"If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all." Leaven your criticism with praise?
I'm not sure that would work in this particular situation; the magnitude of the criticism seems to drown out the "She's a *good* breaker..." remarks. Or more generally. When I was in English class and we were critiquing one another's work, I'd split my page into a plus column and a minus column to do my analysis, then share the plus column with the class. Negative feedback is very useful to experts in their areas of expertise, but for most people a little goes a long way and positive feedback is better.
I think you might not know the entire story... briefly, most of the breakdancing community was opposed to making it an Olympic sport, because it is an art, and should not be judged by people who do not understand the culture of that art well. They were afraid by making it a sport, it will be reduced to pure athletic performance and the artistic self-expression element will be lost. Raygun and her husband were parts of the small number of people who were pushing to make it an Olympic sport and the reason she could qualify that most people in the breakdancing community boycotted the qualification events, so there wasn't much competition.
So it is more than just poor performance, it was more about trying to hijack a subculture.
I haven't read much about the controversy,,, while I'm quite sceptical of allegations the the AOC qualifiers were rigged in her favour/that she performed poorly as part of some personal 'research' project (you don't mention this but I've certainly seen this take online).... There are certain things that do give me pause:
1. She has said, I think in an early interview after her performance at the olympics that she took some creative liberties. She had felt this was jusitified as she was not confident in performing certain power moves (I'm forgetting what they're called in breaking..)
2. Having looked at her output as published on her official MacqU profile it seems she has previously completed a number of performance-based projects. So while the theory this was all part of some scholarly project is outlandish and likely untrue (most rational people won't ruin a performance on an international stage, representing their country for a manuscript), it does give credence to the idea that her creativity at the olympics was informed by her academic practice.
If she indeed took some creative liberties in her performance, then I think she had acted irresponsibly and for that she is rightly criticised. Other more 'expressive' sports such as diving and gymnastics have strict criteria that officials follow to fairly and uniformly adjudicate acts. I would assume breaking is graded similarly at the olympics. Given that Raygun was representing her country in an international competition, she had an obligation to give a performance that would give the most points. I'll further add, she had an obligation to perform in manner that is *most likely* to give her the most points. It was very, VERY unlikely that her creative performance would garner her more or any points for that matter.
Secondly, as an olympic athlete there is a presumption that she knows the rules of her competition. So, regardless of whether she 'chose' to perform 'creatively', she should have known *not* to perform those specific moves (as the don't conform to grading criteria) or she really should have known the rules of her competition much better. We expect a lot from our olympic atheletes and the bare minimum is knowing the rules of your game. I also think the public might have been kinder to her if she had garnered any points at all, however strange her performance was.
You're right that mockery on the internet at this global level can be especially devastating. I feel bad when I voice my criticism of her because I know I wouldn't cope with the scrutiny she's faced. Still, I think much of criticism is reasonable, and for me (not knowing any ethical theory oop) my rudimentary criterion for bad criticism is whether an individual act of criticism was excessively cruel. Most of the memes/snarky comments online seem to display a proprotionate response to her performance. While in the aggregate, the harm from these comments is compounded and could be seen as disproportionate I'm not sure how we could feasibly stop people from commenting. If a media outlets shuts down comments, people will find other ways tk vent their frustration. Perhaps in these kinds of situations, one unfortunately must learn to ignore the criticism an temporarily seek comfort in relative solitude.
It's possible that she qualified, and then made the calculation that, in order to win, or even place well the only chance whatsoever- however slim- was to try something unusual. I tend to think that is a reasonable strategy when one is far behind- even if it only has a 0.1% chance of working, that can be better than trying conventional strategies.
Generally thinking, I don't think we have enough information to know what was in her head and I believe that in cases of ambiguity we should cling on to good faith as hard as possible.
The Lotus Eaters read aloud the intro to a paper she was writing about this nonsense and that told me all I need to know about her internal system of viewing the world. She's a uni lecturer, views herself as a victim, and she has a phd, doesn't she? I don't feel like I should extend empathy simply because so many other people insisted on doing it when what she really needed was to be told she was ridiculous and she needed to stop.
"break dancing" (not even going to give it the first capital letter a sentence deserves) is not an olympic sport. This whole episode of the olympics (also not getting the respect of a capital) was really an episode of South Park in real time. As Scott says below, negative feedback is very useful and if you either eschew it, or ignore it so much that no one will give it to you, you are storing up wrath for the day of judgment.
This was her day of judgment. The media bears some blame because they love this kind of story and they, too, have been sidestepping the important work of taking a long, hard look at themselves.
"If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all." Leaven your criticism with praise?
I'm not sure that would work in this particular situation; the magnitude of the criticism seems to drown out the "She's a *good* breaker..." remarks. Or more generally. When I was in English class and we were critiquing one another's work, I'd split my page into a plus column and a minus column to do my analysis, then share the plus column with the class. Negative feedback is very useful to experts in their areas of expertise, but for most people a little goes a long way and positive feedback is better.
Yeah, and even pure negative feedback isn't necessarily "not nice". It depends on whether the purpose and tone is cruel or constructive.
I think you might not know the entire story... briefly, most of the breakdancing community was opposed to making it an Olympic sport, because it is an art, and should not be judged by people who do not understand the culture of that art well. They were afraid by making it a sport, it will be reduced to pure athletic performance and the artistic self-expression element will be lost. Raygun and her husband were parts of the small number of people who were pushing to make it an Olympic sport and the reason she could qualify that most people in the breakdancing community boycotted the qualification events, so there wasn't much competition.
So it is more than just poor performance, it was more about trying to hijack a subculture.
I haven't read much about the controversy,,, while I'm quite sceptical of allegations the the AOC qualifiers were rigged in her favour/that she performed poorly as part of some personal 'research' project (you don't mention this but I've certainly seen this take online).... There are certain things that do give me pause:
1. She has said, I think in an early interview after her performance at the olympics that she took some creative liberties. She had felt this was jusitified as she was not confident in performing certain power moves (I'm forgetting what they're called in breaking..)
2. Having looked at her output as published on her official MacqU profile it seems she has previously completed a number of performance-based projects. So while the theory this was all part of some scholarly project is outlandish and likely untrue (most rational people won't ruin a performance on an international stage, representing their country for a manuscript), it does give credence to the idea that her creativity at the olympics was informed by her academic practice.
If she indeed took some creative liberties in her performance, then I think she had acted irresponsibly and for that she is rightly criticised. Other more 'expressive' sports such as diving and gymnastics have strict criteria that officials follow to fairly and uniformly adjudicate acts. I would assume breaking is graded similarly at the olympics. Given that Raygun was representing her country in an international competition, she had an obligation to give a performance that would give the most points. I'll further add, she had an obligation to perform in manner that is *most likely* to give her the most points. It was very, VERY unlikely that her creative performance would garner her more or any points for that matter.
Secondly, as an olympic athlete there is a presumption that she knows the rules of her competition. So, regardless of whether she 'chose' to perform 'creatively', she should have known *not* to perform those specific moves (as the don't conform to grading criteria) or she really should have known the rules of her competition much better. We expect a lot from our olympic atheletes and the bare minimum is knowing the rules of your game. I also think the public might have been kinder to her if she had garnered any points at all, however strange her performance was.
You're right that mockery on the internet at this global level can be especially devastating. I feel bad when I voice my criticism of her because I know I wouldn't cope with the scrutiny she's faced. Still, I think much of criticism is reasonable, and for me (not knowing any ethical theory oop) my rudimentary criterion for bad criticism is whether an individual act of criticism was excessively cruel. Most of the memes/snarky comments online seem to display a proprotionate response to her performance. While in the aggregate, the harm from these comments is compounded and could be seen as disproportionate I'm not sure how we could feasibly stop people from commenting. If a media outlets shuts down comments, people will find other ways tk vent their frustration. Perhaps in these kinds of situations, one unfortunately must learn to ignore the criticism an temporarily seek comfort in relative solitude.
It's possible that she qualified, and then made the calculation that, in order to win, or even place well the only chance whatsoever- however slim- was to try something unusual. I tend to think that is a reasonable strategy when one is far behind- even if it only has a 0.1% chance of working, that can be better than trying conventional strategies.
Generally thinking, I don't think we have enough information to know what was in her head and I believe that in cases of ambiguity we should cling on to good faith as hard as possible.
The Lotus Eaters read aloud the intro to a paper she was writing about this nonsense and that told me all I need to know about her internal system of viewing the world. She's a uni lecturer, views herself as a victim, and she has a phd, doesn't she? I don't feel like I should extend empathy simply because so many other people insisted on doing it when what she really needed was to be told she was ridiculous and she needed to stop.
"break dancing" (not even going to give it the first capital letter a sentence deserves) is not an olympic sport. This whole episode of the olympics (also not getting the respect of a capital) was really an episode of South Park in real time. As Scott says below, negative feedback is very useful and if you either eschew it, or ignore it so much that no one will give it to you, you are storing up wrath for the day of judgment.
This was her day of judgment. The media bears some blame because they love this kind of story and they, too, have been sidestepping the important work of taking a long, hard look at themselves.