There exists, among the population of martial arts devotees and self-defense exponents, a particular, peculiar classification of Internet Troll, previously undocumented but frequently encountered. This is the spectator, a bystander to the martial arts who would be little more than a lurker if not for the fact that he is also given to vociferous and persistent expressions of his ill-informed and frequently hypocritical opinions. Spectators are encountered most often on the Internet in martial arts discussion sites, as they prize the anonymity afforded by this type of interaction. They are, therefore, most frequently “keyboard warriors” who are most comfortable insulated by telephone lines and far removed by wireless ether, their bravodo and their false courage masking both profound ignorance and astounding insecurity.
Spectators are also found in real life — by the purest definition of the word. The loud-mouth shouting at the baseball game, “Come on! Base hit!” is a spectator of the most fundamental sort — a non-participant who believes the brilliant insight he offers will make the difference between victory and defeat for his team. At martial arts seminars and in kwoons or dojos, the spectator is the visitor or the visiting student, who walks in the door armed with preconceived notions and (usually) a hostile agenda. Whether he is the student of a rival school looking to affirm his faith in his teacher, or a seminar attendee convinced he knows it all and hoping to make the seminar instructor look bad in front of a paying audience, real-life self-defense and martial arts spectators have two things in common with each other and with their keyboard commando siblings. First, their training and their own levels of accomplishment are not nearly as advanced as they would have you believe. Second, their knowledge of the martial arts and self-defense in general is only the smallest fraction of what they claim it to be — and and even smaller fraction of what one would conclude it to be from the audacity with which they proclaim their beliefs.
The self-defense field, the martial arts community, can be divided into three basic segments. The first segment comprises contributors — people who spend the time and effort to contribute productively to the topic, giving their energy and their ideas, offering their ideas publicly for consumption (and for criticism). The second segment comprises participants — those who consume the ideas created by the contributors, who traffick in these ideas and in their study, who actively learn and who sometimes cross the dividing line between segments to become contributors themselves. All contributors are participants; some participants are also contributors; all participants are honest and earnest seekers of self-defense knowledge, though such participants frequently disagree vehemently with one another.
The third segment within the self-defense community consists of the spectators. As I’ve said, spectators are frequently anonymous, though this is not always so. The spectator contributes nothing to self-defense. He may or may not consume some of the information provided, but his is not earnest participation; he takes but he does not give, he benefits but he does not help. This makes him a martial arts parasite, of sorts. As you can imagine, such a person would suffer from terribly low self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy if he could not compensate for them. His attempts to compensate don’t actually solve the problem, but they push the feelings aside, burying them beneath layers of delusion and arrogance, behind fortifications of presumption and hypocrisy.
The spectator is a full-time critic. He may or may not be devoted to something he considers worthy (and to which he compares everything). Many spectators, for example — such as the population of the Internet’s preeminent martial arts troll site, Bullshido — are devotees of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). Anthing that is not MMA, No Holds Barred (NHB), or Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) -approved is crap and the spectators at Bullshido will gladly tell you so. They’ll pontificate endlessly about this fact, their assertions fast outstripping their knowledge of the martial arts, their assumptions and presumptions about other arts and styles (and the practitioners of those arts and styles) wildly inaccurate and flatly offensive. The individual spectator at such a site might or might not be much of an MMA fighter himself, but that’s not what matters; what matters is that through criticizing everything and everyone that does not fit within his narrow definition of what is worthy, the spectator can feel better about himself.
This is an natural human reaction, really. It is much easier to criticize someone else’s work than it is to produce productive work of your own. It is much harder to see your hard work attacked, mischaracterized, misinterpreted, or dismissed than it is to attack, to mischaracterize, to misinterpret, or to dismiss the work of others. To criticize takes no time at all — only the willingness to open one’s loud mouth. To create, by contrast, takes time and effort. Contributing invests the contributor in what is created and leaves him open to the slings and arrows of those who have themselves made nothing, but who are only too glad to sit in judgment over what others have made.
Spectators love to point to pictures on other martial artists’ websites, making fun of everything and anything they see, frequently divorcing pictures from context and sometimes even altering those photos for humorous effect (ignoring copyrights in the process). These same spectators never offer pictures of themselves engaged in the techniques of their system, never open themselves to the same sort of criticism. Spectators love to make fun of videos on various self-defense sites, too, but of course none of them have ever created or offered publicly a serious video of their own. (Yes, there are rare exceptions, but they are just that — exceptions.)
Spectators have an extremely high opinion of themselves and their abilities by default, to hear them talk about how badly just about everyone else in the martial arts “sucks.” Challenge them, invite them to confront you face to face, demand that they produce material of their own, suggest that they contribute productively to others’ safety and wellbeing, and you will be met with blank stares and more childish ridicule. The spectator does not contribute, does not participate, and does not discuss. He does not even debate, at least not substantively and reasonably. No, the spectator only heckles. This is his defining characteristic and his only offering.
Deep down, the spectators know who they are. They are the “armchair martial artists,” the second-handers, the scavengers. They offer nothing but comment on everything; they produce nothing but criticize all. There is no population of contributors and participants completely free of such parasites, but we all must recognize and revile them for what they are. The hyena makes a lot of noise and runs in packs, but deep down he is little more than a miserable thief with no real ability and nothing to offer the world. The hyenas — the spectators know this only too well.
They’ll never admit it, but we know the truth.
I wish everyone on a certain widely read webside named above would read this column because it expresses exactly my reaction to so many of the postings. It is easy to make fun of someone’s hair, or find something wrong with an isolated technique. There is always going to be something to find wrong with anything produced by anyone because we are human beings and no one and nothing we do is perfect. I appreciate the positive emphasis here, and reminder to focus on the positive contributions and the best in what someone is offering for public inspection.