Morons of the Internet: The Guardian and MMA

This is the segment where I scour my favourite forums around the internet and find some particularly interesting articles about current affairs told in the words of my favourite human beings.

In this edition we once again find out what meaningless thing The Guardian is selectively hating and then shoehorning into their narrow minded worldview. Mixed martial arts is all the rage at the moment, so let's see how The Guardian can compare this to people with viewpoints that oppose theirs.
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/mar/26/ultimate-fighting-championship-fight-of-our-lives-mma-donald-trump-vladimir-putin-conor-mcregor
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/28/its-easy-to-be-seduced-by-ufc-but-violence-will-grow-from-legitimising-the-cage
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The entertainment people choose to watch certainly does tell us about the world we live in, but then so do the appearances of shit articles in allegedly sophisticated news publications. Turns out that even if you know fuck all about the subject matter you can still write an article about it for The Guardian. I'm not going to bother analysing this observers poor description of goings on, as he even admits he has no fucking clue what's going on, but still decides to write a piece on it anyway which I will happily tear to shreds. This ignorance shown towards mixed martial arts translates into his shoddy analysis, but even that is nothing compared to the fundamentally stupid argument underpinning this whole piece. These two paragraphs perfectly sum up this mess of an article. Never have I ever read so much waffle that means absolutely nothing to anyone. 'An emphasis on binary, zero sum worlds'. Just what the fuck are you talking about? How is that different from any other sporting event? It's called sporting competition you fucking idiot. How from this evidence a cultural shift can be observed is equally bemusing. Surely this man must be aware that the UFC is merely one of many combat franchises that has existed for millennia, ranging from the bare knuckle pits of Victorian Britain to the gladiatorial arenas of Ancient Rome. How then has combat sports only now become a cultural revolution? It's not Donald Trump's fault that the Romans loved a good lion decapitation. Neither is it bullish for the president of the UFC to defend his company. Meryl Streep essentially just insulted his child so of course he's going to fight back. But more importantly, what the fuck has any of this got to do with mixed martial arts?

Ugh, I can just imagine your predicament watching these low life scum enjoy themselves. That alone should indicate that nothing is right about this sport. Of course being The Guardian the points raised here are then somehow linked to some random buzzword; in this case it's a crisis of masculinity. Where the fuck did that come from? Even more bizarre is how the UFC can be a spectacle of traditional gender roles, when the writer himself declared that female fighters have a main event role in this supposedly masculine organisation. And why would this apparently masculine sport be gaining so much traction if masculinity is in crisis? Was masculinity also in crisis during the 1970's when boxing was going through a boom period? Amusingly this big claim is backed up by famous academic Grayson Perry. Oh no wait sorry, he's not an academic, or even a mixed martial arts fan, rather an artist famous for designing a house and some vases. Please tell me I don't need to debunk this point for you. I just wish this writer would stop trying to force his gender issues into everything he dislikes in order to devalue it, because he just ends up looking like a condescending ass.

Just a friendly reminder that the idea of male on male competition is sexual selection rather than a Darwinian mechanism that you're referring to here. Natural selection and sexual selection are actually in conflict with each other, and minismising the carnage is one frequency dependent strategy that very poorly describes the various mating strategies in humans. Anyhow once you're past this meaningless point about evolution you get to another meaningless point about the novel 'Fight Club'. I certainly can't complain about this writer not sticking to the point. Then politics is brought up out of nowhere despite the fact this writer has no evidence that the so called 'alt-right' are the primary target of the UFC. Donald Trump then makes an appearance thanks to allegations of sexual assault and beauty pageants. That's sexual assault and beauty pageants, not mixed martial arts. It's a well known fact that Donald Trump has promoted multiple MMA events, but why does that make it an inherently evil or masculine thing? And more importantly, why does this writer think he can link every horror in the world to mixed martial arts? See I can also bring in my own literary references, except mine might actually be somewhat relevant. I personally feel this article should be aligned to the 1946 essay 'Politics and the English Language' by George Orwell. In this essay Orwell describes how political language is often purposely unclear to hide the truth, rather than express it. In short all the pointless ramblings in this article are really just a poor excuse to display a personal narrative that exemplifies its points with sources shoehorned into the argument.

Surprisingly this is not the only time The Guardian has thrown a hissy fit over MMA. Hell they've even published articles calling for the sport to be banned:

Well at least this article actually has a reason for shitting on the sport rather than just personal hatred. The central argument here is that studies show mixed martial arts has the same risks of brain damage as boxing. I don't know why that constitutes a ban of MMA and not boxing, or the majority of combat sports that cause serious injuries for that matter, but once again this article looks to be turning into a crusade against a disliked topic. How disappointing. I just love how despite never stepping into a cage before, or even providing supposedly overwhelming evidence, this writer thinks he has the intellectual superiority to start dictating whether fighters should be allowed to follow their passion. Get down from your high horse and maybe only start commenting on subjects when you actually have coherent points to make, otherwise you just look like an idiot.

Oh my mistake it turns out that instead of a serious argument we have a noble hero in our midst, battling against the horrors that mixed martial arts is inflicting upon the children. If this is propaganda then I highly suggest hiring more persuasive writing staff next time. I also don't understand the free speech comparison. Free speech isn't a consumer product, it's a universal right, and not something you can choose to partake in. There are plenty of limits to ensure people's safety in the sport; they're called rules. This comparison gets worse when you consider that MMA is a rapidly growing sport in Australia, which wouldn't make sense if people were unable to tolerate it. Of course the poor metaphors and ludicrous points are just an excuse to go on a witch hunt. I don't know why I'm supposed to take this article seriously when it states mixed martial arts causes violence by citing a brawl between fans at a single event, who may I add have absolutely no bearing on the safety of the fighters. In my funny little world I've always noticed that football also causes brawls, in fact here in Britain this idea of crowd violence has a whole culture built around it. So tell me, why aren't we trying to ban football as well? None of the points this writer has made so far are exclusive to mixed martial arts, and are actually incredibly common in the majority of sporting disciplines, so where's the issue? At some point this guy is going to have to admit that this is about him trying to dictate his selfish personal preferences on society rather than a supposedly noble crusade to reduce sporting injuries.

What I fucking cannot stand about both these article is the snobbish sense of superiority. I'm sorry I'm one of these people that like watching grown men beating the shit out of each other. I don't like cricket or ballet, where I would like to add injuries occur too, but I don't go around writing condescending articles that seriously go about insulting a whole group of fans, even going to the extent of calling for the sport to be banned. I reckon I could write an article in no time at all calling for a sport to be banned in the moronic style of these Guardian writers. In fact here we go:

'Cricket is a sport largely engrained in British culture, and despite knowing absolutely nothing about it I've decided I feel entitled to generalise a whole sport based around my personal demons. The real problem with cricket can be exemplified by it's influence throughout the world that was once colonised by the British Empire. There's a clear colonialist narrative surrounding the whole sport, that reminds me of similar themes presented in Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'. In this masterful work an ivory camp is subjected to a cruel imperialistic regime that one would also find engrained in the cricket playing masses of the 19th century. It's therefore obvious that cricket has been dictated to the oppressed masses by the patriarchal British regime, and should therefore be banned today because even if you're not convinced by my pathetic argument that it's clearly racist, some people might have the chance of getting hurt. The horror, the horror.' Shit, I might have just got a job with The Guardian.
 
To conclude it's absolutely fine to dislike the culture surrounding a certain sport, in fact I don't particularly like the mixed martial arts culture to be honest, but that doesn't excuse these pathetic pleas to a ban a source of excitement for a great many people. Maybe instead of smearing your shit filled morals across the internet you could instead try and understand why people such as myself enjoy this sport, but no, because myself and this group of primitive pondlife can't hold a candle to your objectively better taste in sport. It's then another thing to start using this respectable sport as a symbol for everything wrong in the world. If you don't like it then fine. I don't like journalism in The Guardian, but I would never do something as idiotic as attempting to ban things I hate. Grow up and stop using your platform to whinge about trivial issues that you know fuck all about.