"Worrrrrldstaaaaaarrr!”
You can easily find that word being shouted out if you just search “one-punch knockouts” on the Internet.
What comes up are hundreds of video compilations of people — mostly men, of course — getting laid out by a single punch.
And, in the background, you often hear someone yelping “worldstar” in reference to the video-content aggregator WorldStarHipHop — a site that celebrates and even encourages the “one-punch” culture. I looked up the site in preparation for this column and the first video on the site’s page was entitled, “How to win a street fight.”
Many of these videos aren’t actually what I would call “fights” because that implies two people willingly entering into battle. So many of these knockouts are actually sucker punches on unsuspecting people with disastrous results.
I’m writing about this because of two horrific sucker punches that have been in the news lately.
The most recent story involves the release of a video showing an unnamed Burnaby man suffering “life-altering injuries” from a vicious punch outside of a Vancouver lounge. The crime took place at 2 a.m. and reminded me of something my uncle once told me: “Nothing good ever happens at a bar at 2 a.m.”
It certainly didn’t in this case.
In the video, you can see a group of men having an animated conversation. The victim isn’t even really facing the man who assaults him. The dude just waits for the victim to not be looking at him before he launches his fist and then casually walks away. He has no regard for his victim.
After the victim is knocked out, another man stands over the lifeless body and is seen shouting in rage. (Police are trying to identify the assailants and you can view the video here if you might know them.)
I don’t know what these guys were arguing about and I don’t care because it’s irrelevant. One guy probably bumped into another guy and things escalated. I’ve seen fights start between dudes over much less.
That’s the thing about bro culture — it’s so irredeemably stupid how bros are willing to throw down over nothing in order to save face.
And it’s not just bros in their 20s, either. Lawrence Sharpe is a 40-year-old man who was just convicted of manslaughter after throwing a sucker page that killed Michael Page-Vincelli in a Starbucks.
That case also had a chilling video showing Sharpe sauntering into the Starbucks and then unloading on his victim. Sharpe also casually walked out without checking on his victim.
The fragile male ego and an overabundance of testosterone aren’t anything new. It’s just that in this video age we’re able to watch so many of these incidents over and over again. Perhaps most disturbing is just how excited people get after someone has been knocked out. They laugh and scream and jump around. The person shooting the video will often put the camera right up to the unconscious person’s face and you can see their eyes rolling back in their head and their body twitch.
That could be somebody dying. That could be somebody suffering “life-altering injuries.” But nobody seems to care.
I haven’t always been immune to this, of course. I can remember being 20 and chanting “FIGHT! FIGHT!” as two drunk guys squared off outside of a bar. It never occurred to me at the time that somebody could actually be seriously injured.
Because in bro culture, it’s all about the act.
Not the consequences.
— Chris Campbell is the editor of the Burnaby Now and New West Record newspapers.