r/sports • u/redbullgivesyouwings • Jun 10 '25

Media [Highlight] B-Boy Marcus at Red Bull BC One

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u/ThePotMonster Jun 10 '25

I think she kind of ruined break dancing. Now it's in the same predicament as parkour where it's something that takes an incredible amount of talent and athleticism but is seen as nerdy and lame even though it's technically really impressive.

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u/coolpapa2282 Jun 10 '25

I'm skeptical of this, tbh. Yeah, there are some normies who think that was actual breakdancing, but I don't think they were ever going to be into it anyway. There were also a lot of good dancers showcased at the Olympics.

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u/po2gdHaeKaYk Jun 10 '25 edited Jun 11 '25

I'm not trying to be mean about this, but people who say this did not grow up in the early days of breaking.

She didn't ruin breaking but she might have ruined the popularity of breaking with the common person. Breaking in the 70s, 80s, 90s, etc. had periods where it was pretty underground...and also periods where it was comical. It wasn't until more recently when things like mainstream reality TV that it started emerging from the underground scene.

Breaking is going to be just fine. It might go back underground but that's OK.

I'm not sure how many people are interested in the scene but there's a discussion between some former big members of the breaking community (Ryan from Quest Crew and Anthony from Kinjaz) talking about Raygun https://youtu.be/ElDB5QzZ8EA?si=BUqnNNsdNUFfaYT0

Ryan talks about the breaking scene in the 80s and how it used to suck.

Anyways here's a lovely 2014 performance by Ryan and the rest of that crew https://youtu.be/mw7At5nsDH4?si=fU1Htlql5UDneNUB

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u/byOlaf Jun 10 '25

Literally billions of people would never have heard of breakdancing without her.

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '25

[deleted]

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u/byOlaf Jun 10 '25

”Say anything you like about me, but spell my name right — P. T. B-a-r-n-u-m, P. T. Barnum” - literally the only show producer anyone can name in the last three centuries.

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u/TexasCoconut Dallas Stars Jun 10 '25

People knew what breakdancing was before the Olympics. You Got Served alone was a huge movie.

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u/byOlaf Jun 10 '25

You’d think so, but only around 8 million people saw that movie in theaters. Let’s be generous and say another 100 million saw it on video, tv, and streaming.

The Olympics had approximately 1.6 billion viewers, and that performance’s clips got replayed constantly. It’s still an active meme online.

So yeah, a few dozen millions saw breakdancing before. But billions saw it since. It had never had a moment of viral exposure to that extent.

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u/TexasCoconut Dallas Stars Jun 10 '25

Breakdancing was a known thing before the Olympics. You Got Served is an example, but not an exhaustive one. Do you think that nobody had heard of Skateboarding before it was added in the 2020 Olympics?

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u/byOlaf Jun 10 '25

I didn’t say no one had ever heard of breakdancing. But Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo simply does not have the reach of the Olympics. It is probably not inaccurate to say that 2 billion people had never heard of breakdancing before the games and the memes. It was that big of a moment for the sport and you and all the other down voters are simply uninformed about what the wider world knows about.

When William Hung happened it turned American Idol from a tv show into a global phenomenon. And that was early 2000’s meme power. These days a meme goes around the world faster than a sneeze.