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I've been watching the first few episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. There's obviously plenty to unpack about the story and the larger Game of Thrones universe, but the one thing I want to zoom in on is jousting. There's no spoilers involved here, but jousting features somewhat significantly in the first few episodes. Obviously the show is fictional, but it draws a lot of references and inspiration from the Medieval times. And jousting was a very real sport: Yes, there's some inherent military basis for it, but it eventually involved into a sport that was popular among nobility. As it is depicted in the show, and no doubt true in real life, it looks absolutely brutal. Strip away the particular pageantry and chivalry of it, and it is at its core a form of entertainment. Brutal, violent entertainment. A couple of days ago, something popped up somewhere on my social media feed (I would like to think that it wasn't specifically suggested to me by the algorithm, but rather maybe someone else commenting about. That, or I may have to reconsider some of my personal content choices). It's apparently called Run It Straight, and there's really quite no other to put it: It's two dudes running into each other at full force. Basically modern day jousting but without armour nor weapons. Just straight body-on-body contact. (I don't want to link to any videos because I don't want this to be misconstrued as me promoting it). There's perhaps some sports basis to this: It's not entirely dissimilar from the kind of contact we see in full-contact rugby or American Football. But here, it's so much more violent and brutal, because every other semblance of sporting endeavour is stripped away. I certainly don't condone it. I think it's dangerous and actually kind of stupid. But I will also concede that there is something slightly hypnotic about it. Are we as humans perhaps drawn or attracted to violence? Do we find entertainment in people acting in "stupid" ways? Is it some animalistic instinct that we haven't fully shed? (You do see some such behaviour in nature documentaries, like when rams fight for supremacy and, well, ram into each other.) Anyway, I do hope this supposedly "viral" new sport actually does not catch on at all. The world has plenty of problems as it is. We really don't need full-grown adults just running into each other at full speed.