Raygun deserves better than this because we all deserve better than this

Let’s repeat some truisms. Humanity appears to be a cluster of brief sparks in an empty universe. We are rolling down a hard and steep mountain towards the grave. We are misshapen pots full of microfractures, and the wrong blow might split open. Our heartstrings are splayed out from our bodies where someone might simply grab them. Our senses and minds are riddled with metastasizing lies- and we cannot escape this no matter how hard we try to jam our eyes open. None of us can weigh the good and evil within ourselves. If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. It has long seemed to me that these things are intimately related, this is not the right kind of universe for cruel words, with a few exceptions. I bitterly regret the many times I’ve used them anyway.

Raygun, Rachel Gunn, was Australia’s entry into breaking at the Olympics. Her performances were not as strong as her opponents, and so she lost. People have decided, for unclear reasons, that this reflects poorly on her, and so have deputized themselves to brutalize her online. Once this goes beyond a certain scale, it becomes mob punishment. People sometimes try to defend themselves by saying “Getting yelled at online isn’t punishment”. But it quite clearly is in both its intention and the magnitude of its effect. Humans are social creatures, and inevitably ostractic cruelty hurts us badly. Think about the sacrifices the average person would pay to avoid what has happened to Raygun- to avoid their name being dragged through the mud by millions- many people would give an arm or a leg- I know I would. How is that not a severe punishment? It’s possible that all this tumult hasn’t hurt Raygun, just as it’s possible that an individual might suffer little from being savagely whipped because of extraordinary resilience- that doesn’t change its nature as a punishment.

Raygun got into the Olympics by entering a qualifying event. The event was not rigged and the IOC and Australia accepted it. she won the qualifier. There have been criticisms regarding how the event was organized, but she did not organize it herself. If she had stood aside, someone else from the event would have gone, someone who the judges thought was not as strong a performer at that event as Raygun. A bizarre claim that Raygun or her husband manipulated the results of the qualifier in some way is false according to SMH. Of course, it’s possible that later on some evidence of impropriety will surface, showing that Raygun did in some way corruptly gain admission to the Olympics, that can never be ruled out, but her critics online know nothing about it yet, and neither do I.

Plenty of skepticism has been expressed about the qualification process, and from what little I know I am inclined to agree, though it is always easier to criticize than to do. For example, one commenter in the breaking scene wrote:

I was a b-girl for seven years. The way the trial competition in Sydney went about is ridiculous and disadvantaged many. Even if you found a way to Sydney, from a rural area, such as Alice Springs, Tiwi Island, you're at a disadvantage away from community and support networks, basic needs; accomodation, food and safe travel options to and from the competition. I wonder what would have happened if they did regionals throughout Australia. And appropriately funded winning heats to come to Sydney. Dance is a huge part of First Nations culture, and the b-girls Ive battled against in the past who are First Nations were absolute legends bringing so much energy to the floor, and shredded. That should have been represented in an opportunity to compete for the Olympic trial system.

This is all reasonable criticism of the way the event was organised, of Australia for not providing more support, and perhaps even of the IOC. More support is needed for poor athletes and athletes of color. and Australia should eliminate poverty through redistribution and combat racism. However, none of this indicts Raygun. Nor is the claim that the 2028 Olympics breaking event was canceled because of Raygun true, or credible, and even in the bizarre world it was true that’s on the IOC and is not something Raygun could have reasonably foreseen. And I will repeat because this is important, maybe there's some other feature of Raygun’s story that I don’t know about that makes her actions regrettable or even wrong, but if so, I don’t know of it, and, crucially nor do the vast majority of people treating her actions as worthy of opprobrium.

And don’t give me dross about how if one wants to be an athlete, one must be prepared to face criticism. This is true to a degree, but the response Raygun has faced has not been within normal bounds, has included bizarre and defamatory lies and allegations of corruption, and even if it were normal, wouldn’t be conscionable.

My understanding is the Olympics partly works on the basis of regions with each region guaranteed some representation in each sport. I can run about 100 meters in 20 seconds. If, bizarrely, mismanagement of the qualifier meant that the only people who tried out for the 100-meter sprint were me, and people worse than me, and there was no way to give up my spot to someone better, I would go to the Olympics, because it is honorable to ensure a region is represented, and because going to the Olympics would be sick. This seems obvious to me, and I don’t understand why anyone would think otherwise. Rachel Gunn is a much better breaker than I am a sprinter.

But let us imagine that she was- to some degree selfish in going to the Olympics. Suppose for example- and as best I can tell this is fanciful- that Raygun could have nominated someone else to go in her stead, someone she knew was better, but didn’t because she wanted to compete in the Olympics.

Even so, the upset of those online at Raygun almost in every case reflects one of three ugly instincts.

1. Those who feel upset that they have had to gaze upon this. For example, those who cringed with secondhand embarrassment and now want payback for that.

2. Those who want to elevate their status by verbally attacking others. For example, by establishing that they would have the savvy to never do anything that cringe, or that they are better than those ridiculous humanities academics, or that their tact in navigating bodies and spaces is such that they would never crowd out the more marginalized or simply that their wit is sharp and quick.

3. Those with prior grievances who want to roll Raygun into those grievances so they can use her to ‘prove’ a point- e.g. “This is participation trophy culture gone mad”.

A negligible portion of it is driven by people who have a deep concern about the future of breaking, and even when those who do care deeply about breaking join in, it is not adjoined to the good of the sport. The good of the sport is established in advocating for more opportunities to participate at every level, not mocking those who do participate.

From this perspective, we can also see why the yellers have made so many mistakes about the facts of the case- none of these three motives requires much respect for the truth, just as none of them require much concern for efficacy.

Instead, public participation in punishment becomes a process that substitutes for real action towards the positive goals that the participants claim to be pursuing- e.g. more opportunities for breakers. This is rather like how community participation in ritual sacrifice in a climate of superstition substitutes for actually doing something about problems individually or collectively. This is almost always true when we punish through mass yelling. Even when the crime is grave, the question is always whether are we expressing anger and hatred because we assess it as the best way to help, comfort our feelings, or serve our own ambitions?

I think of punishment mobs as a generalization of Debord’s Spectacle- politics as a ritual.

1. Unlike the spectacle, in addition to watching we are invited to participate in play acting a pseudo ‘solution’ as a fetishistic alternative to actually doing something. The presence of a busy box makes it harder to see how far away you are from the real buttons and levers of power.

2. The ‘solution’ given in ritual punishment moves us from the individual to the collective. We are reassured that there are rules to deal with this sort of thing and that the wicked one has Broken The Rules- e.g., “Rachel acted on arrogance and vanity”. The possibility of a structural problem- even a small structural problem like not having regional tryouts- is diminished in our minds.

3. Our very desires are altered. We start out wanting a fair society, but gradually participating in processes like this moves us to wanting our feelings soothed and our relative status assured.

The problem of punishment is that it always implicitly affirms, as righteous by comparison, the punishing community and the systems it lives under, the very systems that generated the putative wrongdoing. Of course, this isn’t a reason to never punish, but it is a reason to be wary of punishment, and especially to be wary of rejoicing in punishment.

Part of the problem is that in a deep level we don’t understand how big the world is now. Punishment by yelling and possible ostracism can be an effective and necessary if harsh, strategy in a small group with a persistent wrongdoer. As society gets larger, it becomes a poor strategy, but on some level, we don’t realize how big things are now, and so we still reward ourselves for attacking supposed wrongdoers.

It hardens you but it does not make you strong. If you spend too long yelling at people- punishing people- you lose the sense that humanity deserves better, and thus the whole putative basis of your punishment. You can see this syndrome in the Daily Mail right- so many years yelling about sickos, assholes, free-riders, scroungers, weirdos, creeps, thugs, chavs, spivs, young people these days, etc., etc. and you find yourself wondering “Since they see evil everywhere except in themselves, who are they even trying to protect”? Yet the right can tolerate this- because it can work on a basis of cynicism and irritation. For the left- with its humanist vision, it is essential that we believe that people deserve better than they have. I know this seems simplistic, but so rarely have I seen anything good come out mob yelling, and so often have I seen people frozen into permanent cold anger, or, perhaps worse, sneering irony.

To come back to the introduction. I guess I think of it like this. Flung around in the dark, falling fast to our deaths like a meteor shower, impossibly separate even in our moments of greatest intimacy, impossibly needy even in our moments of greatest aloofness, and with one impossible power- the power to conspire against the forces of necessity that created us, capable of reaching out to that lonely other. The thrill of telling someone off is entirely incompatible with seeing things this way, and can only exist when we forget at least momentarily this is the universe we live in. It’s not just incompatible with understanding the situation, it’s also incompatible with seeing people as they are- it undermines understanding by making us little Manicheans seeing everyone as bad or good, unaware of the vast and throughly mixed oceans of good and evil sloshing around in us. It particularly destroys our capacity to see our own faults. Self, others, world, the thrill of punishing will make you blind to all of it.

To be clear, I think there are cases in which public condemnation of particular, named individuals, is called for but this is a limited strategy suitable for specific occasions - yet all the incentives point towards it all the time- and so it becomes an overweening ritual, wholly and comfortably part of the very same loveless world that produced the despised event. I’ve done it myself countless times, sometimes intentionally, and sometimes in a sort of accident (e.g., sharing something ridiculous when it should have been clear things are tipping over into mobbing the author).

One suggestion I’ve heard is that fear of condemnation reflects the softness of the present generation. Rubbish. Even when people were in many ways tougher than they are now, they were still absolutely petrified of public shaming, and wisely so.

You might be like “Woah there man, slow down. Enough with the gravid prose. She was a breaker, and some people yelled at her, it’s not that deep, why are you talking about it like it’s some kind of massacre”. Somehow, we’ve forgotten that issues of shame and affiliation are at the core of our lives. If she is like most people, millions of people yelling at her on the internet because she participated in the Olympics will be one of the biggest events of her life. If anything I’m not taking it seriously enough here. For the median person, this outcome would be roughly as bad as aggravated assault, people who think of themselves as well-adjusted and moral are participating in it, and events like this, Raygun deserves better, because we all do.

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