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I recently (and by recently, I mean two weeks ago) started water fasting, and to displace the constant feelings of food cravings I started watching food-related videos, most notably: TLC's 600lb Life. It is extraordinarily trashy TV, but illuminating.
Before I describe the negative observations, here's the positive ones: A) All of the successful patients had a good attitude to begin with (they wanted to lose the weight, and were willing to commit) B) They followed the doctor's instructions (important.) C) They had friends and family who were supportive and were generally affable individuals to begin with (likeable!)
As a representative slice of the people who get really, really fat, they're about 5% of the population. The rest that follows is the generalizations of everyone else.
Now. For the hot takes:
THE OBESE ARE IGNORANT
Do you remember the much-maligned food pyramid from your health classes, the one that put way too many grain carbs at the bottom? At the very least, it puts vegetables on the second tier, and fast food at the very tippy top. And these people don't even know that. The very concept of CICO they stubbornly defy. They don't seem to know anything about basic nutrition that even a kid would know. And it's not like they're getting fat off good cuisine, either. (A fat gourmand with a diverse palette would be, at the very least, a good friend to have to ask for recommendations.) They're just eating fast-food slop paid by their welfare checks. And speaking of...
THE OBESE ARE ENTITLED
There is a certain childlike narcissism that accompanies each and every one of these patients, that demands the world bend around them: that they should be fed, bathed, and cared after without giving anything back in return. They frequently manipulate their family members and spouses to look after them, hand and foot, even their children. They're rude and throw tantrums, and their ignorance only strengthens their stubbornness. (They even disagree with their own doctor, a man they're self-selected to seek out!) They continue their bad eating habits - even in the hospital itself! - and have food snuck in for them to eat. This inevitably leads to...
THE OBESE ARE STUPID
In wrestling, where the tiers are segmented by weight class, in order to hit the weight limits, athletes often go to extraordinarily lengths to temporarily lose 5-10 pounds before weigh-in to get as much of an advantage as they can. In the show, in order to qualify for bariatric surgery, patients need to lose a certain amount of weight so that it is safe for them to go into surgery. Now, admittedly, going to 1200 calorie diet when you're used to 10k+ is pretty hard, but even going to 5,000 - twice the amount of a healthy adult - would guarantee weight loss without significant dietary changes, other than portions.
Do they do this? Of course not.
In fact, I'm pretty sure they don't even weigh themselves beforehand. It's always a surprise and a shock when - surprise of surprises - that eating the same amount as you did before would maintain it. (In fact, some of them even gained weight.) The tantrums, the lies, the threats - all are laid bare before the uncaring measure of the livestock scale.
Of course they don't get the surgery. And they're always left wondering why, the poor buggers.
So, in conclusion, I have come into belief that you should judge people for being obese. Not to say that all fat people are ignorant, entitled, and stupid. But they definitely have at least one of these traits, and should be avoided at all costs.
Reality tv is not "real." You are drawing strong, condemnatory conclusions about people in the real world because of the way characters in a TV show behave.
Perhaps you shouldn't be too quick to condemn anyone for ignorance.
This is what I was told, and, being born into a solid middle class environment, I believed it. But tbh after living for a while in cheap urban neighbourhoods (I'm very glad I do not anymore!), it seems much less obvious. Not literally everyone, but the majority of my neighbours really was trash reality tv-tier in behaviour. A minority was worse. Very few were better. Afaik reality tv nowadays selects in both directions; Yes they look for trashy people, but not too trashy bc middle class and higher who have no contact with these people will stop watching since it's too much for them.
As someone who’s never interacted with people like that, would you care to give some concrete examples of common trashy behavior?
Mostly what @loper says, being loud & obnoxious, predictably self-hurting stupidity, casual disregard for other but not even with any perceptible gain for themselves, unnecessary constant interpersonal drama. Some specific people/situations I've lived with:
A young couple which would reliably fight every odd day. The girl would throw the guy out in the late afternoon or so, the guy comes back later at night after drinking, she screams at him while he is pleading for 1-2 hours, and then eventually let him in. Don't know what they were fighting about, was in spanish. Loud enough to keep me awake. And when I say every odd day, I mean every odd day.
I come to a new place, middle of winter in London, shared accomodations, really cheap. But the floor is extremely dirty so that you have to put on fucking shoes to go to the bathroom or kitchen. Everyone complains about it ... But a cleaning lady comes weekly, and actually cleans really well. I tell people to just put some cheap house shoes on, that way they don't get dirty feet but also don't bring in the mountains of dirty snow from outside. Nobody listens except an older polish couple who already wore house shoes. They ask me why I even bother. Everyone else continues complaining about everyone else, but changes nothing.
A bartender / odd jobs girl. Claimed to be a professionally trained singer, but I'm pretty sure that was either some kind of fake college scam or she was just making shit up. Always broke, I actually loaned her money once (not much), but she ate out constantly, went to coffee shops every day, go to expensive concerts weekly etc. and still would complain how she wouldn't earn enough. Roughly once per month she would bring a new guy with her, usually after partying, so around 4 in the morning, turn on loud music, fuck even louder (apparently the music wasn't yet loud enough). Next or a few days later she would cry a lot and spew bile into the phone. Rinse and repeat. At least it was less often than the couple.
A raging alcoholic whom I lived next door to for 7 years which I literally never have seen in person. As far as I know from others, he slept through the day, gets up in the late evening, grabs some alcohol and drank until he falls asleep. And I know he loved WW2 docs. In fact the whole neighbourhood knew. Because every summer day when it got hot he would open all his windows at night and the TV was so loud that you couldn't sleep since we also needed to have the windows open. If you ring his doorbell he would ignore it. If you screamed loud enough ( he lived top floor) he would scream back that you should shut up, or else he'll come down and fucking kill you. I called the police once or twice when I was sufficiently pissed, but it didn't really help much.
Another guy I never saw. Turns out he completely trashed the place, then went back to his family but was so ashamed that he continued paying rent several years. His family had to pay a few thousand on top for repairs once the landlord realised. Which is actually unusually nice, since ...
rent nomads exist. The only I didn't actually live next to, but I worked as a postman for a while and saw a case first-hand. They pay rent for like three months up front to get in and to get some legal eviction protection, then they don't pay rent for months and once you get close to evicting them they trash the place out of spite and vanish over night.
Edit: oh and I almost forgot: Somebody once stole a flower pot from our balcony ... And put it on their own balcony. Which was right next door. In plain sight. It wasn't even expensive. Just .. why ?
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Its been a while but:
Defending rather than rebuking or chastising their ill behaved children.
Generational NEET
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This is the most striking feature of degeneracy. So many of the other things I can at least understand when I contemplate their lives. Stealing from the supermarket is bad, but the individual doing it does benefit. Drinking aggressively in the park until you pass out isn't great, but hey, I like drinking too and simply have a place to do it that people don't notice.
But just throwing things on the ground? What the fuck? Why? You are literally five feet from a garbage can, you could just as easily deposit your trash there, but instead you drop a glass bottle on the sidewalk where it shatters, leaving shards of glass for some unsuspecting dog to slice up their feet. This can only be described as wanton, casual malice for the world around them. This is the act that moves people from my mental category of pitiful into the category of despised.
To be fair, I personally have not seen public garbage receptacles spaced anywhere near so closely in the cities that I have frequented. But I still think that failing to carry one's garbage for an extra quarter-mile of walking is pretty lazy.
I'm not referring to a general case, I referring to the specific case of the degenerates I see in the park that literally prefer to throw things on the ground than walk five feet to the garbage can. In many cases, they'll literally need to walk past the garbage can to leave the park.
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It is reality TV. I'm not contesting that.
But they sound exactly the same way really fat people I've talked to in real life. They behave in exactly the same way, just to an exaggerated extreme. They have the same excuses, the same denial, the same willful ignorance that will lead them - eventually - to an early grave.
One of them is my own mother.
But suppose that there really is a obese person who is well-informed, conscientious, and intelligent. Knowing that what they are doing themselves - that their diet is harmful - and then doing it anyway is no credit to them, no more than that same hypothetical person who was all that, and a heroin addict. In fact, it makes it worse.
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