excessive consumerism, would stop buying shit.
Videogames. Always videogames. I'm surprised he hasn't blamed myspace.
"You get to be a superhero for a night," Klimanis said. "We have to go to work every day. We're constantly told to buy things we don't need, and just for a couple hours we have the freedom to do what we want to do."
And that is beating each other up? Idiots...
bash$
Are those the same people who defend brutal video games by claiming that young adults can tell fiction and reality apart? Seriously, that was a cool movie. A MOVIE!
Look at the position of the leg with regards to the arm.
If it was a straight in kick, his leg would be tangled up with his opponent's hand.
If it was a side kick, his leg would be connecting with his opponent's shoulder. Look how his kicking foot is outside of both their bodies.
If you got "the solution to our problems is kicking each other" from Fight Club the movie, then you must have only watched the 1st 1/2 of the movie.
Extremists misinterpreting literature for ideology is hardly new, though. These people are hitting each other with heavy metal objects, they are probably addicted to the body's painkillers or the feeling their brain makes while it is being made retarded.
Ok, as someone who *has* been in more than my fair share of fights, studied martial arts, etc, I'm confused by this to a certain degree. Not by the fight clubs, just the news story. I haven't had to use my martial arts skills in anger or self defense, because my insturctor taught self respect and that first rule: the best way to not get hurt by a punch is to not get hit by it. That means he focused on avoiding blows, not blocking them, but it also means he focused on avoiding fights in the first place. Anyway.
The reporter is making these folks out to sound like crazies.... They aren't. They are men frustrated by their daily lives. I can understand this desire to vent physical frustration in a very real way. I learned that I don't need to hit anyone in order to do that, just pratice the martial arts forms I have learned. That is either not something these guys have tried, or found to be satisfactory. That's fine, and as long as they all agree to what they are doing, have at.
He focuses on one guy at the end who is making... questionable choices, certainly from how they where presented. Married later in life (than social norms, mind, for all that's worth), choosing to go to this fight club instead of taking the time out to be with his wife, on their first anniversary, for a very important event in her life. Talking about how tough it makes him feel... sounds like he's got other issues to me. Sounds like the writer is trying to focus on that.
Oh, and the trying to link teen violence to this stuff, and childhood media exposure? That's just poor reporting, and poor taste.
I'm modding this story -3 troll.
I thought engineers and geeks appreciated efficiency. They should just stay home and stick their hands in a waffle iron periodically, then go back to coding.
E pluribus unum
Sorry to say it but these days most of the martial arts you mentioned are now either sports with rules protecting the combatants or have bugger all to do with common ways of being attacked. This includes stuff like UFC which rule out attacks on "vital points" like eyes, throat, groin.
Look, they generally start as powerful self defence techniques which can be used when attacked by untrained attackers but the instant you start competitions, add rules they become methods of fencing for points. The training and techniques change for the tournaments to the point that they are largely useless against the kind of wild untrained and violent attackers they were originally designed for.
You do what you train and if you're training for head height roundhouse kicks , as good as it looks, you will end up on your arse when you try to use one on the street.
So, if you're going to practice a martial art, make sure it's with a teacher who teaches the original self defence art, not watered down long distance tournament fencing techniques. This is the elusive "become a master" step. It has nothing to do with the particular art or style btw, they're all ways of manipulating the opponent through force. It's purely down to the instructor.
p.s. you don't take or know a martial art, you have to practice it.
Deleted
Sorry, "Fight Club" was about rebellion and self realization. Same thing with another movie of that time "American Beauty".
The protaginist (he has no name) is a bitch office worker who subconsciously develops an aggressive persona that manifests itself when he "sleeps". There was no homo-sexuality in the film. The only person who got fucked was Marla. The fact that men were hugging in a testicle cancer support group is meant to be farscicle.
Quit projecting.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
It isn't a new problem. Tyler Durden's solution to the problem was fight club, a place where men can feel alive.
But that isn't the real solution to the problem, the real solution is to get a life. Haven't you seen the disclaimer at the beginning of the DVD?
Fight club works for Tyler. But none of us are Tyler Durden, all of us are like Edward Norton. For him fight club lost its appeal, fight club didn't make him feel complete, a girl did.
And at the end of the movie Edward Norton ends up with Marla Singer and they're both happy.
Here's the premise as I understand it:
A man find's his work and his life unsatisfying. He is unable to express his individuality and to have the sort of life he wants.
His proposed solution: to spend his nights with other losers punching them and trying to hurt them while they try to do the same to him.
How is this an improvement? To me it seems far worse.
Suggesting that Fight Club carries homoerotic themes is not to say the movie is about homosexuality. Many of the film's most important scenes involve half-naked, sweating men in close contact with each other. The contact is violent and a "legitimate" equivalent for the close contact men and women have in the film.
A clear example of a homoerotic theme present in the movie is the subplot where the unnamed narrator ("Jack") becomes jealous of Tyler Durden's relationship with Angel Face. While beating Angel Face's face to a bloody pulp, the narrator confesses
These images are partially veiled sexual references, "Panda that wouldn't screw"; "open the [. . .] valves [. . .] and smother"; and "I wanted to breathe smoke". Of course these images mean other things, too: reckless abandon, species suicide, environmental destruction, etc. But they also can be read sexually. (You, willtsmith, might say "they are susceptible to sexual projection.")
The final proof comes after Angel Face is carried away and Durden (lighting a cigarette) asks the narrator, "Where'd you go, psycho boy?" and the narrator explains "I felt like destroying something beautiful." In other words, the male narrator reacts to the blond man's beauty by beating the beautiful man up. This scene from the film directly links homoeroticism and male-on-male violence.
My guess is that the idea of sexuality being present in this film gets your panties in a wad, which is reasonable considering the film is also about macho men who in no way would be gay. But, really, it's OK. Just because sexual themes are present in these scenes of hypermasculine violence doesn't mean your wrestling buddies want to bugger you, not all of them anyways.
blog
When these losers want to "feel something", they beat each other. When I want to "feel something" I go get a massage.
Want to guess which one of us gets the great job and the raise and which one gets his ass fired for calling sick all the time or coming to work beaten and stupid?