Here are two stories:
In one story, two budoka square off wearing oyoroi (Japanese period armor) in an online video. They perform some partner kata not really designed for budoka in oyoroi; i.e. the targets for the techniques are the most heavily armored areas. Real oyoroi techniques would seek to take advantage of weaknesses in the armor. Moreover, the spacing of the kata is too distant to really be effective. Members of a budo social media group puzzled over the video, but at length concluded that the it must be some form of advertising for the style. Perhaps the use of colorful armor was just intended to add some "flash" (to use the vaudevillian expression) to the presentation. Perhaps the exaggerated distance between the partners was because...? In any case, the group, made up of experienced budoka, decided to give the video a pass, seeing it as a ploy to increase attendance at a small, satellite dojo of an established style, rather than as a poor example of the style itself.
Second story - a puff piece in a small, weekly newspaper with a website. The article is about a local art gallery/cultural center that has a weekly Japanese sword class. One of the photos, which inexplicably made the cover of the issue, is of a beginner student. The article itself features a not very good photo of the instructor, in which the te no uchi (grip on the sword) looks not-entirely orthodox. One reader of the piece started in to snarking about the photos on FB, which, to his experienced eye, looked amateurish, even though he did not know the group or the instructor. He corrected himself somewhat after realizing that the photo of the beginner student was *not* a photo of the instructor, but all the same, he came just short of suggesting that the instructor must not know anything about swordsmanship. He finally backed down after some of the instructor's colleagues called him out on his rush to judgment based on a single photograph.
These two stories present a number of issues. One is certainly the race to judge based on essentially no evidence. Virtually every day, FB commenters confess they have derided a topic without reading the link to the article. Occasionally, someone even posts an article because they like the headline, not realizing the article itself is expressing a completely opposite point of view. And of course, that does not include the fake articles, fake quotes, fake photos - fake everything - designed as clickbait that makes it on to FB.
Story number one got a pass because a famous teacher of a famous style was involved in the production of the video. Story number two, featuring no one famous, needed some colleagues playing defense in order to get a basically anonymous troll to stop denigrating the people involved.
A few weeks ago, the comedian Chris Rock mentioned that some well known comics who do stand-up performances have banned smartphones at their concerts. Comedy either works or it doesn't; the only way to find out is to try out the material on a live audience. These comedians fret that jokes that backfire, videoed by audience members and posted on social media fora, could endanger their careers.
Fortunately, the audience for the snarker in story number two was limited to a small group of people, but the question remains: what if it had been larger? Instead of accomplishing its aim of increasing publicity for the class, the puffy little article could have had the opposite effect. And it would not have made any difference to the person who spoke irresponsibly. I have spoken to budo teachers who forbid photos or video of their classes. One person confided that he lives in fear that a video he made just so his students could have a reference to technique could make it to the web. Many years ago (before digi), I was taking photos of a budo demonstration by an experienced teacher. Afterwards he approached me and asked me to show him any photos before publishing them. He explained that a photo that showed any technique as being slightly "off" would reflect badly on his practice, and most importantly, might embarrass his teacher. I thought he was overly cautious, but obviously, he had a point. He was just ahead of the curve.
The point is, we all know we're not perfect, yet at least some of us are happy to rub other people's noses in their all-too-human imperfections. Even though everyone knows that judgmental voyeurism is unjust, we watch anyway. Hell, the entertainment journalism industry makes a living at it. And, with all of that support, it seems rushes to judgment are an inevitable part of online life. Our only consolation is that, somewhat like drunken bar patrons, scandals only last as long as anyone can remember them; which is to say, the memory is gone by the next trip to the bar. And being unable to remember something amid the tide of stimulus, real and fake, is the saving grace of well-meaning, but not well-done, stuff on the web.
