So, I just rejoined after being dormant for like, a decade. Are the old school Bullshido investigations still a thing? I’m trying to catch up here…
No. They never really recovered. Lack of integrity + a lot of Dunning Krueger. It sucks. Bullshido had promise as an OSINT team, but the best we have is now W Rabbit showing up to cases well after the fact.
Or maybe I was there and gone before anybody knew it.
I am a one man Mechanized Attack Squad.
My personal opinion is that it’s far too dangerous and costly, in 2021, to engage publicly in the sort of mission Bullshido was previously engaged with.
First, martial arts frauds for the most part are broke ass drama queens with no real resources. Frank Dux, Radford Davis, Carter Hargrave…aside from a few unfortunate collateral casualties these guys are worthless and weak. But that doesn’t quite apply to the broader scale of things the New Bullshido is after, which includes entire nation states (which have unlimited resources compared to this crew). Cults??? Nobody here wants to get on their list, trust me.
Second, it’s just safer for everyone involved. For a long time Bullshido heralded outting yourself as much as possible so that you could be scrutinized, otherwise you were to STFU and sit and learn from the elders. Things have changed, people are getting doxed and murdered online. Anonymity, as much as I hate to admit it, is sometimes a necessity. Again, I’ll point to the few unfortunate souls left on BS who have been directly targeted by investigation subjects, often to their own cost and peril.
So rather than a CSI: Bullshido the forum is better off returning to its McDojo.com roots, imho. Put it all out there, but in an indirect and impartial manner, without EVER directly interacting with subjects. That’s for people with badges, not social media.
Just my .02
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I see your points, but some of this doesn’t make sense to me. When I did an investigation back in the day, it was nearly completely online. I emailed the party in question, then followed up on his claims, then called it out as bullshit. His nascent school never took off after that, since anyone that searched his name would see the investigation (at that time, at least). Does it have to be more than that?
I imagine, at least in the martial arts bullshit world, there is still a very safe way to test claims. Someone goes to take a class with individual, notes their claims, investigate said claims, report results, rinse, repeat. If the person in question wants to dispute the claims, they can do so on the forums, just like before. I don’t see how the investigators identities are relevant, other than allowing for the accused to doxx and attempt character assassination. All that matters is the evidence, not the person collecting it. Am I missing something?
There’s a fine line between investigation and witch hunt. As we have hurdled the line of training BS, along with most of the martial arts community, our mission has shifted to BS in anything. Sciences, politics, etc.
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If you want to investigate shit, investigate it. This is and has always been a grass-roots effort.
Bullshido’s staff aren’t here to operate a detective agency, they’re here to operate forums that allow anyone who wants to be an independent Investigator, to have a platform.
Personally, I don’t give a shit about the bullshit in the martial arts anymore, but a lot of people here do, so if you want something done about it, do something about it.
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Right. I don’t need anyone’s permission to do shit, I just noticed that there isn’t a section for investigations anymore. Don’t want to run afoul of any “witch-hunt” rules I’m not aware of either.
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No worries, just do good shit because it needs to be done and we’ll all sort out the rest.
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There is a very fine line between what I would call a “strategic cyber identity” and an investigator’s real identity. They are separate yet connected, forever, and that comes with risks.
One of the best people I ever met on Bullshido, someone who changed my whole life really and suddenly, had his “online” persona here and elsewhere effectively black flagged by anonymous actors who made a series of shitty backyard wrestling Youtube videos with fake captions tagged with his name. Damage done, he left behind forums like these forever. Ever since then he’s been forced to stay 100% in the real world. His happy fun cartoon days are done, and I for one lament this.
What worth is it, really, to fight that fight? It would not be the first time, or the last either.
The chilling effect is palpable because quite frankly, people are just as willing to trust bullshit online as anything anti-bullshit. SO the crusade mentality must be dropped, that now belongs to QAnon morons.
To succeed now it’s all about being more like librarians (that can choke people out and smash faces when provoked).
In the real world, people have the right to face their accuser.
We have seen dozens of “investigations,” which are really just grudges and/or purposeful smears. If there’s a real component to the complaint, and it’s demonstrated, we 100% support it being public knowledge. Bring it on.
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That’s why I’ve stuck around here for so long. Whilst we all fall into outright arguments on here sometimes, it’s a fair fight and people will be held accountable for what they say.
Unlike social media, specifically Twitter which is in effect one great witch-hunt. Faceless nobodies collectively ruining strangers’ lives with zero accountability.
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I disagree. Literally no one waa held accountable for the Vinny Souza smear job.
I disagree. Using the same Q tactics against them with the ability to rationally think gives us the advantage in some very significant ways. Why would I be concerned about a separate persona, specifically for investigation, getting black flagged? That’s exactly how Q works. Hell, that’s how secret shoppers have worked some time immemorial. I like to think of martial arts bullshit hunting as consumer rights advocacy, when you get down to it. An anonymous investigation of a martial arts “master” with well cited research is damaging beyond repair for them. Bullshidoka don’t have the advantage of being anonymous…they must operate in the real world in order to spread their bullshit to their students. I see this as one of the remaining bastions of calling out con-artists IRL, because you can’t be a bullshido master completely online.
I’m all for changing tactics to respond to new threats, but ceding ground to the Q mentality is not something I am wont to do. Especially given we have the same tools at our disposal. I guess I’m just not following the logic. And I’m finding it a little strange that there seem to be so few people focused on specifically bullshido anymore…what happened over the past ten years here that people stopped? Did the general pervasiveness of conspiracy culture eclipse focusing on the martial arts community, or were there specific events that I’m not aware of? Or did everyone just get bored and said “fuck it?”
In the American criminal justice system people have the right to face their accuser. And that is because a defendant is making a direct accusation. That is not the same as someone making a claim on their background and having an investigator say “that’s bullshit, here is why.” In the court of public opinion there is no such requirement, and I don’t think there should be, especially given the concerns about doxxing and retaliation. If you need the identity of your accuser to defend yourself, you are merely interested in character assassination or fallacy, not addressing evidence. Again, this concept is more akin to an anonymous food reviewer, not a murder trial.
To think of it another way: They are the ones making an initial claim. Some SEAL wannabe claims service, yet provides no evidence or fraudulent evidence. They didn’t prove their claim, therefore they leave themselves open to that claim being tested by others. The identity of the others is completely irrelevant, as they themselves made the original claim.
I disagree. Yes, the 6th Amendment deals directly with criminal charges brought by the government, but the accuser in that case is ALWAYS going to be the government. Kinda lacks any teeth, in that regard. If I say you’re a filthy poodle-diddler, you should be able to see me as the person that says you’re a filthy poodle-diddler, and not have it just be rumors in the press from unnamed/anonymous sources.
Yes, but that’s not the kind of accusation we’re discussing. And I’m also not talking about making unfounded accusations or spreading rumors. That’s strawmanning my point. I’m talking about someone making a claim and then having it tested, and results of that test being publicized. This is not the same as someone accusing another of an action taken against them. If someone says they are a Kung Fu Master trained by X in Y, then investigating the veracity of that claim and reporting the results has absolutely nothing to do with an “accuser.” There is no moral or ethical concern with anonymously calling bullshit on someone’s claims. That’s how bullshido investigations can still be done with rigor without risking anyone’s safety. Arguing for the inverse only allows people to be intimidated into silence by gaslighting them into thinking a claim can only be tested if you put yourself in the public eye. I think that’s utter bullshit.
What happened with Vinny Souza?
I’m all for rigor. I’m also for standing behind a claim that you make. We’re not so far apart, here. The only difference I think is that the plaintiffs are laid bare, instead of being able to hide behind “but you’re a charlatan because I said so.” Keep everyone honest.
I understand. But identity is wholly irrelevant in my view when dealing with testable hypotheses. The claim should always be “you’re a charlatan because insert verifiable evidence.” If it’s a he said, she said “character” accusation, then I agree with you that identity is relevant. But I’m of the opinion that those kinds of claims rarely hold water and can’t be proven one way or another. Popularity contests or “good arguments” have nothing to do with whether or not something is true. But hey, we’re talking about semantics at this point.