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[Neonivek]

I think it is because food is something everyone needs to eat. So it is an addiction almost everyone shares and thus it is somewhat normalized.

As for "encouraging others to drink" it already exists if you know where to look.

[penguinofhonor]

.

[Bauglir]

There's a really beautiful false dichotomy here, though. Why are the only options self-inflicted Evil and moral-obligation Good? I prefer to approach all those drugs you mention as bad shit happening to people, akin to diseases, and obesity the same way. So the gaining community (to the extent that it exists and isn't just Poe's Law rearing its ambiguous head again) can be compared to measles partiers, except those are fictional, so we'll have to find some other group that's just as stupid. But you've gone pretty hard to the opposite absurd extreme there, Flying Dice.

[ChairmanPoo]

Obesity itself isn't a problem. If it was - if it was that simple - there would be no problem because obesity can be cured in one afternoon with liposuction.

No. It cannot. Not without an early rebound anyway.

Otherwise liposuctions would substitute gastric bypass surgery (which is pretty shitty and failprone in itself)

[Bohandas]

With a repeated regimen of liposuction then.

[Orange Wizard]

I honestly don't know how you chaps make the leap from "unhealthy food is unhealthy" and "obesity is unhealthy" to "omg ur fat and gay and desirve 3 diiiiie"

shitty

Oh you.

[Tack]

Eh. I judge fat people.
Issue is that I've recently been becoming one of them.

So I happily judge myself- not that it gets me off my ass and going for a run.

[Graknorke]

All those other things effect people besides the user? Drinking can make you more dangerous to others and smoking causes other people nearby to ingest nicotine whether they want to or not.

We shouldn't try to shame anyone into quitting a bad habit because they hate themselves for it. Just like we shouldn't make children get good grades by telling them they're worthless and they'll fail at life if they don't. That's not the right way to encourage people.

But if there's any reason to have social stigmas for behavior, it's because it can harm others. I don't see being fat doing that, unless you are afraid of fat people falling on top of you.

Obesity affects people besides the user. Issues relating to being overweight make up the largest group of issues the NHS has to treat. And then there's that being overweight locks people out of a lot of work, limiting job mobility. That's pretty disastrous for any employer who wants to hire people for a physically demanding job only to find most of the applicants completely unfit to do it, or just not get enough at all.

[Frumple]

I honestly don't know how you chaps make the leap from "unhealthy food is unhealthy" and "obesity is unhealthy" to "omg ur fat and gay and desirve 3 diiiiie"

Think that's mostly because that's how the cultures they're in actually react to obese people. With rare exception, you're actually looking at what amounts to a concentrated and sustained campaign of varying degrees of debasement, coming from pretty much every angle of a person's life -- friends, family, media, medical professions, random jackwads on the street, etc., etc. Last I checked, there's a statistically notable level of discrimination involved in job hiring and wages, too, even when the person in question can meet and maintain work requirements.

There... actually is a pretty different reaction to obesity and, say, drug use, at least here in the states and in my experience (Experience having overweight family members, among other aquantences, as well as many that have been drug addicted at some point, just to start). Drug use is treated as bad (well, except when it isn't, like with alcohol use), and the person abusing it generally tried to advise against it, but there's also this undercurrent of treatability and disease -- that it's as much something that's happened to a person as because of them. Obesity... doesn't really get that treatment. If you're fat, it's entirely your fault and you're a lesser person for it, someone to be shamed and ridiculed instead of helped. S'a lot of parallels between how folks speak of the poor and how folks speak of the overweight from what I've seen, just with arguably even less sympathy for the latter.

Other issues aside, the treatment of the overweight is, in actuality, something of a problem. Not all people react well to the same motivations, as so many folks seem to fail to realize, which means how its reacted to does quite a lot of damage and often very little gain...

... not that it doesn't make stuff like the gaining community pretty ruddy ridiculous. S'just that fat acceptance movements do have a pretty hefty degree of point in what they've tended to say, at least when I've ran into 'em.

Though why this conversation is happening in the wtf thread...

[Bohandas]

All those other things effect people besides the user? Drinking can make you more dangerous to others and smoking causes other people nearby to ingest nicotine whether they want to or not.

We shouldn't try to shame anyone into quitting a bad habit because they hate themselves for it. Just like we shouldn't make children get good grades by telling them they're worthless and they'll fail at life if they don't. That's not the right way to encourage people.

But if there's any reason to have social stigmas for behavior, it's because it can harm others. I don't see being fat doing that, unless you are afraid of fat people falling on top of you.

Obesity affects people besides the user. Issues relating to being overweight make up the largest group of issues the NHS has to treat. And then there's that being overweight locks people out of a lot of work, limiting job mobility. That's pretty disastrous for any employer who wants to hire people for a physically demanding job only to find most of the applicants completely unfit to do it, or just not get enough at all.

Don't forget the person who has to sit next to them on the bus or on the plane.

Although that would be better solved by using the money from the outrageous fares and innumerable hidden fees to build planes with bigger seats.

[GiglameshDespair]

You think being obese doesn't hurt others? Tell that to the paramedics who have to lift your blubbery carcass after your heart attack. When they have they have to call for others to help, that's others who might be in need wh ogo without.

When they need to buy specialist stretchers and equipment for fat people, they're damaging others by drinking funding that could go to others.

[Neonivek]

The conversation happened entirely because I said the Gaining community is SLIGHTLY less crazy, towards being fat, then the average person is.

xD

[Descan]

I like how right after Frumple goes "Yeah, fat people are denigrated" you have two posters in a row going "Fucking fat people, mirite?"

[GiglameshDespair]

No, just pointing out that obsesity does affect more than themselves, as was claimed previously - perhaps I could have used less abrasive language, but it is a problem that affects others. You'd get a similiar response if you claimed tobacco was good for the lungs, too.

[Sergarr]

Any time I try to think about "what does concepts mean" or "how to learn to think better" or anything really abstract, I eventually find myself staring at some kind of nothingness where I can't discern anything within.

And I start to feel stupid.