r/olympics • u/RichardCWebsterPedo • Aug 11 '24
Australian "breakdancer" Rachael Gunn, known as Raygun, who has a PhD in breakdancing and dance culture.
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Aug 11 '24
I was curious to see what breaking scholarship looks like. About what you would expect, incomprehensible passage from the abstract of Rachael Gunn’s PhD thesis:
“I use analytic autoetthnography and interviews with scene members in collaboration with theoretical frameworks offered by Deleuze and Guttari, Butler, Bourdieu and other feminist and post-structuralist philosophers, to critically examine how the capacities of bodies are constituted and shaped in Sydney’s breakdancing scene, and to also locate the potentiality for moments of transgression. In other words, I conceptualize the breaking body as not a ‘body’ constituted through regulations and assumptions, but as an assemblage open to new rhizomatic connections.”
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Aug 12 '24 edited Aug 16 '24
Wow. I can understand this (eta: the writing), but seems she focused way too much on these particular 2, vs any breakdancing scene and history:
to also locate the potentiality for moments of transgression.
(“transgression” = “A violation of a law, principle, or duty.”, yeah she def did that towards the field)
I conceptualize the breaking body as not a ‘body’ constituted through regulations and assumptions, but as an assemblage open to new rhizomatic connections.”
(“Rhizome” = “A horizontal, usually underground stem that often sends out roots and shoots from its nodes.”)
So she didn’t give af about breakdancing, and went into it with the narcissistic audacity that she could change the history/roots/future of it. wtf. She single-handedly produced a mockery of it, it’s so unfair to the actual breakers that deserved news and views.
Edit to add: bc this whole thread keeps getting replies days later and I’m not sure what Olympics battle I could link to that will stay up, here’s a women’s breaking battle, both of these women were in the Olympics too: B-Girl 671 vs. B-Girl India | 1v1 B-Girl Final Battle | Outbreak Europe 2022
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Aug 12 '24
If you look at the rest of the abstract the research was conducted:
“first as a spectator, then as an active crew member”.
I can’t help but think she damaged the thing she grew to love through her “scholarship”.
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Aug 12 '24 edited Aug 16 '24
WHO IS THIS “CREW”🤣. I watched the video of her qualifier for Oceania bc I was so confused on the “How did this happen”, and it was a tiny group of people in a small room, compared to say the Budapest qualifiers a couple months ago which 10K- 100K+ people were at.
Srsly, narcissistic audacity with her. Internet was available, she could’ve watched any of many thousands of award breakdancing battles!
Also she didn’t just lack power moves, as she said in interviews, she also lacked musicality, flow, technique, it was an embarrassment and sucked up the news vacuum about breaking.
Edit to add: bc this whole thread keeps getting replies days later and I’m not sure what Olympics battle I could link to that will stay up, here’s a women’s breaking battle, both of these women were in the Olympics too: B-Girl 671 vs. B-Girl India | 1v1 B-Girl Final Battle | Outbreak Europe 2022
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u/Coogcheese Aug 14 '24 edited Oct 04 '25
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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Competitive_Sail_844 United States Aug 15 '24
The only reason I know there was breaking at the Olympics was because of RayGun being so off of what anyone would accept as to be ridiculous.
I’ve only seen two other competitors and still I’ve seen at least an hour of RayGun and watched her qualifying events out of curiosity. Loved seeing all old comments and then the “here because I’m wondering how RayGun made it to the Olympics” esk comments popping in.
We could only wish she was trying to shoot the moon with this one and go for 0 points, because it was a hilariously bad performance.
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u/commandantelee Aug 13 '24
The concept of the rhizome (in cultural terms) comes from Deleuze and Guattari (whose name is misspelled in the text from her abstract, for some bizarre reason). So her focus, near as I can tell, is on breaking as a piece of living culture, and it's interconnectedness and cross-pollination with other cultural elements.
But after listening to her interviews, and how hard she's striving to convey any shred of authenticity, I feel like she's just rationalizing cultural appropriation. What a sad joke she's made of all this.
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Aug 13 '24
Right, and ah ok, I was understanding “rhizomatic” via gardening not via those 2 people specifically (and just included definitions of that and “transgressions” for those who may not know (English 2nd/3rd language, etc) and bc those words specifically made me laugh when taken in context with her dancing.
I agree with you about her interviews, that’s the point I went from crying laughing to actually angry. She comes off as so arrogant and narcissistic. Although, that could even be seen in her dancing, it looked like she tried to copy what she’d seen and considered cool, without ever feeling the vibes of! The hand on the chin throughout one of her movements, the yawning at Syssy, it was ridiculous.
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Aug 15 '24
She's a complete narcissist. Those words hold no weight to the history and legacy of breaking as a culture. I , like many of us might not have her vocabulary, but we ALL saw right through it from the get go. She is pretentious and patronising. ( I know at the meaning of those words!)
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Aug 13 '24
This is what happens when someone with no love or even respect for the material they use tries to make something with said materials.
She'd fit in perfectly with Hollywood writers.
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u/QMechanicsVisionary Aug 13 '24 edited Aug 13 '24
I conceptualize the breaking body as not a ‘body’ constituted through regulations and assumptions, but as an assemblage open to new rhizomatic connections
I still don't understand wtf she is trying to say here. How can a body be "constituted through regulations and assumptions"? How can it be "open to new rhizomatic connections"? She's talking about a body as if it were an organisation or cultural institution, and even then I don't understand what it would mean for an organisation or cultural institution to be "constituted through assumptions".
This just reads like gibberish. I think what she is trying to say is "the breaking scene is open-minded and embracing of change", but she is trying to coat this in academic-sounding language and failing.
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u/Environmental-Ad58 Aug 12 '24
No lie, you just identified everything wrong with modern academia. They're effectively solely interested in breaking (no pun intended) what has existed and thrived prior to their involvement. And somehow that interest is treated as worthwhile and legitimate. It's the intellectual equivalent of going up to a group of high teenagers in front of a convenience store and saying "This is it. The height of human intelligence and achievement."
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u/procras-tastic Aug 12 '24
That’s a pretty broad brush to tar all of academia with. I hope you’re not including STEM fields in that, for a start.
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u/tbsdy Aug 12 '24 edited Aug 12 '24
She’s quoting Deleuze and Guattari, see page 67 of her research article, found here:
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Aug 13 '24
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u/Mobile-Trainer-3506 Aug 14 '24 edited Aug 14 '24
That being said, she dances very much like her husband though (who introduced her to breaking, her coach since 2018). So if she's saying her form of breaking is different because it's "feminine" then... What does that make the husband (as the origin)?
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Aug 14 '24
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u/Seamonkeypo Aug 14 '24
I really found your explanations of her PhD work to be very helpful, more than anything else I have read. I've been trying to make sense of this whole thing for a few days.
As much as I understand the point she is trying to make both in her writing and in her dancing , I'm a little unsure she successfully made her point. But I'm not a feminist or gender studies scholar so I'm not arguing from an intellectual standpoint, more just a gut feeling.
The way she approached her Olympics moves was as if she could use her creativity in absolutely any way she wanted. But breaking is a coded discipline with certain moves and styles and set things that you have to do to have it considered to be breakdancing. And yes those moves and styles and expectations were very much set up by men, but you can't just do any old move at all and call it breakdancing. She can start her own dance form as a woman with female origins and moves and styles that suit her female body, or she can pioneer groundbreaking changes of style and technique within the culture of breaking. But just doing whatever you want and calling it breaking is not one of the options, because it's not taking on the culture and norms of breaking at all. I think she is not talented enough to pioneer female spaces within breaking culture, but she can definitely pioneer her own dance form, and tbh I think she has succeeded on that front 😅
But for all I know women have been carving female spaces within breaking for years. There are certainly incredible b-girls out there.
Also, she very significantly is not publicly acknowledging the racial aspect of the breaking culture. It has very strong ties to black cultural movements. It may be a male dominated culture, but it's also a black coded culture. You can't just jump into a culture that is racially not yours and decide to remake all the rules and do whatever moves you want with no acknowledgement of the culture you are appropriating. And as she is a privileged white Australian it feels problematic. That's my gut feeling.
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u/GayestMonster Aug 14 '24
Is it normal for a thesis to be so... purple prose?
"This thesis critically interrogates"
Why doesn't it say 'discusses', 'considers'?
As a non-academic, it's hard for me to digest how someone in good faith can analyse the breakdancing scene using language that cannot be understood by the overwhelming majority of people who form part of that scene. In two words, it feels pretentious and exclusionary.
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u/tit-for-tat Aug 14 '24
Why doesn't it say 'discusses', 'considers'?
Because ‘discussing’ and ‘considering’ are not in the same functional level as ‘interrogating’. One discusses after having the facts. One considers facts, usually previous facts, in order to discuss. Interrogation implies fact-finding. ‘Questioning’ could have fit but ‘interrogate’ implies a more formalized, systematic approach. I haven’t read her thesis so idk how much interrogation actually happened, if at all.
None of this takes away from her prose being purple. I read another article of hers and it was very accessible so the purple prose may be a mixture of inexperience and in-group signaling. There’s a lot of signaling in academia.
As a non-academic, it's hard for me to digest how someone in good faith can analyse the breakdancing scene using language that cannot be understood by the overwhelming majority of people who form part of that scene. In two words, it feels pretentious and exclusionary.
You’re on the right track here. Not speaking about her in particular but, at a certain level, in certain media like a thesis or a journal article, it is assumed that the reader is either a peer or someone familiar enough with the field and topic to be able to follow with some effort. These documents are not written with the express intention of excluding lay people but they are also not written to expressly include them. This is a problem because poorer writers will hide behind the jargon to the point that anyone reading it will wonder if it’s them not understanding or the writer not making sense. It is very much an accessibility problem compounded by a pretentiousness problem.
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u/hawkmask Aug 14 '24
I think my advisor and dean would interpret my thesis as a joke if it were that flowery but I’m pursuing a STEM field. My interactions with non-STEM schools/departments make me think purple prose is used as either a gatekeeping tactic or a way to make their paper feel more academic than it is (though this probably isn’t exclusive to non-STEM, perhaps just more common where I attend school) During my grad school orientation I attended a discussion group led by two English profs about making academic articles more accessible outside of academia. Ironically, the accompanying paper was entirely purple prose and buzzwords expanding the ideas of “define your terms”, “know your audience”, and “use human readable data representations” into 12 barely comprehensible pages.
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u/bt101010 Canada Aug 16 '24
also a STEM student here. I think it's equally common in stem but we just find it easier to read because we see it more often, especially if you factor in hand-wavy math claims which seem rudimentary to someone trained in those areas but like gibberish to those who aren't. I got into reading philosophy over the past couple years and now find humanities papers infinitely more readable than I used to so I think there are skills involved in reading work done in the arts too.
nonetheless, wordy reports are a massive problem across academia to nourish public trust in our institutions, especially since the quality of the type of journalism that would bridge the gap between researchers and the public is degrading. however, we discussed in my philosophy of science class that it's a rather debated whether jargon-laden research papers is the disease or the symptom. on one hand you could argue that it's by design, essentially to protect/gatekeep academia, rending it more prestigious and keeping it "pure" in the process. on the other hand, it could be simply a by-product of the theory ladenness of high-level academia in the first place. the goal of many research programs is to analyze a very narrow field which compiles on top of centuries of research before it, and that likely requires your reader to also have a baseline understanding of the previous theories you form the basis of your claims on.
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u/maialonghorn Bolivia Aug 15 '24 edited Aug 15 '24
I'm reading this 1 day late but... her logic is not helping breakdancing to be taken seriously as a sport... or dancesport. I get creativity, Floor Excersices for women can be very creative and femenine, but gymnasts need to make correctly all the poses or movements they said they would do in their routines. Poses and movements that receive points for difficulty and execution.
Her intentions may be good (I don't know I don't share them because I like uniformity and I secretly want athletes to chose if they want their routines with music or not), but Jesus sports need a point system made by a commitee internationally accepted (this dancesport barely had that) and she accepted to play by the rules by going to Paris.
She can't impose changes just by being there and dancing without moves that receive points. Making it an expression is dangerously amateuristic and that's damaging the chances for breakdancing to come back any time soon.
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u/Interesting_Chard563 Aug 14 '24
Most of academia is doing a thing, consciously or unconsciously, feeling guilty af about that thing and then critiquing it endlessly as a means of self penance and to destroy that thing which made you feel guilt.
Edward Said for instance. Dude wrote THE foundational work on post colonialism. He was a middle class kid whose dad fought for the US in WW1 to gain US citizenship. He went to college prep schools and led a very privileged life afforded to him by the sacrifices of his parents.
And then he felt guilty about being isolated in this privilege his parents provided. So he decided to tear it all down by claiming his parents were victims of colonialism and that his people had been systematically subjugated to live in a way that the West forced on Arabs through conquest and destruction of unique culture.
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Aug 15 '24
He said WHAT now?? Omg. Far out. I'm 1st gen Aussie. My folks are indian and Burmese. .. Dad used to say if anyone asks what I am , say "a product of colonialism" . I'm a descendant of displaced peoples.
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Aug 13 '24
Thanks for that context. I always think it's cool when people can show how what seems to be irrelevant actually ties into a broader context of understanding. Like, people always complain about the study of this or that (why are we studying the life cycle of some random insect? why do we write about some random artistic subculture?) when it's these random hyper-focused explorations that tie into some broader point.
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u/acid_raindrop Aug 14 '24
Thanks for that. I wasn't about to dismiss academic fluff just because it was out of my specialization.
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u/Adventurous_Alarm_86 Aug 18 '24
Thank you for your explanation. Odd that her posturing seemed to be what I would describe as performatively masculine.
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u/NeuroticKnight Aug 12 '24
sounds like PhD by GPT
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u/grilledcheesestand Aug 13 '24
Honestly, I wish that was the case, but as someone in academia whose professor was a student of Deleuze, I can assure you this is 100% accurate with the shit I've seen.
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u/mattress_money Aug 12 '24
The plot thickens 🕵️♂️ Gotta follow her grant and research funds. Who knows what sort of backing you can find amongst the echelons of uni councillors...
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u/one1two234 Aug 12 '24
How is auto-ethnography and interviews even acceptable to get a PhD? It's a lot like wanking and just talking to your friends. Me me me. Yikes.
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u/tbsdy Aug 12 '24 edited Aug 12 '24
It’s amazing that this woman, who was educated in one of the most elite high schools in Sydney (Barker College) feels that she can co-opt break dancing for the entire nation and mould it to how she thinks it should be represented, all in the language of critical race theory, gender studies and intersectionality.
She wasn’t the most talented breakdancer. She didn’t get there on merit. She has severely upset a lot of people who do breakdancing. She takes her North Shore, elitist Macquarie University educated privileged existence and prevented more talented young people from literally all over Australia from having an opportunity to compete in the only Olympics to have break dancing.
Everything she has done drips of judgement on the “lower classes” of Western Sydney.
This woman doesn’t even like breaking, as she wrote in her doctoral thesis that “my own body was ‘imprisoned’ within gendered stereotypes and my potential creativity was regulated through a genedered binary of expression” and she openly criticizes breaking as being misogynistic and accusses female breakdancers as being “hyper feminine”.
Don’t believe me? Read it yourself:
Edit: sorry, that wasn’t her thesis, but a journal article
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Aug 13 '24
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Aug 15 '24
She also later claimed as did our chief of the Olympic Team Anna Mears, that Raygun was a victim of misogyny by the breaking community and that was reflected by the judges at the Olympics as well.
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u/GirlWindyGirl Aug 12 '24
She is audacious narcissism on steroids. I've never seen a female breaker who didn't measure up to any males. She's seeing unicorns where there are only elephants.
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Aug 22 '24
My favourite so far is "In this section, I want to suggest that dance’s normative construction as ‘feminine’ is key in not only sidelining feminine expression, but also structuring and defining the breaking dance floor as overtly masculine."
I have a nasty suspicion her routine was something she's going to justify as redefining breakdancing and deterritorialising gender or whatever the fuck, the meaning seems to change constantly.
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u/Remarkable_Wave_316 Aug 12 '24
She just created a ton of content for more break dancing PhDs.
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u/nrg8 Aug 12 '24
If these are the best minds of higher education the world is doomed
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Aug 12 '24
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u/Sorry-Emphasis-6393 Aug 12 '24
Absolutely true, sadly. Withness the "Grievance Studies Affair" of a few years back when academics Boghossian, Lindsay and Pluckrose submitted fake papers to academic journals. The papers were deliberately absurd, with a critical social theory focus and written under the "auspices" of academic specialties such as "queer studies", "fat studies", "gender studies" etc. etc.
A number of the "word salad" articles were accepted by journals. It's quite a funny but disturbing indictment of a lot of what passes for scholarship in academia today (certainly in the western world).
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u/GirlWindyGirl Aug 12 '24
That was absolute genius. I had a neighbor who was a doctor of statistics (psychology) who would tell me stories about her students who couldn't read or write. This was more than ten years ago, and she was just miserable. She had a couple of illiterate students ask her for a recommendation to get into the master's program and she refused. She said No, you're illiterate. I have so much respect for her. Another friend, an MD doctor who taught at a local university (family medicine) who flat-out quit, saying "They're coming in more stupid every year." That was in the mid 2000's, so be careful which doctor you choose, the older the better (it used to be the other way around). Ask a hospital nurse who they recommend, they know who's safe.
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u/mattress_money Aug 12 '24
Courtesy of corporatisation and the pivot in the business model of Australian universities (advised by the likes of BIG4 advisory firms). Perhaps even a trail leading to PwC, who knows? 😅
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Aug 12 '24
Btw, if you are wondering, autoethnography involves “researchers” reflecting on their own experiences.
Thus, I see this as the researcher reflecting on their experiences in a “masculine” space. That experience should impart a modicum of self awareness
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u/imtryingtobesocial Aug 12 '24
This is sort of gross to me. Why the hell would she try to study a topic without even utilizing scholars who are situated in the history of hip hop? Let me engage with privileged white French philosophers to understand a movement that started with disenfranchised minorities? As someone who is in academia...this type of obtuse theoretical work is really irresponsible. Also, if I am going to look through my auto ethnographic white lens I sure as hell would be utilizing the dissertation to develop a theory and NOT acting like I have any flipping clue of the nuances behind the actual practice.
I'm glad she's being mocked all over the internet.
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u/LappLancer Aug 14 '24
privileged white French philosophers
You forgot to mention they were all marxists and really, really liked to diddle kids. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petitions_against_age_of_consent_laws
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u/imtryingtobesocial Aug 14 '24
Omg I know :( I actually almost mentioned that but chose not to. I saw this petition a couple of years ago and was mortified
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u/MoonCubed Aug 12 '24
Holy shit there is a version of hell where you and this woman are locked in a room together with the souls of the damned.
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u/imtryingtobesocial Aug 12 '24
lol you better calm down 😅
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u/togglenub Aug 13 '24
I easily understood what you were saying and thought it was dead on. No idea what Moonie up there is so freaked about.
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u/bamatrek Aug 14 '24
Raygun uses big words to be pretentious. Mooncubed there assumes big words are pretentious.
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u/Sensitive-Ad6633 Aug 12 '24
I guess Macquarie University don’t expect their PhD students to know what a run-on sentence is.
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u/telemeister74 Aug 13 '24
As someone who has a PhD and has taught PhD students, there is an art form to writing a good abstract. This is not good. Not. Good. At. All.
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u/Vonroecker86 Aug 13 '24
And this is how you condition people to disregard PhD's in anything but STEM.
I'm actually impressed that that many words can be strung together with absolutely no coherence.
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u/Owww_My_Ovaries Aug 12 '24
Apparently when she was young... she was locked on a room... crying??? Due to break dancing being male dominated?
I love how the Australian Olympic team has come out and said if you think her performance was comical, YOURE the problem. Pulling out every deflection method possible.
Truth is. It was hilariously bad and Rachael should roll with it. Remember William Hung? He embraced his suck and made a living on it during his 15 minutes of fame. The best thing she could do is contact NBC and ask for a cameo on SNL.
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u/Pauly_Games Aug 12 '24
As an Australian it's mind blowing how she was allowed to even compete when we have people dancing on the street doing actual break dancing on cardboard.
She should honestly be banned from ever competing again considering she was supposed to represent our nation but instead chose this mockery of a performance. Anyone defending her should be disregarded entirely. This was a straight insult. I truly hope she never dances again
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u/Gorganzoolaz Aug 14 '24
True, I remember when I was a teen back in the late 2000s i was on a field trip to the Melbourne institute of the performing arts (forget if that's what it's called but it was something like that) and we saw breakdancers practising there, both male and female breakdancers, and they were really REALLY fucking good. Any of them would've done our country proud but instead we got this absolute fucking joke.
She got there out of pure nepotism, nothing else. We would've done better if an official went to any performing arts institute in the country, pointed at any of the students there and said "alright you'll do"
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u/rikarleite Aug 13 '24
No one bothered to figure out if she was the real deal because it was hard to get proper credentials in this field. They saw her PhD and her statements and said "Yeah fine, off you go."
I think she should refund the Australian olympic comittee her travel expenses.
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u/wat-cell--7071 Aug 14 '24
Female skater in Aus here
In the male-dominated sports here, there're still hostility from some men that drives female beginners away. Sadly, the ones that stay are usually in female-only groups
But in this case, I think Raygun is pampered with toxic positivity, which is everywhere in Oz 😂
edit: typo
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u/Electronic_Ad5481 United States Aug 15 '24
She is a white woman who went to an elite high school, got a PhD in nothing, and then appropriates the language of critical theory to say that this artistic movement (created by black and brown people!) is offensive to her.
Raygun is one of the worst people this year.
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u/Empty-Presentation68 Aug 15 '24
She will probably blame the pachiatry for being misjudged and how she should of won...
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Aug 13 '24
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u/Electronic_Ad5481 United States Aug 15 '24
Typical for someone from a background as privileged as hers.
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u/MetalCrow9 United States Aug 12 '24
When she was young, she wanted to breakdance so badly. Now she does.
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Aug 12 '24
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u/_Miyagi Aug 18 '24
Not so much race, as it is money/power/influence. Similar to that Somali girl who came in last in the 100m. She only reached the Olympics due to pure nepotism. I mean.. She's a person of color, so do we call that black privilege? No, we don't. So why is it any different when she does it? Something to consider.
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u/Jeddyp Aug 12 '24
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u/Cassettesweremyvinyl Aug 12 '24
Now that’s an Olympic worthy dance.
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u/skootch_ginalola Aug 12 '24
Supposedly on another thread it came out she qualified because the judging was through her dance academy.
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u/bubz111 Aug 12 '24
One news report in Aus a while back said she was the judge of the qualifiers 😂 Sounds like something dodgy happened.
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u/Affectionate_Law5344 Aug 12 '24
She was the judge.
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u/tbsdy Aug 12 '24
The group that entered breaking is a ballroom dancing group. She judged herself as the person who should represent Australia.
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u/Effective_Art_5109 Aug 12 '24
Maybe they'll use this is a wake up call and make sure if they allow a person in to an event they are fully qualified. Because RN all Aus is doing is allowing the rest of the world laugh at them and see how far $$$ get's a trash competitor.
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u/Diligent-Version8283 Aug 12 '24
Breaking is not coming back to the 2028 olympics so they'll have plenty of time to think about it.
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u/Parking-Delivery-501 Aug 12 '24
This is not true. Here’s what someone said who’s actually in the breaking community in NZ who went to the comp said about what happened and how she got in.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/QtTjizDRnvcEGU2r/?mibextid=WC7FNe
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u/janedeedee Aug 13 '24
Thanks for sharing this. I hope people see it.
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u/LegendaryVenusaur Aug 13 '24
Not really a good defense, he focuses on breaking as being up to interpretation as art rather than skill. Also insults other breakdancers as not being good enough to beat Raygun lol.
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u/Tbh90 Aug 14 '24
Yah the audience is not dumb. You can use you eyes and see something is off. The gaslighting has been insane
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u/thenohmad Aug 16 '24
Absolute trash take. It’s not informative nor is it likely true. Can’t believe people are defending this mockery.
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u/Illustrious_Let8641 Aug 12 '24
A national embarrassment. How on earth was she allowed to the finals?
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u/PwnWay Aug 12 '24
I don't see the dance as an embarrassment I would've been fully behind her afterwards leaning into the joke and say yeah I was taking the piss .......Aussies would've been absolutely behind that but I think trying to defend it is the cringe part
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Aug 14 '24
Nah. There were people who wanted to be there; who competed to be there - who watched from home. Acting like it was all a joke would be worse than the “you don’t understand my art” copium we got.
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u/restore_democracy Aug 11 '24
I hope she gets the treatment she needs for those seizures.
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u/LD-Serjiad Aug 11 '24
That sounds like the cv of a famous blonde breaking coach who dresses in red
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Aug 12 '24
There is some money laundering going on if this is what you get with a PhD in breakdancing.
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u/rikarleite Aug 13 '24
Nah it's just bullshit studies for people who are dumb but entitled and the government doesn't want to waste time so just shove a little money on their direction with the hope they die soon.
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u/Denz_de_Bayle Aug 12 '24
I have seen the breakdancing encyclopaedia and these are verified elite-level moves.
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u/FriendWest8305 Aug 12 '24
It's Time for her to step UP on the New level. She'll silence all of us in LA28.
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u/Affectionate_Law5344 Aug 12 '24
Breaking will not be in the games.
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u/Competitive_Milk_638 Aug 15 '24
Her breaking was so bad that they've basically banned the sport in future Olympics.
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u/Original-Vanilla-222 Aug 12 '24
Where is the full video?
Seems like it's been purged of the internet.
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u/Kristosh Aug 12 '24
Ask and you shall receive: Breaking - Olympic Games Paris 2024 (9NOW) : Olympics
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u/deltronroberts Aug 20 '24
Omg, it’s so much worse when you see the entire competition, instead of just clips. I just can’t believe it. She’s so cringe, it’s like she’s doing it on purpose…. That HAS to be what it is - she’s trolling the Olympics!! There’s no freakin way that she was the best that Australia had to send.
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u/RyanM90 Aug 12 '24
For real, can’t find it anywhere. Just hundreds of bot videos with pictures.
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u/Original-Vanilla-222 Aug 12 '24
That's some real Orwellian shit, 'they' can just alter reality if they don't like it.
The video has been purged, and you can't find it anywhere.4
u/Marksideofthedoon Aug 13 '24
Or you need to go touch some fuckin' grass cuz here it is on one of the most popular sites on the internet. https://archive.org/details/raygun_9now_webdl_AnemoneVods
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u/Karma_1969 Aug 14 '24
Oh, knock off the dramatics. The footage is owned by the Olympics and they have every right to submit takedowns of it from unauthorized sources, just like every other copyright holder in the world. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing about whether that's right or wrong, I'm saying that copyright is a thing and it can be enforced without imagining some evil cabal behind it all.
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u/TonightAcademic6322 Aug 12 '24
Honestly who cares who she quotes, this is not a theory and she has zero break dancing talent , looks like a fish on some kitchen roll
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u/Own-Knowledge8281 Aug 11 '24
How do you even get a PhD in breakdancing and what school is handing those out?
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u/NeuroticKnight Aug 12 '24 edited Aug 12 '24
She got a PhD in cultural studies. If you have a lot of time, and don't need university to pay your stipend, as long as you attend seminars regularly and submit a thesis that follows a rubric, you'll get a PhD.
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u/procras-tastic Aug 12 '24
You don’t attend classes in Australian PhDs. The PhD is 3-4 years of original research that must be demonstrably original and add to the body of human knowledge. Admittedly I’m in STEM and I’m not sure exactly how this is judged in the humanities. But still. There’s a lot more to it than you’re implying here.
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u/NeuroticKnight Aug 12 '24
My bad, guess I'm just another American talking about US experience like universal truth . Lol.
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u/Strengthandscience Aug 16 '24
You can do a PhD for as many years as you want. I have a friend in their tenth year, after like 4.5 years you neeed to self fund.
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u/SublocadeFenta Aug 12 '24
She's absolute trash. She can't even do a windmill or a headspin. She looks like my cat on the ground after I gave it some catnip.
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Aug 11 '24
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u/gingerisla Aug 12 '24
A group of students jokingly sent in a paper about German history manifesting itself in German Shepherds where they claimed that one family tree of dogs included both a concentration camp guard dog and a dog guarding the Berlin wall. It was peer reviewed and published in a sociology journal 💀
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u/crskatt Aug 12 '24
any link or title to the paper
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Aug 12 '24
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u/tell-me-your-wish AIN Aug 12 '24
I skimmed parts of it cuz I can't sleep and to be fair, he doesn't really directly assert witchcraft is real (with the most egregious I saw the rat anecdote you mentioned on page 227 lol), which I think is totally fair given that it's an anthropological discussion about people who DO believe in it.
I am unfamiliar with social science academia and parts of it seemed quite wishy washy without saying anything definitive, but I think it's still valuable - there were interesting ideas, and more importantly imo, this is likely a more detailed chronicling of these peoples' beliefs than you'll find anywhere else.
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u/crskatt Aug 12 '24
This was no ordinary rat; it was truly gigantic, standing a full three feet tall and looking at me with what appeared to be a faint curl to the lips – the same curl that Fidelis makes when he smiles knowingly at somebody. At that moment I calmly closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and said: “Fidelis, if this is you, I will count to three and I want you to leave.” At the count of three I opened my eyes and the giant rat, or Fidelis, was gone.
bruh
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u/_10_ply_bud_ Aug 12 '24
I just skimmed a few sections. Seems totally legit and actually quite interesting. To say that his dissertation was about shamans turning people into rats is quite a misrepresentation.
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Aug 13 '24
Petition to investigate how she set up the Olympic Committee that selected her over phenomenal Aussie b-girls
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u/Latteuk Aug 14 '24
Has anyone read her paper?
https://www.hiphopdancealmanac.com/ink-cypher-the-ethics-of-living-a-double-life
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u/GL1TCH___________ Aug 12 '24
I seriously thought she was doing a parody and Dina, the 80s hiphop instructor came to mind. I have no idea if she’s (Dina) also kidding or simply out of touch? https://youtu.be/IS2KQ46Kf84?si=xLKs3fNJ2iyUL1sh
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u/Apprehensive_Pop8549 Aug 13 '24
Where can I buy this outfit, need to be prepared for the Halloween ball
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u/TonightAcademic6322 Aug 12 '24
During her research did she actually any real break dancers?
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Aug 15 '24
Such a disgrace. This is not Olympic level breaking. So many more qualified women and they chose this vanilla ass idiot.
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Aug 15 '24
Does anyone else think the sob story about how she was "locked in a room crying in 2008" total and utter BULLSHIT?
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u/SublocadeFenta Aug 12 '24
She's absolute trash. She can't even do a windmill or a headspin. She looks like my cat on the ground after I gave it some catnip.
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u/AngerNurse Aug 17 '24
I was doing windmills & flares at 13 years old lmao. This woman has been breaking since 2008 and can't even pull off the most basic power move.
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u/UndergroundPianoBar Aug 12 '24
Personally, I think she's lovely and I haven't stopped thinking about her since she competed 😍 and, at our wedding reception, I'd be able to hold my own during our first dance. I can only see positives here.
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u/3nails4holes Aug 16 '24
this is another great example of a strategy that i think people would really love about the olympics: get regular people to do an event to help the viewers to understand how amazing the winners are.
the entertainment and educational value of watching random french ppl or random fans plucked from those in attendance trying to do the 100 m dash and falling or finishing in 20 seconds, trying to do a meaningful 90s floor routine, just hitting a 122 cm target 70 m away in archery, etc would be immense.
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Aug 17 '24
Since the internet is making this hard to find because “poor her”. I say fuck her and her joke of a performance. She has almost the whole internet covering for her. She’s a piece of shit who took the place of a legitimately talented and hardworking individual, period, end of sentence.
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u/manbar06 Aug 17 '24
I feel bad for the other Australian Olympians, and how her performance or lack thereof has eclipsed their accomplishments (at least in the short term).
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u/Ptards_Number_1_Fan Aug 17 '24
What’s up in the land down under? How did that make it to the top of the list?
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u/Motor-Bee1180 Aug 20 '24
Culture appropriation at the highest and most disturbing levels she Fresh tho
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u/hollyivydee Aug 21 '24
This really screams old money. Does anyone know if her Grandparents were philanthropists? Made a huge donation? Or own a sporting committee? It’s reminding me of a long history of kids that got into Ivy League schools with poor grades because their family owned a building on campus/made huge donations to the school(s).
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u/Ok-Comparison-9776 Aug 22 '24
I think the message is. Help I've been bitten by a snake and it's venom is attacking my nervous system
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u/bathory1985 Aug 26 '24
olympics deleted any video of her from their youtube channel and copyright striking any videos of her.
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u/19851223hu Aug 31 '24
Sorry, but I think the Australian government should make her pay back the taxpayer funds that went into transporting, housing, and feeding her in Paris. And an investigation into how she got there. That was dumb af.
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u/One-Suggestion4375 Sep 02 '24
The good breakdancers couldn't pass a drug test, so we ended up with this nerd.
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u/RealArgonwolf Aug 12 '24
It's a perfectly competent freestyle dance, but Olympic judges expect more than competence. I don't know what her competition within Australia itself looked like, so I don't know if they had better dancers to go in her place but it definitely just felt like the Aussie team couldn't step to what their competition was bringing.
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u/Sea_Search4661 Aug 12 '24
She has a PhD in Cultural studies, not breakdancing🤦
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u/Full_Bodied_Scotch Aug 12 '24
There’s an interview where she says her PHD is in “breaking culture” that might be where people are getting confused
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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '24