Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Question about Fighting

C

Changen

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 23, 2011
55
0
California
Hopefully I placed this in the right section, if not maybe the mods can help me and put it where it belongs.

So I was thinking about it today after watching an incident happen in front of my house last night. Im curious on what peoples views are on fighting in general and what would warrant you to fight. Now I realize everyone is different and I'm not singling out any group of people in particular or at least not trying to but lately I started to notice even more than usual people starting fights or fighting for no particular reason. Is this where we are going in this day and age? Another question I have is why is it when someone does try and start a fight for no reason and the other party walks away from it they are called a b**ch or mocked for doing it. Im sure everyone has their reasoning and limits before they will fight as do I but why is not fighting frowned on more and more now days. Wouldn't it take the bigger man to walk away from it.

Anyway the incident I saw was this. I don't sleep very well so I am awake at the wee hours of the morning and my desk happens to look out my front window toward the street. I was up last night and as usual my neighbors down the street were having a party. I noticed a rather large group of people in their front lawn hanging out and as one of my other neighbors ran by from his late night workout as he did for as long as i can remember one of the guys from the party tries to call him out. Before the drunken guy was about three feet away from him. Now Ive known and trained with this particular neighbor for years in a few different disciplines such as Judo the whole MMA thing and we currently have trained in Eskrima for the last 3 years. As the i assume drunken party goer proceeded to taunt him and he keep trying to walk away, as he walked away the guy and some of his friends started following him down the street calling him names and trying to get him upset enough I'm guess to fight one or more of them. I couldn't rationalize why they would do this i mean is it the alcohol or a trying to establish a dominancy thing. All in all my friend (neighbor) made it to his house and went inside before calling the cops on the party.

Ive just noticed over the years that stupid occurrences like this have been happening more and more. I was just wondering why? Why is it the cool thing to fight now days I understand under certain circumstances it is required but for stupid reasons why is this such a trend? Ive been in fights before won some lost some and have walked away from many but everyone I have been in has reasoning behind it such as I feared for my life or due to the totality of the circumstances I felt that if I didnt intervene someone else could be seriously injured or possibly killed. I guess in the end Im just looking for insight on the matter and peoples thoughts on why it seems to be happening so much more in this day and age.
 
This is not really a problem for me. I'm an extreme wussy, and usually whimpering puts off the other guy. :p

I don't know if there is an increase in fighting in men - I haven't seen any data one way or the other. It seems that a perceived threat to one's self-concept (e.g.masculinity), or some need to establish dominance. I have read some stuff suggesting that there is an increase in violent confrontations among women .

Probably safe to say the the trigger is a combination of the individual and the situation. Fighting in prison is different from a fight while drunk at a party, which is different from a fight after someone is cut off while driving. A little obvious, but there it is.

I find crying and begging works well for me - no fights.;)
 
Violence is a last resort. If you can't get through to someone with words/knowledge in a civilized manner, then force is usually necessary. I'm not saying force your will upon someone, just fight in self defense and when there's no other alternative.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

I got into a pretty serious fist fight with a friend at my apartment this summer. We were all drunk and I felt he was disrespecting my apartment by intentionally dropping Corona bottles on my carpet. I picked him up under the arms and dragged him to the front door, but we started punching. Luckily, there were a lot of our other friends to pull us apart, but I punched him in the face which I felt really bad about. After we got separated and cooled off, we made up and apologized because we obviously don't want our friendship to be taken out of hand like that. Honestly, I think a bunch of guys and alcohol is not a good combo. There was a lot of tension in the air that night and I think that's what set us both off.
 
_Matt said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

I got into a pretty serious fist fight with a friend at my apartment this summer. We were all drunk and I felt he was disrespecting my apartment by intentionally dropping Corona bottles on my carpet. I picked him up under the arms and dragged him to the front door, but we started punching. Luckily, there were a lot of our other friends to pull us apart, but I punched him in the face which I felt really bad about. After we got separated and cooled off, we made up and apologized because we obviously don't want our friendship to be taken out of hand like that. Honestly, I think a bunch of guys and alcohol is not a good combo. There was a lot of tension in the air that night and I think that's what set us both off.
Click to expand...

Alcohol is a disinhibiter - that plus some excessive testosterone is a nasty combination.

It does sound like you guys handled an unfortunate situation really well - a shame to lose a friendship over an alcohol fueled mistake. ;)
 
I can honestly say that I have never hit anyone in my life.

I did get into an altercation at a friend's home once, but I just pinned him to the wall with my right hand to his chest, and left it at that.
 
I've never been in a fight. However I do train in Karate, hopefully this means that my inevitable first fight will be slightly more in my favour. Having said that, I will always avoid a fight or confrontation at all possible times. I have no desire to hurt somebody, or be hurt.
 
tristangage said:
I've never been in a fight. However I do train in Karate, hopefully this means that my inevitable first fight will be slightly more in my favour. Having said that, I will always avoid a fight or confrontation at all possible times. I have no desire to hurt somebody, or be hurt.
Click to expand...

This is true to the teachings of karate, but some bullies take it up for ulterior motives.
 
fighting has a long tradition in europe , its a unwritten law to have fights in or outside pubs, if you are on the streets on weekends in downtown
or if you attend festivals , or sports events like footballgames(soccer)


there exists even a genre of music only made to have the right backround music for fights after or during football matches ,fights are normal events here in the good old europe ...OI (music)
a great example for that :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnMWvy0oCMg&feature=related
 
I don't worry too much about fighting. My stepfather and I exchanged a single punch each when I was a teenager, but other than that I've never thrown a punch in anger, nor have I had one thrown at me.
 
Tomorrow said:
...My stepfather and I exchanged a single punch each when I was a teenager...
Click to expand...

More please! :D

I am surprised at the ultra non-violent responses here. I guess I grew up in a rough area! :eek:

I have managed to avoid physical fights since I was about 16-17, but there were many before that age. Most of them were unwelcomed, but "sometimes you gotta do whatcha gotta do". <shrugs>
 
My father gave me some excellent advice: avoid a fight whenever possible, but if you cannot, make him bleed.

I've talked my way out of dozens of fights, most recently when an official's aide decided I was being rude and threatened to "beat the ****" out of me.

I told him, "There's two ways this goes down: you swing and after I finishing breaking your arm, we both go to jail. Or, you swing at me, hit me and I let the cops take you to jail. Either way, you go to jail and you have to explain to your boss why you're there."

I might have scalded him with water, he blanched so fast.

I went to a rough school, so I learned to avoid fights by ********ting people. I make them laugh and try to find the one person who is sane and get them to help me wrangle the group.

The thing is, drunken idiots want to fight, but you won't gain anything by doing so. Best case scenario, you win, bang up your knuckles and end up talking to the cops. Worst case scenario, you get killed because the group attacks en mass or someone has a weapon. So, avoid them if you can, walk around the block or wait for them to leave.

Or, approach someone at the periphery and strike up a conversation, share a smoke. Talk to them for a bit and then make sure they hear you leave. Say "later bro" and walk calmly away.
Drunks will think you were part of their group. And, drunks don't attack their group.
 
I've never been in a fight and never intend to be.

It's usually easy to avoid getting drawn into a fight. If someone taunts me to try and get me riled up, they're normally the sort of person who I have no respect for - in which case their words have no credence or impact on me. In any would-be fight situation, you have to assess what you would gain/loose - and I've never seen a situation yet where the upside outweighs the downside.

This talk of 'being a bigger man by walking away' is all very well - but as a mindset it's still concerned with your own pride and machismo - and I think that's a weak way of looking at the situation. If some looser is taunting me, that has zero impact on my pride (neither positive or negative) and by walking away I'm just choosing to continue my day according to my own plan, instead of endangering my health and freedom by submitting to someone else's. It's completely logical and calm, and I don't need to involve any unhelpful feelings of machismo, pride or passion.

I used to train a lot with Wing Chun. That taught me very clearly how you can never judge how dangerous a person can be in a fight situation (we had some small scrawny guys who were devastating). It also taught me that if I were ever to be attacked, the only response is to be 100% committed to removing the threat as rapidly and decisively as possible. Any messing around just increases the threat to your own life and wellbeing. Job number 1 is to continue happily and successfully in my own plan for the day, and if they choose to involve me in a violent incident that I can't avoid, I would respond with justifiable rage.

There's a lot of psychology that surrounds fighting and the non-verbal communication that leads up to it. Training in some martial art at least makes you aware of this, and helps you to make changes to the way you hold yourself and your personal assertiveness, that makes it less likely that someone will challenge/attack you. People looking to start fights are essentially bullies who can easily sense a lack of confidence or weakness - and look to exploit this.
 
Last edited:
firestarter said:
I've never been in a fight and never intend to be.
Click to expand...
Same here. I'm a lover, not a fighter. :D

MacHamster68 said:
its a unwritten law to have fights in or outside pubs, if you are on the streets on weekends in downtown
or if you attend festivals , or sports events like footballgames(soccer)
Click to expand...
I go to around 30 football matches a year – home and away – and have done so for many years. I've attended games in all four of England's professional divisions, as well as non-League and internationals – and I've not been involved in a single fight or altercation with anyone at a ground or if having a pre-match pint beforehand.

Clearly, I must be doing something wrong. :rolleyes:
 
One time, outside a club, I got jumped by 5 guys, they beat the crap out of me, then promptly got arrested. 4/5 of them are in jail for the next 5 months because I didn't defend myself, so that was worth it.

On the whole, if you are a big guy people will try to mess with you when they're drunk, so if you can defend yourself do it. I don't like people who carry weapons around with them though, that's where things get scary.
 
Not a big fighter

I am not a fighter myself either, but... I don't find fighting useless. There are situations in which we really have to fight and i don't mean proving dominance... that's stupid ^^
What your friend did in that situation i find to be the best thing to be done.

Stupid ppl do start fights like these just to try and be dominant while the alcohol increases stupidity xD
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back