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The First Rule of Fight Club Should Be "Don't Imitate Fight Club"
Written by Arya Ponto
Thursday, 16 July 2009   

tylerdurden-wannabeA 17-year-old kid in New York was arrested Tuesday night as the mastermind behind a Starbucks bombing last Memorial Day. He was trying to copy a ten-year old movie, maybe you've heard of it, called Fight Club.

Typical teenager, the reason he got caught is because he bragged to his friends at school that he was the one responsible. Dude! First rule is you don't talk about it! What a moron.

Yes, that's him in the photo (which I took from his Facebook page), trying his best to look like Brad Pitt, but failing miserably. Now, why do I get the feeling that he'd never seen it until recently on DVD in his stupid room, with no real understanding of it? He had probably never read the book, either.

According to the NY Times, Kyle Shaw admitted to the police that he started an underground fight club of his own at first, and then moved on to launching his own Project Mayhem. Terrorists these days... No originality whatsoever. Luckily, no one was injured in the bombing.

Kyle is hardly the first to mimic the film, although he is terribly late to the party. Since the movie was first released in 1999, there have been many reports of underground fight clubs spurting out across the country, apparently by people who were dumb enough to follow Tyler Durden's words even though he's clearly the villain and Ed Norton blew his own goddamn head off trying to get rid of Durden's influence. Maybe these idiots stopped watching halfway or were too busy ogling Brad Pitt's sexy abs.

A 2006 report from USA Today reveals an underground fight club in Silicon Valley that started nine years ago, directly inspired by the film, where geeks and techies from the software industry go to beat the crap out of each other at night.

"When you get beat down enough, it becomes a very un-macho thing," said Shiyin Siou, 34, a Santa Clara software engineer and three-year veteran of the clandestine fights. "But I don't need this to prove I'm macho — I'm macho enough as it is."

Inspired by the 1999 film Fight Club, starring Brad Pitt and Ed Norton, underground bare-knuckle brawling clubs have sprung up across the country as a way for desk jockeys and disgruntled youths to vent their frustrations and prove themselves.

"This is as close as you can get to a real fight, even though I've never been in one," the soft-spoken Siou said.

Uh huh. So what's the harm in a few disgruntled workers letting off steam by hurting one another? While it's clearly unhealthy and masochistic, those guys are the least of the problem. It gets more worrisome when kids as young as 12, who generally don't have the daily work stresses, engage in similar behavior just so they can look cool. Another report exposes teenagers who start fight clubs which eventually, like in the movie, turn into just another street gang. The violence even spills onto unwilling participants.

Then there's people like Kyle Shaw, who find a satirical subversive message attractive enough to actually follow, therefore missing the point completely. What they should really do is watch Fight Club again, and pull their heads out of their asses this time.