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Thin Privilege or Lifestyle Consequences

tbright1965
tbright1965 Posts: 852 Member
Warning, at times there are about 30 f-bombs a minute, so NSFW.

Came across this guy in the Peloton ad controversy.

Wondered what others thought about this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqAQhq22HpY
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Replies

  • aokoye
    aokoye Posts: 3,495 Member
    Ninkasi wrote: »
    Disclaimer: I like Alan Roberts and EDDF.
    aokoye wrote: »
    It's as if medical and/or mental health professionals who have PhDs can't have opinions that are seperate from their practice/the practice they're working in.

    I have to disagree with you on this one. I have a PhD (in chemistry) and am paid to render professional opinions. People make decisions and deploy assets based on my conclusions. I know how important facts are and how damaging unsubstantiated opinion can be.

    When you are in a position where you are paid for your professional opinion (which doctors/mental health professionals definitely are too) you can't deal in anecdotal reports, they lower your credibility. Do I have opinions on things? Sure, but if I don't have the facts behind me I don't say them out loud. Even if the doctor he references was writing in good faith, she's lowering her credibility.

    I can see where you're coming from as someone who will likely end up getting a PhD in linguistics, who has multiple friends and colleagues (in and outside of academia) with PhDs, and who knows quite a lot of people who are mental health care professionals.

    I think, however, that it's important to realize that there are plenty of successful and respected academics who talk about things related to their field on social media platforms without using empirical data. That might not be the case in your field mind you, but it's not a universal.

    Would your thoughts be different if this was a type of discrimination that has more discourse? So say a sociologist shared anecdotes about racism that their students had faced? Would that make that person less credible? If so how?
  • MikePTY
    MikePTY Posts: 3,814 Member
    aokoye wrote: »
    MikePTY wrote: »
    Anyone want to TL;DR the video for me?

    TL;DR:
    Person finds a twitter post by a psychologist about various ways people think they're discriminated against on the basis of being obese. Said person gets very grumpy in an impressively and seemingly unnecessarily intense way about this and goes on an 11 minute rant about why this person is not right and why people who are obese are facing the consequences of their weight. This is all peppered with an impressively large amount of profanity (it's almost comical) and was said in a tone that I can only associate with (cisgender) men who think that the only way in which to motivate people/get their point across is to speak in a very aggressive manner.

    Said person also tries to justify their viewpoint by relaying that they were once overweight.

    That was not my best work with regards to TL;DR summaries. They're much more fun to write when there are at least two people to summarize. There didn't seem to actually be any attempt at a dialogue or any sort of attempt at understanding where people may be coming from in this and I don't think that the person who made the video was wanting a dialogue. edit: was not wanting a dialogue with people who hold differing opinions.

    Thanks for wasting 11 minutes of your life on "fitness bro yells about lazy fat people" so I didn't have to. I kind of had a feeling that was what it was going to be about. Hard pass. It doesn't make him motivational. Just a *kitten*. I am sure that he has a company selling all sorts of fitness programs and coaching is just coincidental and not at all biasing his opinions on it.
  • jazzy550
    jazzy550 Posts: 264 Member
    edited December 2019
    No! Look back in time. If there was "skinny privilege" then that means there's always been overweight people and that's not the case. Back in the early 80s and before everyone was thin.

    [edited by MFP Mods]
  • psychod787
    psychod787 Posts: 4,088 Member
    aokoye wrote: »
    I'll apologize in advance as this is being written in a bit of a stream of consciousness style. I'm writing it as a watch the video (and pausing when need be). I'll also be upfront and say that this person was jarring to me from the word go and that might color some of what I'm going to write. And no, it's not the swearing that I'm displeased by.

    First, I'm really unimpressed by this person's assumption that the psychologist whose post he's dissecting must have some sort of ulterior motive. His not believing that she was writing in good faith when she mentioned that a. she was reporting things anecdotally and b. that these are just the opinions of she and some of her colleagues. Really really unimpressed. Exceedingly unimpressed. It's as if medical and/or mental health professionals who have PhDs can't have opinions that are seperate from their practice/the practice they're working in. :o

    It seems like this person (the guy who is talking) is taking a pretty myopic view. I'd be interested if he had actually read/listened to narratives of people who feel like they are dealing with discrimination on the basis of being overweight or spoken with them 1:1 and actually listened to them with an open mind and the assumption that he has something to learn from their experiences.

    I think the doctor bit is really frustrating because as much as we, myself included, say "seek a second opinion", that's not actually always possible for people for a whole host of reasons. Location, transportation, health insurance limitations, etc. I think the "stop being a child" bit is a somewhat ironic given that it sounds like he's having his own tantrum that he needs the world to see (why else would he have posted it on Youtube?), but I digress.

    Airplanes - we know that airliners are cramming more and more people into planes as a way to make more money. This isn't really disputable. Given that, in some cases this isn't a "you've outgrown the airplane". That said, I do get annoyed when people encroach into my space in places like airplanes and concert halls - that isn't just an overweight issue - see man spreading.

    [cue me changing the speed to 1.25 because this person annoys me but apparently I'm a masochist]

    I think his rant about medical equipment is especially short sighted because this, in some cases (or perhaps even quite a lot of cases), is a life or death issue. To me it's actually very different than most of the other things that have been discussed. I'm of the opinion that medical care is a basic human right and that right shouldn't be taken away because someone is overweight or obese.

    The food bit is neither here nor there. I don't think people get judged by bringing what some people would consider healthy foods to something like a dinner party or a potluck, but some people will get annoyed. That, to me, is different than being judged for say, ordering a large salad and a very large order of dirty fries after an obscenely difficult workout (not my meal yesterday, but I did eat some of the remnants of said fries that my friend ordered and the person who brought out the food definitely thought that she was ordering for more than one person).

    I'm glad that he at least admits that privilege exists. I seriously wasn't expecting that bit.

    An overarching thing that is frustrating to me about this is that he doesn't seem to realize that even if someone has made the decision and taken action to lose weight, that that's a process. That someone who is 5' 8" going from 300lbs to 150lbs isn't going to lose half of their bodyweight overnight and that for the majority of the time that that person is losing weight they will, at the very least, be overweight and most of the time they'll be obese. You (general you) can get pissed off all you want about people not taking responsibility and thus facing the consequences, but they're going to "face the consequences" even when they do take responsibility and are in the process of losing enough weight to be of a "healthy weight" (put in quotes becuase there are a lot of things that are related to being physically healthy).

    I also think we have to look at what caused someone to gain a bunch of weight. How much of that was self medicating for various reasons (though let's not pretend mental health issues don't have a massive stigma around them)? If there's an 19 year old who is obese, how much of that weight was gained when they were a child and had far less control over this? Between their own cognitive limitations, the fact that they weren't buying their own food, how much or little ability they had to be active (even if they wanted to be), etc. I'm personally significantly more apt to blame myself for my own being overweight than my 19 year old neighbor for a lot of reasons. I was in my 20s when I started gaining weight, I didn't/don't eat to selfthe weight was seemingly gained very slowly. Mind you the heaviest I've been was 250lbs (I'm in the 180s right now - I'm 5' 8") and I have never felt judged on the basis of weight.

    ---

    And now I'm going to stop procrastinating and get back to homework, but first I'm going to delete that video from my youtube history becuase I don't actually need or want Youtube to suggest any of his videos to me.

    Excuse me? Man spreading? I prefer person spreading! Lol jk .... op lost me whe. They mentioned vshred.....
  • lauragreenbaum
    lauragreenbaum Posts: 1,017 Member
    I couldn't watch this guy. Very angry and why the hell is he making a video while sitting in his car?? Weird. But...did LOVE the Bob Newhart video. Hilarious.