Am I the only one who notices? (Subjects of Martial Arts Discussions on Social Media)

[Spartacus Maximus]

This entire trend of ´calling out’ schools or ´confronting ´ individuals is completely foreign and uninteresting. Westerners, and especially Americans seem to have this singularly odd obsession with  confrontation and calling out people they disagree with for almost any trivial thing.

Why should one be concerned with what another school teachers or how someone else trains? What does anyone gain from doing it? Isn’t that time better spent learning and improving one’s own skills. It is unfortunate how easily people forget that in martial arts the purpose of the practice and objectives are as different as those practising.

[sensei8]

5 hours ago, Spartacus Maximus said:

 

This entire trend of ´calling out’ schools or ´confronting ´ individuals is completely foreign and uninteresting. Westerners, and especially Americans seem to have this singularly odd obsession with  confrontation and calling out people they disagree with for almost any trivial thing

 

I sincerely doubt that us Americans have cornered the market on this subject. As long as humans are on earth, this concern will always exist globally.

Edited Wednesday at 10:27 PM by sensei8

[Furinkazan]

19 hours ago, Spartacus Maximus said:

This entire trend of ´calling out’ schools or ´confronting ´ individuals is completely foreign and uninteresting. Westerners, and especially Americans seem to have this singularly odd obsession with  confrontation and calling out people they disagree with for almost any trivial thing.

Why should one be concerned with what another school teachers or how someone else trains? What does anyone gain from doing it? Isn’t that time better spent learning and improving one’s own skills. It is unfortunate how easily people forget that in martial arts the purpose of the practice and objectives are as different as those practising.

Yeah, no.  Canadians, Brits, and Australians are very well represented in when it comes to calling out McDojos.

There's a karate page I follow on facebook, where an Italian troll in the comments who practices an Okinawan style is always talking down on Japanese styles.

There's also a German immigrant to the US named Hermann Bayer who has written at least three books bashing Japanese karate.

I don't think that this is based on mere "disagreements."

I thinking that this is self-policing motived by respectability politics.  Especially when it comes to "sports karate."

What I mean by self-policing motivated by respectability politics is this: in middle school or high school, there's a Mexican American kid named Miguel.  Miguel is really trying to fit in and be accepted by the non-Latino students.  There's another Mexican American kid named Roberto, who doesn't care about any of that.  One day, Roberto brings cow tongue for lunch, and he brings tripe the next day.  Miguel feels upset and embarrassed.  He wants that acceptance, and he feels that Roberto is undermining it.

That's kind of what's going on here, where karateka are calling out McDojos.  And "sports karate."

By the way, I know of no single association or dojo whose sole or main focus is "sports karate."

JKS participates in WKF.  I don't agree with WKF style kumite (I prefer the JKA/ISKF style), but I also know that if I was to go into a JKS dojo, I'm still going to get much of the same exact training that I get in an ISKF dojo.

"Sports karate" is an almost non-existent boogie man.

Edited Thursday at 12:47 PM by Furinkazan