Celebrating mediocrity

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She's even inspired Koshitan.

Yep, she's definitely part of the cultural landscape for now.

I can see why. Her performance was just so bizarre. Both terrible and kind of heartwarming for its weirdness and apparent enjoyment. But I can also see how people are incensed that she was chosen to compete in the first place when there were pretty clearly much better choices that could have been made.

She's beginning to wear me down with her resilience to global outrage.

I read an article saying that she was very upset and was taking time off from the internet.

Nah, if you read what I posted she's taking maximum advantage of her celebrity status. She's the Eminem of breakdancing.

They're not celebrating mediocrity. They're trying to capitalize on notoriety. Raygun is merely the meme-of-the-moment.

Well technically its both, but WP Subject headings have a character limit so I could only fit one.

Which would have in no way prevented you from addressing it in your original post, or in any post since then, before I bought it up. Also for lulz, I decided to see if "Celebrating mediocrity or capitalizing on notoriety?" would fit in a subject heading, and amazingly it did!

Cool story tho

Point is, you can't really say they're celebrating mediocrity, if it's not the mediocrity that's driving the transaction, but rather the fame - or infamy, as it were.

It's also worth mention that if you're good enough to get into the olymipcs, you're probably better than most people already. Olympic-level mediocrity may not be worthy of celebration on the olympic level, but they're still pretty damn good compared to most people. An average expert is still an expert, and the worst professional is still leaps and bounds beyond the best amateur.

Yeah, her current world ranking at number 1 means she is recognised by international breakdancing associations as the best. I guess she has the last laugh.

Sorta my point. It's not like she's just some rando dancing lady that wandered in off the street. She has suitable credentials in all the right places. Credentials you don't typically get by being mediocre. IIRC she was also something like "Best B-Girl in AUS" or something, a couple years back.

Performing at a high level is already really stressful, and even pro's flop sometimes. The one time most people got to see Raygun, it happened to be a performance of arguable quality. That set the tone for what people thought of her, having never seen her before. Regardless of how she may have scored at the olympics, you can't really call her "mediocre" or "average" in the grand scheme of things. "Average" doesn't get picked for the olympics. Who knows? Maybe she got too clever for her own good? Maybe she got nervous and couldn't execute on point? Maybe she has already explained everything, and I just didn't read about it yet.

So I still can't really call it celebrating mediocrity. At most, perhaps celebrating absurdity, and at worst, capitalizing on meme-fame. Even the worst person to enter the olympics, still got picked for the olympics. That in itself tends to preclude "mediocrity".

Yes this was what I was asking, what was the qualification process. I have since seen a video of her dancing in regional Oceania championship (Asia-Pacific). And she was much better > Olympics. Perhaps being in front of millions of viewers might have freaked her out.

It's an established phenomenon that anxiety / panic / fear of any sort can redirect the functioning of the brain, and make it more "in-the-moment", at the expense of memory recall. It's why test-anxiety makes people forget things they actually know fairly well, once they're put under pressure. Even if she's used to competing on a national level, it's still not the same level of audience as being literally AT the olympics, while international news cameras broadcast to the rest of the world - not to mention knowing you represent your entire country in some way.

I too wondered about the qualification process - that's why I went and found footage of the competition that awarded her the spot. Notable key points: She was much better than she was at the olympics, she was much better than her competition, and it was a muuuuuuuuuuuuuch smaller venue.

People who've never performed for an audience wouldn't know just how nerve-wracking it can actually be - and that there is still a difference between performing in front of 100 people, 1000 people, and 100,000 people (or the 500,000+ that attended the olympics, plus the millions of TV viewers).

So! Since we've determined that she is not in fact "mediocre", she merely had a "bad day" as it were, this cannot be a celebration of mediocrity - though it may be (mistakenly) construed as such, if the observer knows not the full scope of the story, such as her actual history and ability as a dancer, or what it takes to even make it to the olympics in the first place.

But her performance in Paris 2024 Olympics is what will define her though. You and I had to conduct research to find evidence she is > average in terms of the artform. Sure, If she has spent her life studying breakdance then she knows the skills inside and out and has been able to practice those skills over time.

Maybe a litmus test is to compare raygun to Simone Biles. Biles is obviously talented. she had trained much less than raygun (who is 37 and has had 2 decades behind her as a B-girl) before performing in her first Olympics. I suspect raygun is a fan of breakdance and is technically trained. But if she was talented, then that should have showed when she performed (she has performed before judges before in regional championships). So does she have natural talent for breakdance? I suspect not. But that's not her fault. And she did qualify for the Olympics so she hasn't done anything wrong.

If we're going to compare skills, then lets be clear about what skill we're comparing. Performing (in any way) in front of a crowd is also a skill - learning to deal with the stress and anxiety that comes with suddenly being in front of a huge crowd, all staring directly at you personally.

The idea that if you're a seasoned expert who's trained for ages, you should be able to perform under a level of stress that you're unaccustomed to, is not really true. It's one thing if you practice one move over and over for 10 years, and only practice that move, so when the time comes, you can do that move in your sleep - but dancing is dynamic, and not set in stone - unlike a band who performs the same song the same time every time, breakers not only change from show to show, but from round to round, and often make up patterns on the fly, depending on what their opponent did.

It's similar to how someone can be good at writing jokes in advance for a routine, and reciting them onstage in sequence, but still might be awful at being able to improvise.

It's also possible that Simone performs more regularly, and in front of much larger crowds more regularly. By comparison, the entire landmass of AUS has fewer people than the single state of California. Additionally, Maybe Raygun isn't used to such large crowds and such high stakes combined together.

That's one of the many reasons martial artists spar - it doesn't matter how many times you've practiced a strike, or how perfect you have the form - if you've never had to do it under pressure, like while a fist is actively flying at your face, you still have a high chance to freeze up and choke.

Some people get so nervous under pressure they'd forget their own name - until they develop their ability to remain calm in front of others. Scale matters - just cos you're used to playing clarinet in front of a bunch of parents at a school recital, doesn't mean you're equally adept and capable performing at Madison Square Garden in front of 19,000 people.

*Edited because my brain transposed Simone Biles and Serena Williams in the "pro athlete" folder in my memory. The principle still stands. Biles as well has been performing in much larger venues, for a much longer time. Key point, she has been to the olympics several times before, whereas this was Raygun's first foray into that fray. And even then, Biles has made some mistakes and slips in her performances over the years.

Last edited by uncommondenominator on 11 Sep 2024, 11:10 pm, edited 3 times in total.

^Are you under the impression that Simone Biles is a tennis player? She is the best gymnast in the world.