The Fragility of Adult Emotion, Or: That Guy From ‘Robot Wars’ Losing His Bollocks Was Really Funny, Wasn’t It

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that Robot Wars is important. That Robot Wars reflects us, humanity, with all our warts and flaws: that if we were to hold a mirror up to the human experience, that reflection would be six garage-built robots called "Wheely Big Cheese" desperately flipping each other onto a redundant flame pit.

No. Robot Wars is just Robot Wars. Sometimes a thing can just be a thing. Eight teams of four nerds in matching robot-emblazoned hoodies, all saying very serious things about PSI measures, while Dara O'Briain looms in a three-piece suit and says "EHHH." Jonathan Pearce narrates. It is the only competition in the world where contestants are either pre-teens from Aldershot or semi-retired engineers from Aberdeenshire, and nothing in between. You know what Robot Wars is. That's all Robot Wars is. Here is a .gif I made that sums Robot Wars entirely up.

So we know what Robot Wars is now. But it is also home to the greatest televised adult tantrum of modern history, and that is the subject of our discussion today:

What we are seeing here, on the surface, is the driver and captain of Team Behemoth storming out of shot after losing to a team of children. What you are also seeing, deeper below the surface, is that same exact thing happening. There is no softening of this moment that context can provide. I have watched the entire episode to check. Behemoth – and true RW heads will know Behemoth as a veteran of 18 years, a former champion, a consistent big, square, six-wheeled robot in a world of come-and-go flipping machines – Behemoth lost to a small metal ramp that does a weak little handstand (called "Cherub") on a judge's decision, and Ant from Team Behemoth handed his controller over and left the room.

How sharp and hard do you feel your emotions as an adult? Mine have deadened and dulled over time. When I was a teenager – early, naked-faced teenagedom; the big blockbuster emotions of middle adolescence; and then the slow coast out into late-stage gangliness and early young adulthood – emotions used to crackle through me like fireworks, like roaring truck engines. I could flip from the deepest depressive trough through to laughing until my face ached in a fraction of a second. Go from the good hysteria to the bad hysteria and back again before I'd had my toast pop.

Now, everything is wadded in cotton wool. Now I don't feel so much because I am blithe to the novelty of emotion. True life crises barely affect me now. But sometimes – sometimes – something cracks and breaks through, and it could be trivial, it could be nothing, but when it comes through – when something works and wiggles its way into my psyche and makes me have an emotion – and—

So the reason Ant from Team Behemoth has lost his bollocks is because Behemoth is a "modular robot" now, which basically means that big flipper thing on the front is now interchangeable depending on which robot they are fighting, i.e. they got absolutely done out by a powerful spinning weapon last year and now they are back with a sort of big plough thing to combat exactly that. But then the new interchangeable plough thing has fucked up and sort of jigged and got stuck, and Ant told the boys before the fight – use the old plough, don't use the new sort of plough thing – but did they listen? They did not. And now they have lost to children.

Thing is, if you watch the entire episode ­– which I have – you will recall a scene before the fight where Ant, full of the glees of life, knowing his superior robot would trounce these children with their child robot, here Ant talks about how this fight will be such a cakewalk that he can afford to use the new weapon, just try it out. "This will be a fun little fight, actually," he says. A fun little fight. Just a fun. Little fight.

And that is what makes the ultimate moment of despair so delicious. Ant from Team Behemoth has punctured himself on his own hubris. He underestimated the children, with their little ramp: he forgot, for a moment, the old truism about Robot Wars, which is basically "they are all just wedges with wheels on them and sometimes the radio signal just fucks up and goes out altogether". Nothing – the universe has reminded Ant – nothing in Robot Wars is assured. And then the children did this.

Have you ever seen a human who was ever so lonely:

And then he had an emotion about it. In a post-match to-camera interview explaining his antics, Ant – still pulsating on the sheer adrenaline of having the most precious object in your life destroyed by some 13-year-olds – eyes wild and roving, that quiver in the voice of someone trying very hard to stay and appear calm while very much not staying or appearing calm, Ant says: "Putting a grabber on the front of a robot in what was such a crucial match was a very poor duh-duh-didda— decision."

I know what he is feeling like here. He is having Adult Emotion, and it's very hard to control that.

One time, at university, I cried alone in my kitchen because I'd run out of Babybel.

I wanted the Babybel and I went to have a Babybel and there were no Babybel there. Just the netting.

So what that means is: somebody took the Babybel. This is what happens at university: people think if they leave the container behind theft never took place. How many times have you opened the fridge to find an empty milk container?

Exactly. So someone took the Babybel. I think I know who but it's technically libel to accuse them here so I won't say who. But I know who.

So I'm there at the fridge and I want a Babybel and there are no Babybel.

And it is Sunday, late in the evening, and all the shops are closed as a result. There is no way of me getting Babybel to put Babybel in my body.

And in the house it's just me and this empty Babybel netting and no other food.

All I wanted was a Babybel, is the thing.

So anyway, what I did instead of reacting in a logical or adult way is I slumped with my back against the wall, sliding down it until I was entirely ass-on-the-floor, and called my mum.

Sometimes, we – adults – we don't know how to deal with things. We are waved off into the world at the age of 18, cut off from the support network that has coddled us this far, and expected to cope.

And then sometimes you run out of Babybel or some small girls hurt your robot and all your emotions come out at once.

I know what's happening with you, Ant. They all laugh but I get it. Sometimes it's just a bit much, being alive, isn't it? Sometimes the steam inside you rises and rises and the only way it can come out is through tears.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that Robot Wars is important. But what if—

Right:

What if it extremely is?

@joelgolby

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