When I hear people trash the art, their instructors, schools that they’ve left, I feel a little sad for them, and also a little annoyed. They forgot, or chose to ignore, how much jiu-jitsu’s done for them.

Recently, there’s been some drama involving a former jiu-jitsu instructor who’s making noise because he burned his black belt in a video and promised to expose the lies of jiu-jitsu to “help” the deluded jiu-jitsu student victims. He’s decided that we’ve all been wronged by our jiu-jitsu teachers. Hilariously, a large amount of jiu-jitsu practitioners are “liking” and sharing his Instagram posts, apparently not fully understanding what their actions are signaling.

Of course, me being me, I signed up to his email list, and it turns out the end goal is to sell a $2,000 online training course and a $24,000 1-on-1 session.

Drama sells. But it’s cheap and doesn’t last. If you’re at a good school, meaning you like what you’re learning, how you’re learning, and you’ve made friends, that’s all there is to think about.

If you feel like your school or teacher is scamming you, just leave. Don’t stay and complain. As a school owner, one of my biggest regrets is not kicking people out sooner when they proved themselves to not be a cultural fit. They always infect the good students with bad ideas eventually.

The time to make noise is when you need to help prevent something bad. For example, if there’s a sexual predator at a school, you should make it known.

But creating drama to say you’re helping is not that. Not when the full story isn’t told. Not when the “answer” is going to cost the people you “rescue” thousands of dollars.

As much hate as Gracie family gets, the one thing they don’t do is promise to change your life. They offer jiu-jitsu instruction, people pay for it, and that’s the end of the exchange. If your life changes for the better as a side effect, great. If it doesn’t, well, it was never promised in the first place.