Yes, you read that right. The fighting robots have entered their dance era.

Look, we're not here to yuck anyone's yum. If you want to spend six months and a few thousand dollars programming your 250-pound killbot to do the Charleston, that's your God-given right as a free citizen and we will defend it. But let's be honest about what's happening here: this is the most Bay Area trajectory imaginable. Something cool, competitive, and a little dangerous gets popular, and then the culture slowly sands down every edge until it's... a choreography showcase.

It's the same instinct that turns street food into a $22 tasting menu, or a pickup basketball game into a mindfulness retreat. The Bay Area has a pathological need to take things that are viscerally fun and make them palatable. Robot combat was one of the last bastions of pure, unregulated engineering chaos — machines built in garages, designed to destroy each other for the entertainment of cheering crowds. Now we're scoring them on artistic expression.

To be fair, there's genuine technical skill involved in programming a robot to move with precision and fluidity. And competition formats evolve — that's fine. But there's a reason millions of people watched BattleBots and approximately nobody is tuning in for So You Think You Can Robot Dance.

The market will sort this out, as it always does. If audiences want carnage, builders will deliver carnage. If they want the Nutcracker performed by welded steel, well, this is San Francisco — there's probably a grant for that.

We just hope someone has the good sense to let at least one robot throw a punch during the talent portion.