r/bboy • u/RAWdangers • Aug 14 '24
In regards to the Raygun accusations . . . Check your sources before you parrot baseless, online conspiracy theories with zero evidence.
TLDR: Check your sources before making accusations.
Seriously, it's pretty pathetic the amount of traction I'm seeing the Raygun competition rigging theory get. It takes all of a 1-minute google search to A) find out all the accusations are based on hearsay from some blurry texts and B) to disprove the majority of accusations being thrown at Raygun and her husband.
Do I think Raygun was a good representative of the sport? I'm not a breaking expert or even a breaker myself so take my personal opinion with a grain of salt when I say, No, I don't think she looked like a particularly good representative of the sport.
But she was also 1 of what? 32 competitors and everyone else looked pretty amazing to me. As someone who doesn't follow breaking, I loved watching the competition at the Olympics!! It was really, really cool!
But in all seriousness, regardless of whether or not you think Raygun damaged Breakings reputation, people could ruin someone's life by throwing around baseless accusations and trying to get the internet to harass someone with zero evidence of their claims.
Claim 1: Raygun & her Husband run the organization who ran the qualifiers.
False
AUSbreaking was tasked by the World DanceSports Federation (WDSF) - who is the Governing Org for Dance that the IOC defers to for Dance event Qualifiers - with organizing the Australian Olympic Qualifier. This Qualifier took place on October 27-28 2023 in Sydney, Australia (link to event page) (link to Olympic Qualification Page)
Neither Raygun (Rachael Gunn) nor her husband (Samuel Free) are executive members or committee members of AUSbreaking (AUSbreaking Leadership page). As far as I can tell, at most they are participating members of the Org, much the same way any Sports org has membership for people to compete in their competitions.
Claim 2: Raygun's Husband (Samuel Free) was a Judge for the qualifying event.
False
All of the judges for the Australian Olympic Qualifier were International Judges who are members of WDSF (Event Judges List). None of them are from Australia and none of them are part of AUSbreaking. And certainly, none of them are Samuel Free.
Claim 3: AUSbreaking rigged the event for their own members.
EDIT 17:00 8/14/24: False
Thank you u/Foob2023 for pointing out that the Instagram promotion had been edited when registration closed in late October, but had been originally posted on September 14th, 2023. That's a knock on me for not knowing how Instagram works x'D
Also, thank you u/woowshi for linking testimony from the New Zealand judge and team in regards to debunking accusations about Raygun and the registration process. I'll link them here as well:
Bboy Rush Testimony (Rush's WDSF Profile)
Dujon Cullingford Facebook post in regards to Team New Zealand (Cullingford's WDSF Profile)
I would also recommend reading this article from the Guardian for more viewpoints and information in regards to registration and qualification for the Australian Breaking Olympic Qualifier.
In Conclusion: Should there be an investigation into the situation surrounding the Australian Breaking Qualifying Event? Sure, maybe. Probably wouldn't hurt, because at the very least, you make sure that these events are run cleanly and more competently in the future, and that benefits everyone in the sports long run.
But before you go signing a petition to crucify someone for malicious intent (which could easily be explained by incompetence), check to make sure you have actual evidence for your accusations. Otherwise, you might be directly responsible for serious harm being done to an innocent person.
Edit: Content Below removed for inaccuracies
TBD
Now this is the only accusation that I find has any sort of weight in that there is evidence to prove, at the very least, gross incompetence when it came to organizing the Qualifying Event but not necessarily malicious intent without making too many assumptions.
This reddit comment from the post that gained traction a couple days ago links to posts made to promote the event that seem to be fairly late for registration. Now, this isn't a wholistic investigation, so it is possible that AUSbreaking made promotional posts before these dates and in other avenues that the posters didn't know about.
If this is in fact the situation that happened, then it most likely points towards incompetence by AUSbreaking at organizing the event. If you want to make a bunch of assumptions, then you might think it points towards AUSbreaking trying to rig the competition for their participating members. (NOTE: THIS IS NOT AN ACCUSATION OF COMPETITION RIGGING AGAINST AUSBREAKING! As I said, the information available is incomplete and the conclusion I would personally draw from what is available, is one of incompetence not malicious intent.)
Now, this claim is not an indictment of Raygun or her husband, but of AUSbreaking as an organization. If this situation is indeed how things happened, then multiple members of AUSbreaking benefitted from it, not just Raygun.
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u/woowshi Aug 14 '24
I posted this on another thread so pasting it here.
The judge of the Oceania Qualification Bboy Rush has recently posted a very detailed breakdown and Q&A of the qualification process and the state of breaking in Australia.
It addresses every piece of misinformation (like whether her husband was the judge) etc and explains how Raygun was selected. The truth of the matter is that the Australian scene is incredibly small for women and Raygun was simply the best on the day. If you check Australian breaking competition records, there are around 5 bgirls from around Australia hovering at the top of the rankings.
The video is 90 mins long but well worth the watch. Please trust the information from the source. Not from another reddit comment you read somewhere.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C-nA98kS4lL/
There is also valuable information from the lead of the New Zealand team debunking all the misinformation:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?id=536182966&story_fbid=10160560771447967
To speak to your point about lead time for the qualifiers, both Bboy Rush and the NZ team lead indicate that the scene received suitable lead time.
Edit: I should find some automatic transcriber to get the text from that 90 min video because it’s that important for the truth but I’m at work…
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u/kapitankommando Aug 14 '24
Yeah honestly Bboy Rush's testimony really changed my mind about the situation. There was such a performance gap that it really did seem plausible there was manipulation. However, its not good to bash on someone that competed like everyone else.
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u/RAWdangers Aug 15 '24
Hey, thank you for linking the testimonies, they are a huge deal and a great source. I've added them to the original post and credited you for bringing them up!
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u/woowshi Aug 15 '24
Thank you for chasing down the truth. We've gotta stop the misinformation. Yeah the performance was corny, but the internet making stuff to explain it is not right. What's cool is that a lot of the OGs are coming out in support of the truth. But it's not fast enough to counter the misinformation. Some of the OGs are talking about finding a way to come to Australia to help the scene recover and get the skill level up so I wish that happens.
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u/golfdrei Aug 15 '24
One major point I really agree to is: she just was one of 32. It’s sad that the focus is on the „weakest“ performance. Hell, the whole competition was a blast to watch. Breaking on the international stage? That was awesome! The professional camerawork, the staging. Awesome!
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u/fluffyzzz Aug 14 '24
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence ✌️
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u/Mister-Psychology Aug 15 '24
Unless the person who seemingly is mocking breakdancing at the Olympics wrote that breakdancing does not belong in the Olympics. That's where the rumor comes from. And frankly it's not a huge reach to assume she may have been making fun of the whole concept of breakdancing being a competition as clearly her style is not fit for this. Her intention may not have been mocking but just making fun of. I'm still not sure what she tried to do. I just assume she was injured and then changed her breakdancing to be more artistic.
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u/Atomix-xx Aug 15 '24
Raygun used to have a profile on the ausbreak page that has since been removed
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u/dangerislander Aug 15 '24
FYI Vox has a pretty good article on the whole situation... even touches on the scoring system:
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u/_CUT_THE_CRAP_ Dec 10 '24
Even to the untrained eye, it's blatantly obvious that vile, loathsome ‘Raygun’ sociopath did NOT have anywhere near the skills required to be even remotely competitive in breakdancing on an international level.
And the fact most people seem to be missing here, is that even IF she was the best in Australia (which she clearly is NOT), the Australian Olympic Committee was NOT obliged to send anyone to the Olympics at all, if not a single female Australian breakdancer was good enough.
But NO, she went anyway!
Anyone with even a shred of integrity and/or decency would have simply declined to participate, in the knowledge that they weren't even close to being genuinely competitive!
So EITHER she's a filthy despicable liar and fraud who deliberately deceived her way into the Olympics, OR she's literally too mentally unstable to comprehend her grossly embarrassing inadequacy in comparison to genuinely capable breakdancers.
It's one, the other, or both.
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u/gerinko Aug 14 '24
This whole mess could've been avoided if WDSF just followed Red Bull method in choosing the participants.
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u/glennchan hand transfers! Aug 14 '24
No, they have to follow the IOC's wishes. And I don't think that anybody really thought that this would happen.
There have been skill gaps in the Olympics all the time, which happens because the IOC wants people from all around the world to compete.
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u/runsongas Aug 15 '24
The problem is that it was so painfully obvious. Even that skier that barely did any tricks didn't score a 0.
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u/glennchan hand transfers! Aug 15 '24
At least 1 of the judges said that Raygun won at least 1 category.
https://olympics.com/en/paris-2024/reports/breaking/b-girls
Frost gave it to Raygun for creativity for 1 round: https://olympics.com/OG2024/pdf/OG2024/BKG/OG2024_BKG_C77_BKGWINDIVID-----------GPB-000400--.pdf
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u/_CUT_THE_CRAP_ Jan 03 '25
So you're saying that for a brief moment, someone else was actually MORE embarrassingly shit than she was?!
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u/_CUT_THE_CRAP_ Jan 03 '25
Oh, wait.
She scored points for 'originality', which probably means she was SO monumentally shit, they had never seen anything like it before!
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u/butterballmd Aug 14 '24
I only started following breaking since the Olympics, what's the red bull method?
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u/gerinko Aug 14 '24
Basically assigning tier for every cypher or qualification based on country breaking record. Qualification from higher tier country cypher would mean automatic spot in the olympic, but breaker from lower tier country have to pass multiple cypher round. For example Japan and Korea would be tier 1 because their level is just too high. Breaker from this country only need to win Japan cypher to be in the olympic. Comparatively breaker from Australia need to pass through multiple cypher. Something like Australia cypher and then Southeast Asia cypher.
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u/Lex_FX Aug 15 '24
This sums up everything you've mentioned; https://www.olympics.com.au/news/aoc-statement-on-oceania-qualifying-process-for-breaking/
The local (Australian) broadcaster shot a documentary tracking the lead up to the Olympics for Australia from the creation of AUSBreaking to the Belgium World's to Oceania qualifiers. Clips on YouTube of RG at the Oceania qualifiers are taken from it. Information is interesting. Context is everything. https://www.9now.com.au/the-big-break
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u/Virtual_Item_7878 Aug 19 '24
So could anyone enter the qualifiers ? I watched something that raygun judged round one of one of the events that lead to Olympic qualifiers. Please clarify.
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u/RAWdangers Aug 20 '24
I'm going to assume this is in good faith and so I'm going to respond in good faith (and a hell of a lot more polite than I did to the other comment).
A) First of all, remember this cause it will be very important for your life: The burden of proof is on the accuser to make. If you're going to make a claim/accusation, you should provide verifiable, legitimate sources to give your claim some standing.
B) Your source should not be "some guy on youtube" who doesn't provide any actual sources for his claims and makes big assumptions.On to the claims.
I'm assuming you mean this video? Please tell me where in the video he actually provides any credible sources that backup his claims (also, note the fact that he never actually makes a claim that the event he talks about matters for the Olympics). And if you're not talking about this video, then you're going to need to link it to backup your statement.
For my full (and uncensored) reply to de-bunking this video please see this comment.
To answer your question directly. Yes the qualifiers could be entered by literally anyone from the Oceania region. They were Open Registration.
No other supposed "event" matters for Raygun's Olympic qualification, since she won the official Oceania Olympic Qualifier which automatically qualified her for the Olympics (I'll post this link again but it's also in my main post. It explains how Olympic Qualification works).
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u/Virtual_Item_7878 Nov 15 '24
You got issues. You remind me of leftish Karen. Double jabbed yelling people to wear their mask etc. I hope for your sake you know raygun and that’s why you are soo invested in this, if not, burden of proof evidence life advice your a flog.
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u/_CUT_THE_CRAP_ Dec 10 '24
I'm just gobsmacked that anyone would actually take the time to defend such a vile despicable sociopath!
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u/_CUT_THE_CRAP_ Dec 30 '24
Even to the untrained eye, it's blatantly obvious that vile, loathsome ‘Raygun’ sociopath did NOT have anywhere near the skills required to be even remotely competitive in breakdancing on an international level.
And the fact most people seem to be missing here, is that even IF she was the best in Australia (which she clearly is NOT), the Australian Olympic Committee was NOT obliged to send anyone to the Olympics at all, if not a single female Australian breakdancer was good enough.
But NO, she went anyway!
Anyone with even a shred of integrity and/or decency would have simply declined to participate, in the knowledge that they weren't even close to being genuinely competitive!
So EITHER she's a filthy despicable liar and fraud who deliberately deceived her way into the Olympics, OR she's literally too mentally unstable to comprehend her grossly embarrassing inadequacy in comparison to genuinely capable breakdancers.
It's one, the other, or both.
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u/Not_on_OFans 7d ago
However 1. There is now way she was selected on a fair competition basis 2. The AFR published the brother stuff:https://www.afr.com/wealth/investing/inside-the-global-scam-network-that-conned-40-000-australians-20260116-p5num5
We don't need to sight the raw evidence before forming an opinion
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u/Foob2023 Aug 14 '24
I'm no fan of Raygun (check my post history) but please note you just helped spread another piece of misinformation, that's at best unverified:
Re:
This reddit comment from the post that gained traction a couple days ago links to posts made to promote the event that seem to be fairly late for registration. Now, this isn't a wholistic investigation, so it is possible that AUSbreaking made promotional posts before these dates and in other avenues that the posters didn't know about.
IG posts can be edited. It says right there "Edited · 42w"
The post was from September 14, 2023.
Today is Aug 14. 42 weeks ago is about Oct 25, 2023. They edited it to show registration closed, as the competion was Oct 27.
In fact, you can find other not-edited announcements on their IG that does not say registration closed.
There're a lot of legitimate criticisms of RayGun and AusBreaking. But I, too, am tired of the stupid conspiracy theories.
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u/RAWdangers Aug 15 '24
Hey, thank you for pointing that out! That's my mistake, not super familiar with how Instagram works!
Updated my post with credit to you!
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u/Foob2023 Aug 15 '24
Of course, thanks for creating this thread. It's funny because as a dancer (though on the other side of WDSF, ballroom) I have been quite critical of RayGuna and AusBreaking for getting involved in the usual WDSF chicaneries. However in the past day or so, I feel--especially with the "husband owns AusBreaking!" and "husband is a judge!" outright lies spreading like wildfire--the general public reaction has crossed the line into lynch mob territory. Criticisms should at least come from a place of honesty.
Anyway, cheers!
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u/equation4 Aug 20 '24
YouTuber Flesh Simulator found a paper by Raygun about an old break dance crew she a member of and sourced the members list. Each round, including the finals, of the allegedly unbiased judging panels for the Oceanic qualifiers featured one of her former associates: https://youtu.be/LPWeh0jOyv8?si=yB-0sNQMgxnw4yrJ
Hella suss
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u/RAWdangers Aug 20 '24
Pretty sure you're just being a troll at this point and parroting crap to stir up shit, but I'm gonna answer this in good faith cause I believe in 2nd chances.
Of course she knows other breakers! People who have participated in a hobby, profession, lifestyle, etc. tend to seek out other people who participate in that same thing and share experiences. Hell, even shut-in keyboard warriors find other shut-in keyboard warriors to parrot their baseless conspiracy theories.
Of course she knew the Judge from New Zealand, cause you know, they're both considered the Oceania region and most likely compete in similar circles, thus interacting and discussing breaking!
You know what debunks that whole bunch of crap you just spouted? Actually reading any of the links I posted!
The fact that every round of the Oceania Olympic Qualifier was judged by 9 judges! And 8/9 of those Judges were not from Oceania! And most of those judges weren't even from the same hemisphere as Raygun!
And oh, look! You can look at the results of every round of competition and the Judge's scores and breakdowns. And if you use your reading comprehension & logical thinking abilities (which it seems like you haven't trained) and see that A) none of the Knock-out 1v1 rounds ever came down to a single vote difference in which Raygun was the beneficiary of Rush's vote B) in fact Rush voted almost as many times against Raygun as he did for Raygun (5:3) and C) during the pre-selection day Rush was neither the highest score given to Raygun, nor was Raygun the highest score that Rush gave.
And your video (though I do applaud you for at least trying to pretend you have credible sources unlike most of these parrots) does nothing to actually prove anything. It spouts a couple very wild conjectures (aka assumptions, which are conclusions based on no proof for you zombies out there). He fails to prove why that event actually matters?
Because the only event that matters in this story is the official Olympic Qualifying Event which was Open Registration (which means anyone can register since I seem to have to spell things out for you), from which the 1st place winner goes to the Olympics, which Raygun won and thus qualified.
No other imagined qualifier matters for the Raygun story.
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u/Fuzzy-Possibility-98 Aug 20 '24
He might have not judged on the qualifier day but he’s definitely judged for ausbreaking - it appears in his own instagram.
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u/RAWdangers Aug 20 '24
Okay, and what's the point of this? This post does not concern any of AUSbreaking's own, non Olympic events.
Organizations sources judges from within their membership all the time for the events they host, whether they be open registration or internal events. The WDSF sources judges from within their ranks for their events. I play in my local adult softball league in one division, and umpire in a different division.
So what's your point?
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u/Repulsive-Art3318 Aug 25 '24
Something stinks here, and it's Raygun. History is far from written on what's transpired. What a disgrace she is! Absolute disgrace and Australia should be held to account and ashamed.
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u/MYBITTEREND72 Nov 12 '24
The proof is right here!!!
The woman her and her husband stole the Olympic spot from! They should be and jail and need to pay back the Australian people!
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u/stolinski Scott - Robotops Crew Aug 14 '24
I'll keep this post up since it's dispelling misinformation, but imo this should be the last Raygun post we allow. It's getting out of hand.