In Defense of B-girl RayGun.

This post is about B-Girl Raygun and the Olympics. It has nothing to do with business and there's no "and this is how you can improve your SAAS sales" takeaway. It's something that's important to me and given me so much in my youth. It's worth talking about it because I think most people's take come from ignorance.

Some qualifying statements. I’m not just a random guy on LinkedIn with an opinion about breakdancing. I breakdanced competitively from age 13 to 21 under the name B-Boy Jinxta. You won’t find any videos of me because back then, no one even had cell phones.

I was lucky to be a part of two breakdancing teams (we call them Crews), one named Kurupt and the other named Battle Monkeys. Battle Monkeys formed a team with another crew named Full Force, which eventually became Super Cr3w. Super Cr3w won Season 2 of America’s Best Dance Crew. My team has a pedigree you would not believe: one guy won Star Search twice, multi

ple team trophies, and some of the guys are performing regularly in Vegas with the Jabbawockees.

Link of the team winning.

My team mate winning Star Search

My teammates crushing a battle

I won’t repeat the whole B-Girl Raygun story since it’s gone completely viral on the internet. It’s sadly the most talked-about story from the Olympics.

According to BTW (the best story popularity tracker I know of), it was the 8th most talked-about story in America. For reference, the passing of Susan Wojcicki was 5th.

In summary, Australia sent a female breakdancer who performed so poorly that it caused a huge upset on the internet. People connected her academic background with “being privileged” and also culturally appropriating Hip Hop culture.

I’m going to list the most comments made about her and give you my “professional breakdancer take" on them.

1. “She’s horrible and a disgrace to breakdancing. She must have gotten there because she’s a connected to the organization.”

Her performance and overall skill level (I reviewed multiple videos) are poor. That’s an objective statement when I compare her capabilities against well-known B-Girls worldwide. That being said, I have not actually found one in Australia who is significantly better than her.

“These people should have been there, not her!” Of the ones I’ve seen, I can say “professionally” it’s pretty close. If you have any examples, I’d be more than happy to watch them. Here are some of the examples people have been posting.

2. “Academics that teach topics can’t actually perform well.”

I have my own opinions about this, but in this case, I don’t see why that’s brought up. I think that’s an unnecessary personal attack. If that somehow gave her an unfair backdoor advantage, then yes, it would be relevant, but I’ve seen no evidence of that.

3. “Her outfit is insulting. It’s not the traditional ‘breakdancer look.’ She looks like a park ranger.”

Generally speaking, breakdancers are young and on the fringe. There are many outfits that are much stranger than hers. There’s a well-known B-boy named “The Cure” from the 2000s who dressed like Robert Smith and totally crushed it. Breakdancing has gone through multiple fashion phases; we stopped dressing in tracksuits and backward caps a long time ago. Since the 2000s, the fashion sense has evolved from tracksuits to goth wear. In summary, breakdancers dress in a way that helps tell their “dance story.”

Mike, The Cure

4. “Her style is more of a mockery.”

In breakdancing, most competitors fall into two camps: Power Heads, who do the insane aerial moves, and “Stylez,” who focus on toprock (the initial dance before you execute your set), footwork, and freezes. Of course, it’s gray, and individuals blur the lines. Power moves are judged on difficulty and execution, while style is judged on originality and cleanliness. Both are judged on the general flow of the set. Regarding Raygun, she chose to lean towards Stylez. Here, I have to agree: her sets were of poor quality. They lacked originality, cleanliness, and any flow. But yes, 99.99% of people who compete in any sport aren’t worthy of any medals. This includes any Olympian in any sport.

Example of Power Heads

Example of Stylez

Summary

1. Being capable at any sport an at Olympic level is near impossible. The people who do it are superhuman.
2. There are outliers cases where a sport is less popular, the bar is much lower, and some cases people do make it to the olympics.
3. B-Girl Raygun is not a stronger performer in any sense. But she certainly didn't do anything wrong and does not deserve the amount of hate going around.
4. I've found no evidence of unfairness on how she made it to the OIympics.
5. I just really wanted to share a bunch of break dancing videos on Linkedin.