MMA fighter turned real life superhero Phoenix Jones announces retirement

[Steel]

http://mynorthwest.com/1299501/seattle-superhero-phoenix-jones-retiring/

“My whole life has been about making a balance,” Phoenix Jones, aka Ben Fodor, told NW NERD Podcast in an exclusive interview. “And I’ve seen a lot of stuff on the street. In the end, there is not a balance. It doesn’t make sense. I’ve seen it on the streets. I’ve seen what people do to each other. And I live with it every day. Every day I live with horrible, horrible things. And I think to myself, ‘I made a difference.’ But I didn’t make a difference. It didn’t make a difference.”

“The difference was supposed to be the people who saw (a superhero), being inspired to not act this way anymore,” he said. “We have not gotten that lesson. We didn’t get it at all. The shots. The stabbings. The bullets. It wasn’t worth it. No one got it. Maybe I stopped an individual situation, but people were supposed to get better.”

[Janeway]

That declaration of his complete and total loss of hope in humanity is perhaps the most depressing thing I've read in a long time.

[spazthemax]

Both depressing yet potentially an excellent beginning to a supervillain

[Iknowtoomuch]

This is just the part of the movie where he loses hope. He just needs the love interest or the plucky comic relief character or maybe an inspiring hobo to pull him out of it.

[JohnnyMo]

Shit, Protoman was right. There are no heroes left in man.

[Kokujin]

This is the perfect moment for a film company to buy his life story and make a film with him as the protagonist.

[Genkaz]

So this is what a real superhero would feel like, basically Rorschach times ten.

[Steel]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu7TCu9a3sM

Stops a fight but get stabbed, hit by a car, and mocked by the person he saved. I'm pretty sure there's videos of him being mocked by police, too.

[Genkaz]

Yeah... I guess the main problem with being a real life superhero is that quite frequently there IS no good guy, just different assholes beating each other up, as a result it's quite difficult to maintain hope. Because you never really know if the person you are saving is not even worse than the person who was attacking them.

[llamalords]

Its almost like the concept of superheroes has been literarily debunked a billion times as being a complete fantasy. Wtf was this guy trying to accomplish?

[Kipados]

After like ten years, I was hoping he'd retire eventually for his own health and safety, but damn, not like this. It was always comforting to know he was out there, fully prepared for anything and doing it all for a genuine reason.

This guy even had his own super team at one point. It's a shame that he lost faith in the message.

[halflambada]

he wanted to save society

but no one told him he'd need to save himself from society