Mike Tyson, Millennials, and the Machinations of “Fuck Around and Find Out”

Unpacking the champ’s mile-high melee and the generation gap between actions and consequences…

Fuck Around - colloquialism; linquistic shorthand fək-a-ˈrau̇nd 1. Act in a manner of performative foolishness, generally in a public setting “Put the Silly String away and quit fucking around, Cody! We’re at the Vatican.”

2. Behave recklessly or with flagrant disregard for social norms or the personal boundaries of others, often in a manner suggesting a severe “home training” deficit. “We were enjoying the creole buffet, until some jabroni just had to fuck around and stick his finger in the jambalaya!”

Find Out - phrasal verb ˈfīnd-au̇t 1. Discover a piece of information “I figured dad was Santa Claus, but was shocked to find out he’s also the Easter Bunny! Does that make me part rabbit?”

2. Experience tangible consequences for one’s irresponsible behavior. “That fool did not just stick his crusty-ass finger in a public pot of jambalaya! Hold my etouffee, Lester, cause he about to find out…”

By now, you’ve surely seen the video. On a recent JetBlue flight leaving San Francisco, a Florida man fucked around with former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson and swiftly found out. Or so it seemed.

The clipped obtained by TMZ shows Melvin Townsend III standing over Tyson’s seat back and yammering incessantly, then cuts to Tyson punching the man repeatedly.

At first glance the rumble on the runway appears to be a textbook case of “fuck around and find out.” But a closer examination of the incident reveals a much more instructive look at a growing generational divide when it comes to communication and worldview.

The Gen X Flex

Mike Tyson is 55 years old. He was born in 1966, putting him at the upper end of Generation X. The first generation to come of age in a world in which two-career families were the norm and single-parent households prevalent, the “latch-key” kids of Gen X were on their own from a very early age. As a result, they became fiercely independent.

Products of the pre-digital age, Gen Xers spent their formative years outside, generally without adult supervision. While often indifferent to conventional norms and expectations, they also learned through real would experience that actions have consequences.You could hit the big kid on the jungle gym with a devastating one-liner about his mama being so fat her cereal bowl came with a life guard. But you had to be prepared for the uppercut with which he might hit you.

Most likely, no one was around to intervene, and somehow the overworked teacher’s aid stuck overseeing the after school program was always looking in the other direction.

Tyson’s hard scrabble upbringing is no secret. Abandoned by his father shortly after birth, and essentially orphaned as a teen when his mother passed, Tyson was left to navigate Brooklyn’s unforgiving streets on his own. In Tyson’s world, not only did every action have potentially life-altering consequences, so did inaction in the face of a challenge or flagrant act of disrespect.

In the boxing world, where his generational talent made him one of the sport’s most revered fighters, the phenomenon plays out in a matter of microseconds. Throw an ill-executed combination, and you often yourself open to a knockout blow.

Outside the ring, Tyson’s history is a case study in actions and consequences. Reckless spending took him from hundred-millionaire to bankruptcy in the space of a few years. A 1991 rape conviction cost him 3 years in prison during the prime of his career.

Tyson’s life is like a funhouse version of the prototypical Gen X experience in which you fuck around, you’re probably going to find out.

Millennial Malaise

Melvin Townsend III is 36 years-old. That places him towards the upper-middle section of the Millennial generation that immediately follows Gen X. Despite their proximity, the two generations couldn’t be more different.

The abundant unstructured time that shaped Gen X was practically non-existent for Millennials. While parents of Millennials were no more physically present than those of Gen X, their tentacles were micromanaging every aspect of the offsprings’ over programmed existence.

After school hours were jam packed with soccer practice, viola lessons, SAT prep, and all manner of other highly supervised activities in which adults were charged with preventing the intrusion of true consequences.

Bounced in the first round of the tennis tournament because you arrived to the match hungover? No worries, Caitlin. There’s a shiny “participation trophy” with your name on it!

Someone in the crowd heckled you when you fell on your face returning a serve? Well, that scofflaw shall be removed posthaste, because this tournament is a “safe space”!

Coming of age amid the turn-of-the-century tech boom, what little free time inadvertently found its way into the Millennial child’s day planner wasn’t spent outside negotiating social dynamics with other kids, it was spent in front of screens engaging in virtual interactions.

Hidden behind avatars and screen names, Millennials enjoyed the luxury of hurling all manner of hyperbole and vitriol with “virtually” no prospect of real world consequences. As encroaching adulthood pushed Millennials into the society, we suddenly saw the “trolling” behavior that landed them untold numbers of “likes” and followers on social media make its way into the everyday life.

In other words, they were fucking around with no expectation of finding out.

Worlds Collide in the Friendly Skies

As Tyson pummeled Townsend, it’s all too tempting, particularly for members of Gen X, to smile wryly at a long overdue “find out” moment coming to fruition for the Millennial man. While most would agree that no amount of verbal badgering justifies physical violence, consequences can often be disproportionate to actions, particularly when precipitated by copious fucking around. (Not shown on the TMZ video, Townsend had reportedly thrown a bottle at Tyson, who repeatedly told him to “chill”.)

But a closer inspection of the full video tells a different story.

Following Tyson’s eruption, the TMZ footage shows Townsend mugging it up for the camera phones of passengers recording the incident. His face is bloodied, to be sure. But he’s far from distressed. Wearing a cartoonishly exaggerated frown, Townsend turns and poses, assuring the cameras can captured his wounds from every angle.

While harassing Tyson early in the video, Townsend can be seen repeatedly turning to face the cameras. He’s clearly playing not only to the audience on the plane, but the untold millions he knows will see the video when it inevitably goes viral on social media. At one point, he speaks directly to his filmers and presumably their followers, giddily informing all that Tyson is “pissed”.

If Townsend is truly “a big Mike Tyson fan,” as his lawsuit against Tyson claims, he’s well aware of Tyson’s notorious temper. This is the same Mike Tyson who literally bit a man’s ear off for punching him.

In a boxing match.

Tyson working Townsend’s face like a speed bag was not an unintended consequence of his ‘round fuckery, it was the desired result. Townsend didn’t fuck around and find out, he fucked around to find out.

So while the incident may have cosmetically mirrored a textbook case of fuck around and find out, it’s actually a deftly disguised example of the uniquely Millennial phenomenon of “clout chasing”.

The Clout Chase

Clout Chasing — noun; colloquialism klau̇t-ˈchās-ing 1. The pursuit of unearned notoriety through proximity to, or confrontation with, a more popular or respected figure. “Molly is all up in my mentions clout chasing, because she knows all the boys without orthodontic headgear follow me! Girl, bye!”

Mike Tyson has won 44 fights by knockout. Against professional boxers. Had Tyson been trying to hurt Melvin Townsend III, Townsend would’ve left the plane on stretcher. Tyson was clearly just trying to administer a quick primer on the machinations of fuck around and find out.

Instead, Tyson got a lesson in clout chasing. In the days following the incident, the video flew across the internet with the ferocity of a flock of eagles. In the space of hours Townsend went from unknown Florida man to the week’s most ubiquitous face not named Volodymyr Zelenskyy. His lawsuit against Tyson will most likely resolve quickly for a modest out of court settlement. But as the champ is about to find out, the money is beside the point.

While Townsend’s social media presence appears to have been scrubbed, once the suit is settled, it’s a safe bet, he’ll re-emerge with a windfall of new followers. He’ll make the rounds of websites and Youtube channels that traffic in celebrity gossip telling his story. When his 15 minutes of fleeting fame are up, he’ll always have a go-to story to regale the local drunks in any Florida bar he stumbles into.

Tyson, for his part, will be left with his wallet a little lighter and a fresh blemish on the reputation that he appeared to be working very hard to rehabilitate.

Townsend fucked around, but it was Tyson, and the rest of Gen X by extension, who found out. In the world of clout chasing, they learned, there’s no such thing as bad attention — especially if there’s a camera rolling.

The only way to make a clout chaser “find out” is by simply ignoring them, no matter how flagrantly the fucking around persists. Mike Tyson sitting quietly in his seat while a drunken idiot acts out does not a viral video make.

The already truncated Millennial attention span grows shorter by the day. Netflix allows views to watch movies at double speed. There are comments on TikTok describing 15 second videos as “kind of slow”.

Had Tyson ignored Townsend for another minute or two, he almost certainly would have retreated to his phone to scroll through viral videos of clout chasers of eras past fucking around and finding out.