Note: This is a semi-sequel to a previous post on this journal, "The central point of the new/old heads debate." Reading that post prior to this one is not required, but is strongly recommended.
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If you peruse the online text battles of yesteryear, you will find that there is a slow but unmistakable upward trend in complexity. This means that: multi sets are longer, they are held for more lines, punches have more layers of meaning, and such. This phenomenon has already been discussed at length in this journal; see the note above. In this post, I will discuss another aspect of this trend.
This aspect is the increasing intelligence of text battlers. This aspect appears to be its own cause and effect, creating an endless upward trend of intelligence. It is a consequence of the increasing complexity of text battles; as complexity's standards rise, so too must the verbal ability and creativity of its strongest practitioners. Otherwise, it will be difficult or impossible for someone to adhere to these standards.
(Oh, and everything I'm saying here is applicable to audio as well. It's just less pronounced in audio, as audio is less linguistically complicated than text.)
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I'd like to clarify something here before we continue: that creativity, verbal ability, and intelligence are not the same thing.
Creativity is not an aspect of verbal ability or intelligence. However, there are strong correlations; also, without a certain level of verbal ability, even the most creative battler will be incapable of expressing their ideas in an effective form. Without a certain level of intelligence, a battler may struggle to write concise, easily-understood bars, or even operate the site.
Verbal ability, on the other hand, is an aspect of intelligence. While it is only one of many factors that contribute to intelligence, it has an extremely strong positive correlation with the others.
So when overall intelligence changes, creativity and verbal ability will follow. The larger the group being examined, the more noticeable this effect becomes.
Finally, while practice does make perfect, creativity, verbal ability, and intelligence cannot be improved much (as far as I know). Facets of text battling can be practiced, but people will have insurmountable ceilings regardless. Practice will not change the height of that ceiling; it will only get you closer to it.
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The largest consequence of this is as follows:
To put it bluntly, people involved in the "gangster" culture from whence battle rap originated have a lower overall intelligence. (Please don't try to read any sort of racist or otherwise discriminatory bullshit into that statement.) When average intelligence increases in a group, such people will struggle to stay competitive in text battling. From the cultural foundation of a site, they will become the laughingstocks.
This means that certain elements of rap battling culture that were once integral fade away. The noble tradition of cussing out disliked users, mocking them endlessly, and generally being offensive towards them is replaced by an overall more "civil" atmosphere. Crews are no longer massive clubs - often exclusive ones - that foster a strong sense of identity and have huge beefs, but only words near a person's avatar that are occasionally insulted on the forums. (This all makes sense, as intelligence has a negative correlation with impulsivity, aggression, and herd-behavior/team identity.)
It also increases the barrier to entry. The higher the level of intelligence required to become a high-level battler, the fewer people will reach that level. While someone without the necessary abilities can battle indefinitely, the combination of mockery and dissatisfaction with their performance will discourage them from battling; some may even quit entirely.
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I won't drop any names here, but many newer people mourn the loss of this culture. They wish that the violently aggressive insults, crew beefs, and generally harsher nature of times long past would re-emerge. What they do not understand is that the only people who can resurrect that culture are the very same low-tier battlers they mock.
I could discuss this for far more length and touch on many more points. If I wanted to, I could take one of the sentences from the majority in this section and write an essay about it. I don't feel like this is warranted in a mere blog post, though, so I'll leave those details to you.
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And there you have it, folks. Intelligence increases, the culture changes (probably for the worse), less people join, and other stuff.
To cap this off, there's one more observation I'll make. The need for verbal ability and creativity is a magnet for people with high-functioning autism, especially Asperger syndrome. Such traits have very strong positive correlations with those disorders. To the layman who still participates in freestyle battles that are no different from those of 1980, the idea of a battler with Asperger may seem strange to the point of heresy; nevertheless, it is the future. |
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