Message Board Chi Sao
Rene Ritchie, January 20th, 2008
There’s an internet cliche which goes something like:
Reasonable person + internet (access + anonymity) = @$$hole. Of course, non-anonymous posters can get into it just as much, and some can remain reasonable, but in broad strokes there does seem that intelligent discourse on the internet rapidly devolves into something close in kin to “OMG!!111 u are the sux” or “In ur dojo making fight challengz”
There are difficulties, of course. We aren’t really talking face to face on the internet. An 11 year old who never trained a day can easily argue with a 50+ sifu, and its sometimes hard for bystanders to tell who is who, and easy for various trolls (those who deliberately try to cause arguments by making inflammatory postings) and minions (those who don’t know anything themselves but believe and do as their told by their troll master(s)) to make the difficult impossible.
What can a reasonable Wing Chun Kuen person do? Someone who just wants to get better?
Understand that discussion is like Chi Sao. We already know what we know, so discussion becomes a tool for testing our knowledge and finding out what we don’t know. Every time we discuss and come across a new idea we can evaluate it and it will either re-affirm our previous knowledge or add something we hadn’t considered before. But that’s the important part: the consideration. Discussion makes us think much in the way Chi Sao makes us move.
We put out a hand. If it hits, great. If it doesn’t, we change it until it strikes the target.
We put out an idea. If it holds up, great. If it doesn’t, we adapt it until it makes sense again.
Likewise, we can map the forms themselves to discussion.
Those who know what they know (and more importantly: what they don’t) can be steady and stable like Siu Lien Tao. They can relax in their horse and exchange in a calm, considered manner. Straight talk. “How do you do this?” “I do it like this. And you?”
Those who don’t know as much but don’t want to show it might be more like Chum Kiu: changing angles and charging in, trying to break the bridge of one topic and create another, more advantageous and suited to their comfort level. Counter talk. “How do you do A?” “I prefer B.”
Those who know little but think they know it all quickly do into full on Biu Jee recovery mode, overturning the entire conversation with pointed attacks and darting insults. Anything to derail real exchange. Crazy talk. “How do you do A?” “You’re an @$$hat!” (or more sneakily: “how dare you call my sifu an @$$hat!”)
How do we handle each of these? Discuss as much as possible with the first group. Encourage those in the second group and nurture them towards the first. Avoid the third group entirely. (They’ll come to their senses eventually and Karma will rapidly restore balance by making them deal with the next batch of trolls…)
How do we deal with this Rene? Well, my first suggestion would be ‘it’s up to you!’
Truth be known, this is your site and forum (correct me if I’m wrong) so you personally must feel a little responsible yourself, no? What generation of user are you in now? I had avoided forums for so long because of some of the reasons you highlight, and even now I still don’t really know what I’m doing here or what to expect from being here!?
Forums are a great opportunity to meet without meeting, fight without fighting! Let’s just hope the ‘elders’ of each forum see sense and steer all us newbies in the right direction…
The Open Source community generally (read: GENERALLY) fares better, where the common goal is towards a better product. In WC discussions, different people and organizations have different agendas or motives. There is nothing wrong with that. However, we shouldn’t be surprised when conflict and boundaries rise up. Sometimes I forget and get frustrated. Now I’m happy now to meet other practitioners in person so I can get a chance to fix my misunderstandings, maybe improve my crappy Wing Chun and start a friendship.
After all these years, I personally don’t think Wing Chun can be improved by internet discourse. The internet can only give you access to other ideas and help forge friendships by offering more opportunities for people to get together and work it out. Just my 2 rupees.
@TiFei:
I’m in the cyber old age home. I’ve been on the ‘net for a loooooong time, including an early stint as a mod on Compuserve’s Internet New Users Forum (during the release of Win95, fun times!) and various other forums. One time, we had a forum member accuse another forum member of a very serious personal assault, which that member vehemently denied. Compuserve didn’t know how to handle it. Various other forum members took sides. The place became miserable. However, it turned out the two forum members lived on completely different continents and had never crossed paths.
That informed a lot of my later moderation when online. The ‘net can be a phenomenal learning tool or an incredible waste of time and energy. I gravitate to the former and do my best to ignore the latter (I also find that if you stay calm, rational, and a little uncertain in the face of trolling, ranting, and o’erwhelming pride, it just drives the trolls nuts and restores a little karmic wonder to the world).
@marcusp:
I’m currently smitten with the Apple model: rock-solid FOSS foundation with lick-able proprietary innovation painted on top.
Like the 6th patriarch, I believe in instant enlightenment (even when those enlightenments are tiny in my case!), from but a snippet of verse. The ‘net is a huge (sometimes festering) heap of verse that can be mind-numbingly frustrating to sort through, but every once and a while I stumble (almost blindly, no doubt) over that snippet of verse and get that (almost narcotic, I admit) AHA! moment that makes me keep digging just a little while longer…
Well done RR!
Having had many a slanderous comment thrown against me, I can also say that often the person making the attack has vilified me - made me out to be something non-human, or a person with evil intentions. All of this stems from the mind of the person making these attacks - their delusions of greed, jealousy, anger, hatred, stupidity and ignorance.
I often read distorted gossip and stories and laugh! Many of them are not true or maybe just have a grain of truth in them, but have become so distorted that they’re laughable.
I’m sure we all do it to some degree, talks of you and Meghan Fox, or John C. and Jessica Alba, all have us clicking our tongues in envy!
BTW, all rumors of me and Jessica Biel are entirely true.
[...] message board Chi Sao, as we already discussed, when someone has no structure, when there is no truth, fact, or first hand knowledge behind their [...]
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