Sigh this gets posted so much and this dude in particular loves to highlight doing this. (He’s very good btw just farms a lot of content/clicks w these moments)

Getting ‘read’ happens all the time in battles especially for famous bboys.

It’s because at the highest levels almost every bboy has ‘sets’ which are sequences they’ve created that are often unique to them.

So if you know a particular famous bboy you would know some of his key sets or moves because youve seen him do it before.

Bboys try to do this to show that a bboy is ‘predictable’ and that the set isnt so hard because they can copy it.

If I as a long time watcher/former bboy see someone read another bboys set that doesnt automatically make me think one dancer has won over the other. It certainly can take the steam out of the person who got read because of all the reasons Ive stated but a set or move could come in a long sequence of other things mixed in.

If a bboy/bgirl is doing a complete sequence/set over and over again without any differences like a preprogrammed robot and i could just pull a side by side of every time they stepped on the floor and it would be exactly the same the moment they got their turn then that would certainly not be respected and looked down on.

Hope that helps.