#snake oil salesmen with the pitch

[godddamnbranman]

How to stay afloat in a bottomless pit..? The trick is to stop falling.

[unseenbox]

Its very easy to fall out the bottom of the Left and end up in a pipeline to the Alt-right if we fall into the same traps: the temptation to only listen to news that we already believe to be true, to lie if it's for a good cause, to believe that there is no future and the only answer lies in the past, to treat the lives of people around you as less important than the ideology you're trying to promote, to suspend critical thinking because we're being flattered.

The truth is that the grifters and snake oil salesmen and neo-nazis and terfs haven't stopped grifting, they've just changed the pitch. So make sure that what you're being pitched isn't going to destroy you if it's swallowed.

[haggndingh45]

Emperor's Vigor TonicDeliverable

I used to scoff at the idea of men's health supplements. Seemed a bit...unnatural, you know? But as a bloke pushing into my late forties, I started noticing a dip in my energy levels. The daily grind was becoming a real slog, and even that weekend football match left me feeling more knackered than inspired.

That's when a mate down the pub mentioned Emperor's Vigor Tonic. Now, I'll admit, the name conjured up images of Victorian-era snake oil salesmen. But after a bit of research and seeing some positive reviews online, I decided to give it a go. After all, what did I have to lose?

A Potent Blend of Natural Ingredients

The first thing that impressed me about Emperor's Vigor Tonic was the ingredient list. No weird chemicals or synthetic fillers, just a blend of natural herbs with a long history of use in traditional medicine. We're talking things like Wild Yam, Schisandra, and Rehmanniae Radix – all known for their supposed benefits on vitality and overall well-being.

Easy to Take, Gradual Results

The tonic itself comes in convenient capsule form. No faffing about with powders or liquids – just a quick pop with a glass of water each morning, and I was good to go. Now, I wasn't expecting overnight miracles. But after a couple of weeks, I definitely noticed a change. That afternoon slump I used to get vanished, replaced by a steady stream of energy that lasted throughout the day.

More Stamina, Better Performance

The improvements weren't just limited to the workday. Hitting the gym became a whole new ball game. I could finally push myself further in my workouts, and recovery time seemed to decrease noticeably. Even that Saturday football match became a different story. My passes were sharper, my runs more energetic, and I felt genuinely revitalised on the pitch.

A Note on Wellbeing, Not Just Performance

It's important to say that Emperor's Vigor Tonic isn't just about physical performance. While the boost in energy was certainly welcome, I also noticed a general improvement in my mood and well-being. I felt more focused, less stressed, and ready to tackle whatever the day threw at me.

A Sound Investment in Yourself

Overall, I've been thoroughly impressed with Emperor's Vigor Tonic. It's a natural, convenient way to recapture that youthful vitality many of us lose as we age. It's not a magic bullet, of course, but for me, it's been a game-changer. If you're a bloke looking to reignite your energy levels and feel your best, I highly recommend giving Emperor's Vigor Tonic a try. You might just be surprised at the results, like I was.

[visionsofthefu]

They say we have democracy and that our vote counts whilst taking away our liberties on the basis of health and freedom. Whatever they are selling you now, don't believe them. They are just snake oil salesmen pitching their latest product.

[believe-you-me-you-believe-me]

Unleash Your Inner Manipulator: Master the Art of Persuasion!

"Manipulating people is a dark art woven with intricate webs of lies and manipulation, exploiting vulnerabilities and preying on insecurities. It's a chilling reminder that trust can be shattered in mere moments, leaving us at the mercy of those who revel in their power. #Manipulation #PowerGames" Are you tired of being ignored? Fed up with people not doing what you want? Well, fret no more, because we have the ultimate solution for you! Get ready to dive into the magical world of manipulation and take control of those weak-willed individuals around you. Don't worry, we won't bore you with complicated psychological theories or ethical dilemmas. Instead, let's take a trip back to ancient history and learn from the absolute master of persuasion: Julius Caesar. Long before Instagram influencers and salesmen with their snake-oil pitch, Caesar was the true OG of manipulation. His ability to sway the masses and turn them into loyal followers is the stuff of legend. You might be thinking, 'But hey, how can a Roman general help me in my quest for dominance?' Well, buckle up and prepare to be amazed! Just like Caesar, the key to successful manipulation is all about understanding human psychology. People are driven by their desires, fears, and insecurities. Find their weak spots and exploit them like a pro! Caesar knew how to play people like a fiddle. He understood that by appealing to their egos and promising them power, they would willingly give up their freedom. And boy, did it work! Just look at how he effortlessly transformed a republic into a dictatorship. Pure genius! So, dear readers, if you're ready to become a modern-day Caesar, we've got just the tips for you. First, always make the target feel important and valued. Stroke their ego until it grows bigger than Mount Vesuvius. Second, leverage their insecurities and fears. Nothing says 'obedient follower' like someone who's too terrified to defy you. And finally, create a sense of urgency. People act impulsively when they feel time slipping away. So make sure to exploit those opportunities! Now, we must remind you that using these manipulation techniques comes with great responsibility. It's up to you to decide whether you'll use your newfound powers for good or for your personal amusement. But hey, who are we to judge? Remember, my aspiring manipulators, with great power comes great responsibility! So go forth and conquer the world – one unwitting victim at a time!

[infinitemonkeytheory]

The pitch here is simple: a bunch of grumpy old magicians made a big fuss about sexy little Uri Geller just because he claimed his party trick was real psychic powers, and now they’re either dead or friends with him, and isn’t that great? Because really, even if he DIDN’T have psychic powers, what’s the harm in helping people believe that there’s a little magic in the world?

Well, that’s the harm. Segal even SAYS what the point is and still misses it: “The point,” he writes, “is that Mr. Geller is an entertainer” who “CHALLENG(ES) OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE TRUTH” and his bent spoons are ultimately the “precursors of digital deep fakes.” WHICH ARE BAD! THOSE THINGS ARE BAD, DAVID SEGAL! You ran headfirst into the brick wall that was the point and you just didn’t notice, because later you write that Geller is “the author of a benign charade,” and “now that fakery is routinely weaponized online, Mr. Geller’s claims to superpowers seem almost innocent.”

YES! That is the point!! That is precisely what Randi, and Ray Hyman, and Paul Kurtz, and Carl Sagan, and many others argued back in 1975: while magic tricks, presented as feats of skill and sleight of hand, can inspire wonder and happiness, tricking people into believing you have superhuman powers is going to lead down a dark path on both an individual level and a societal level. It gives the person purporting to have those powers very REAL power over the people who believe them, allowing them to say or do anything for money or control. They can tell their followers to send them their paychecks, to have sex with them, or to try to cure their cancer with “mind over matter.” And when we as a society decide that it doesn’t matter if a person is lying to us or not, when we don’t critically evaluate someone’s true self or motivations, when we accept what we’re told at face value, we allow lying fascists like Donald Trump to come to power. We allow neo-Nazi and anti-vaccine groups to spread misinformation and to radicalize more people. Bending spoons would have been just a cute party trick but it became something much worse, much more insidious, when Geller LIED and said he was doing it with his mind, that it was proof he had other psychic powers, and that he could solve CRIMES, and that it meant he could give health advice to his fans.

There’s a direct line from Uri Geller to our current infection of frauds and snake oil salesmen, and fuck David Segal and the New York Times for whitewashing him. And more than that, fuck them for making me stop and consider whether or not Uri Geller is sexy. How do I “mind over matter” that thought out of my brain, Uri Geller? How??? I can’t. You’re lucky I’m not a pathetic litigious bully like Uri Geller or I’d sue the shit out of all of you for pain and suffering.

[considerourknowledge]

Traveling Bullshit Salesman Hoping to Dupe Iowans Again

The two traveling snake oil salesmen seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination have made their opening pitches to Iowa voters. Former President Donald Trump made his first trip to the state since announcing his third presidential bid on Monday, where he took shots at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who made his Iowa debut on Friday. Trump is hoping that Iowans will fall for his tired brand of grievance-based politics, telling the assembled rubes that they have trouble in their state. “You’ve got trouble folks, so much trouble. Trouble with a capital ‘T’ and that rhymes with ‘T’ and that stands for Trump,” said Trump failing to talk to voters about anything but himself and how the 2020 election was stolen.

[boutiquetonki]

Rhyme genie tunesmith

RHYME GENIE TUNESMITH MAC OS

RHYME GENIE TUNESMITH SOFTWARE

RHYME GENIE TUNESMITH LICENSE

There's quite a few digital songwriting tools out there. In short – are there secrets the hit makers know that you don’t? You bet! This is the course that gives you the goods. There are also some free modules that you can dive into immediately here. It’s called the “ Insider Secrets to Songwriting” program.

RHYME GENIE TUNESMITH SOFTWARE

We're going to solve that dilemma in regards to song and lyric writing software.Īnd before we dive into our key songwriting software reviews (and some special discounts we’ve negotiated for you!), I’ve created a Teachable course that captures my last 25 years of signing and working with over 100 + hit makers and Grammy Award winners. There's just no barrier to the marketplace, so people can rush any old product to the shelves, regardless of quality. In other words, writing a song these days does not have to be that hard!Īnd of course, anytime there's money to be made, you're going to have your share of snake oil salesmen and charlatans looking to make a quick buck. There’s just so much available to writers and producers! The downside of this, of course, is wading through all of that technology to find the worthwhile best songwriting software. A $200 laptop with free songwriting software is more powerful, and often better sounding, say than a $10,000 studio 20 years ago.Īn off-brand smartphone is 1000x times more powerful than the studios The Beatles were using to record their classic albums.

RHYME GENIE TUNESMITH LICENSE

Portions of this article were derived from Wikipedia content using the Creative Commons License CC-BY SA 3.0 which can be found here.We are living in a Golden Age of technological tools to unleash creativity. In addition, songwriters are able to monitor hold times, release dates, and chart positions of songs that they have pitched with the use of a pitch notebook. A melody may be recorded via an inbuilt audio recorder, or it can preserve commercially published studio recordings in AIFF, WAVE, or MP3 format. The copyright tracker that TuneSmith provides allows users to keep tabs on the writer and publisher shares of copyright splits and monitor the copyright registrations of songs that have been uploaded. Idolumic’s TuneSmith is a program that helps songwriters create and manage their songs by providing tools such as a sophisticated lyrics editor, a copyright tracker, and a pitch log. TuneSmith is the name of the new companion songwriting program. The Mac version of the rhyming dictionary is supported as a plug-in by Rhyme Genie 4.0, which was made available for purchase and download in January of 2012 as part of the Rhyme Genie 4.0 update. This algorithm gives users the ability to find near rhymes, which are also known as half or slant rhymes, by adjusting the degree to which the word they are searching for and potential rhyme mates sound similar to one another. An intelligent rhyme algorithm is one of the primary features of the software. It had more than 9 million phonetic references, 300,000 entries, and 30 distinct patterns of rhyme. When it was originally made available to the public in 2009, it was hailed as the world’s first dynamic rhyming dictionary.

RHYME GENIE TUNESMITH MAC OS

Idolumic has created a rhyming dictionary application called Rhyme Genie that is compatible with the Mac OS X, iOS, and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

[lol-jackles]

Thanks so much for answering all our questions! I love reading through your replies. I'm sorry if you've already been asked this, but do you think that The Winchesters will also be announced on Thursday? I saw some speculation on twitter that Jensen posting about Dean's birthday today (which I think he didn't do last year?) suggests the prequel may be going ahead. I'm definitely hoping that your thoughts on Walker and its prequel turn out to be as accurate as they usually are!

This must have been an older Ask I missed as we’re past Thursday and annoucements are delayed.  I think both The Winchesters and Walker:Independence are in development:

June/July is pitching season to the studio and then the network.

September the pitch is accepted and refined into outlines to become pilot scripts.

October to November the pilot scripts are refined into drafts for the network.  The drafting continues to January.

Late January is casting and hiring actors and crew.

March/April the pilots are filmed.

May prior to Upfronts is when Network pick up shows

June is when writers are hired. Then it takes 6 weeks for production after the show is picked up to ramp up.  Often the show end up with totally different crew than the one that filmed the pilot and it may be filmed in different location than the pilot was filmed in.

I think The Winchesters will bear little resemblance to familiarity of OG Supernatural. You know how Trekkies hate Star Trek: Discovery because it's not "real" Star Trek because it's an insult to Star Trek? Because Discovery turned a lot of stuff in the canon on its head, and did so in a frankly disrespectful manner - with the greasy confidence of snake oil salesmen.

Each spinoffs of Star Trek (Next Gen, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise) had done their own thing while staying true to the essential spirit of Star Trek, which is the opposite of the Cult of The Victim. But Discovery writers had marry those opposites.

With that said, Discovery does have their fans. If the casting for The Winchesters is good and the stories interesting and compelling, then The Winchesters will have a fair shake with the test audience.

[onceuponatown]

While today a “snake oil salesman” is someone who knowingly sells fraudulent goods, the use of snake oil has real, medicinal routes. Extracted from the oil of Chinese water snakes, it likely arrived in the United States in the 1800s, with the influx of Chinese workers toiling on the Transcontinental Railroad. Rich in omega-3 acids, it was used to reduce inflammation and treat arthritis and bursitis, and was rubbed on the workers’ joints after a long day of working on the railroad.

Enter Clark Stanley, “The Rattlesnake King.” Originally a cowboy, Stanley claimed to have studied with a Hopi medicine man who turned him on to the healing powers of snake oil. He took this new found “knowledge” on the road, performing a show-stopping act at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, where he reached into a bag, grabbed a rattlesnake, cut it open, and squeezed it. He labeled the extract snake oil, even though the FDA later confirmed that his products didn’t contain any kind of snake oil, rattlesnake or otherwise. That didn’t stop other unscrupulous doctors and fraudulent salesmen, who also started traveling the American West, peddling bottles of fake snake oil, giving the truly beneficial medical treatment a bad name. 

Traveling Medicine Shows were really popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s. A Medicine Show was a traveling group that held performances and entertainment to lure people in, then gave a sales pitch for their ‘miracle cures’ and elixirs. This practice was the beginning of the patent medicine industry. Before the government regulated the medical industry, these medicines were not necessarily patented but rather trademarked. Many of these tonics originated in England and began to be exported to America in the 1800s. 

Traveling Medicine Shows is where we see the real beginnings of marketing campaigns. The person in charge, i.e. the ‘doctor,’ would send people to the next town to garner excitement for the show, put up posters and banners, and get folks excited to see the wonders that would be shown. Sometimes the shows had so many entertainers that an actual hall would be needed, but usually, the show would be held right on the street in order to attract the largest crowd possible. In between the entertainment, the ‘Doctor’ would make a sales pitch about his miracle cures. One of the most popular attractions was the ‘muscle man’ who would show his strength and claim it was from one of the potions. People were typically planted in the crowd and would step up to give (fictitious) testimonials about the medicines. Some of these people would appear to have an ailment that the elixir would manifest a miraculous recovery.

While these medicines were very popular, there was no regulation of the ingredients. Most of these elixirs contained morphine, cocaine and large doses of alcohol; some containing over 30%. These potions were advertised for babies and children as well, which sometimes ended with horrible results*.

As more and more people began questioning the claims of these tonics, Medicine Shows were increasingly less successful. Because of some horrible side effects from some of these ‘medicines’ and even deaths, the government began taking notice. Eventually, the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed in 1906 and led to the eventual creation of the Food and Drug Administration. Traveling Medicine Shows may have gone by the wayside, but their legacy lives on. The marketing strategies and sales pitches used back then are still very effective and used in advertising today.   

*This blog does not recommend injecting disinfectants as a potential cure for the Coronavirus. 

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#1yrago Leaked presentation from AI snake-oil salesmen to AAA game company promises horrific, dystopian manipulation of players to drain their wallets

Techpowerup has published a redacted presentation from an unnamed AI company to an unnamed big-budget multiplayer video-game publisher, setting out a suite of surveillance capitalism tools combined with machine-learning to manipulate players to make them as addicted as possible and drain them of as much money as possible.

The slide deck sets out a suite of persuasion techniques to lure new players to the game by purchasing deep dossiers on their situation, views and social activities, then advertising in highly targeted ways using predictions made by an AI model trained on giant data-sets bought from data-brokers. It details highly invasive techniques involving cellphone location tracking, covert mapping of homes using wifi signal strength, and always-on microphones that analyze incidental noise to deliver realtime intelligence about your activities and pain-points, from menstruation to crying babies to depression.

–– ADVERTISEMENT ––

The deck then explains how the AI-backed game can manipulate the players it signs up by tricking them into playing for longer than they expected by tailoring the game play on a minute-to-minute basis to make it hard to put down and easy to restart (for example, they claim that they've used a phone's accelerometer to determine when a player is looking at their phone in bed, then offered them free powerups that lured them to sit up, eschew sleep, and start playing again).

This is a terrifying vision -- and it's also a sales-presentation. I've seen a lot of AI pitchdecks that promise stuff like this and they -- like every other sales presentation -- are promising more than they can deliver. But on the other hand, the sales-engineer who wrote this pitch thinks that games publishers will be receptive to it, and also thinks that they can deliver some of these things, and that manipulating their fellow humans this way is OK. It is a literally sociopathic vision, in which people are viewed as things to be used rather than people with the agency, feelings and dignity that you yourself posses.

https://boingboing.net/2018/02/07/literal-sociopathy.html

[whereareroo]

SNAKE OIL

WF THOUGHTS (1/5/21).

In his losing bid for the presidency, Trump ran as the "law and order" candidate.

Trump has never stopped acting like a condominium salesman. Condominium salesmen will say anything to sell a condominium. The facts are irrelevant. Truth is irrelevant. Guys like Trump have no shame. They say whatever they have to say to get the job done. They're all snake oil salesmen.

Before he was president, Trump was in regular trouble with the law. During his presidency, he has been in regular trouble with the law. His whole life has been full of chaos. There is no "order" in Trump World. Given his track record, only a snake oil salesman like Trump could claim to be a devotee of "law and order."

As the clock counts down on his presidency, Trump's disdain for law and order has hit new highs. Or, should I say new lows?

This past weekend, a few days before Congress meets to officially recognize Joe Biden as the next president, Trump had a lengthy phone call with the Secretary of State of Georgia. Trump indicated that he wanted to be declared the winner of the Electoral College votes from Georgia, and he urged the Secretary to manipulate the election results so that Trump could be declared the winner. There is a tape recording of the whole conversation. At numerous points during the call, Trump clearly violates Georgia election law and federal election law. What happened to Mr. Law & Order?

Tomorrow, under various provisions of federal law and the Constitution, Congress will meet to formally recognize Joe Biden as the incoming president. That joint session of Congress is a formality that is steeped in symbolism. It is a public pronouncement that democracy reigns in America. It is a public pronouncement of respect for the smooth transition of power that arises from the electoral system created by the Constitution, federal law, and election laws all over America. Exhibiting a complete lack of patriotism, and extreme psychopathic narcissism, Mr. Law & Order has arranged protests to attack the election results. He will speak at a protest in Washington and lead the attack on our democracy! Trump doesn't give a hoot about democracy, the Constitution, federal law, or state election laws. He doesn't care about the fact that the people have spoken. He doesn't care about the fact that 83 judges have ruled against his various challenges to the election results. Mr. Law & Order only cares about himself. The "law and order" stuff is a sham. It was an empty sales pitch.

Thankfully, the voters didn't buy the snake oil and they sent Trump packing. Inauguration Day can't come soon enough. If anyone had any doubts, Trump's final days have conclusively proven that he's been the most deplorable president in American history.

[discountroofing]

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You will find that your Conroe Roofer Near Me, the process is simple, detailed, easy to understand, and straightforward. As Roofing Conroe TX, we don't gimmicks, deception, and snake oil salesmen... We detest the high pressured sales pitch! Our company is with you from start to finish! be it your residential or Commercial Roofing Conroe. With Conroe Local Roofer around you can rest assure that you are in the best hands in the industry. Our Roofers Conroe professional and honest approach makes Discount Roofing the best residential roofing company in Conroe, TX! If you are searching for a Roofing Companies in Conroe TX, give us a call today! 936-756-1170

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[easyfoodnetwork]

You Don’t Have to Be on a Diet Right Now

lunamarina/Shutterstock

Memes about gaining weight during quarantine are everywhere, and they’re body-shaming at its most insidious

As soon as it became clear that the only way to mitigate the impact of the novel coronavirus was to isolate and stay indoors, talk of the “quarantine 15,” a horrifyingly timely update to the “freshman 15,” was inevitable. Stuck inside our homes with only Netflix and snacks as comfort in the middle of what is arguably the most uncertain time in modern history, many of us were more worried about getting fat than contracting an illness that makes it so difficult to breathe that you might die.

It manifested, of course, in memes. One popular meme depicted a woman rolling her floured belly onto a cutting board like yeasted bread dough. “So after this quarantine, will the producers of My 600 Pound Life just find me,” another meme wondered. Self-described fitness experts shared at-home workouts, with posts detailing how to use one’s own body weight and the canned goods we’ve all stockpiled to stave off isolation-related weight gain. Some fitfluencers suggested putting on actual pants, the kind that button, every couple of days to make sure that you’re not gaining weight, because your comfy pants will “make you believe that all is well in the kingdom.” All together, it adds up to a neverending trickle of body-shaming.

It almost makes sense. In the middle of a global health crisis, why shouldn’t people try to stay as healthy as possible? But, of course, there is nothing healthy about diet culture, which encourages everything from orthorexia, or an obsession with “clean eating,” to other forms of disordered eating in its pursuit of thinness above all else. These memes function as a shroud for the obvious harm that diet culture does to all of us. More than that, these jokes hide diet culture’s insidious connections to classism, body shame, and a multibillion-dollar industry that stands to profit from all of us deeply hating ourselves.

First, jokes about the horrors of getting fat are a direct and painful jab at people who are actually fat in the present tense. All of us that exist in “before”-picture bodies are keenly aware that many people would rather be dead than fat. There’s nothing like seeing your thin friends react with disgust to photos of bodies that look just like yours. Every time you share one of those memes, you let the fat people in your life know exactly what you think of them — that their bodies are disgusting, and you’ll do just about anything, including periods of literal starvation, to avoid looking like them.

And diet culture doesn’t just harm fat people. It reminds all of us that we are not good enough, that being just a little bit thinner and more toned is the key to happiness. Quarantine-themed workouts targeting “problem areas” like chubby arms, bellies, and thighs remind us that the things we are told to be self-conscious about are, in fact, not good enough. Weight Watchers and NutriSystem literally would not exist without stoking fears that the couple of extra pounds that come with disrupting normal life will transform everyone into fat, shapeless monsters.

What’s so frustrating about all of this self-torture is that science has told us, over and over, that it is extremely unlikely to work. Somewhere around 95 percent of all dieters will eventually gain back all of the weight that they lost. Often it will be more, because dieting trains our bodies to hold on to every single calorie like it’s the last one we’ll ever eat. Diet culture isn’t successful because dieting works, it’s because it’s designed to set you up to fail. If it were, in fact, possible to “lose all the weight and keep it off,” we wouldn’t all be dieting all the damn time.

And don’t think that the industry doesn’t see this moment as an opportunity. Multilevel marketing shillers and snake oil salesmen immediately realized that this is their time to shine, hawking everything from quarantine-friendly diet plans to vitamins that will allegedly prepare the immune system to fight off the novel coronavirus. As a journalist, I’ve been pitched everything from bone broths to protein powders that will allegedly boost my immune system while warding off weight gain.

Most crucially, many of us aren’t sitting indoors just watching Netflix and relaxing. For the millions of people who have lost their jobs in the service industry and beyond, these are not times of abundance and leisure. People are having a hard enough time figuring out where their next meal is coming from, and shaming them because that meal is a package of ramen noodles or a fast-food burger is at best a dick move, and at worst a classist punch-down at people who are doing their best to survive. Admonishing working parents feeding their kids what they’ve got instead of veggie-packed bento boxes they can’t afford is as cruel as it is pointless.

Being stuck indoors, socially isolated and inundated with diet culture bullshit, is particularly fraught for people who are struggling with disordered eating habits. These unhealthy eating patterns are much more common than we think, and aren’t limited to the clinical diagnosis of illnesses like anorexia and bulimia. The leap from dieting to disordered eating is often not that dramatic, and because being stuck indoors can limit access to mental health treatment, it’s a good idea to err on the side of not being a complete asshole to those who are stuck at home, suffering in silence, enduring countless jokes about the weight that people are terrified to gain.

What we should really be doing right now is figuring out how to stop fighting with our bodies every single day. That is a productive use of this time, especially considering that no amount of starvation or exercise is going to make this pandemic feel any less scary, and no amount of thinness can protect any of us from contracting COVID-19. What is possible, though, is using this time to be a little bit nicer to both our own bodies, and the bodies that we are told are not good enough.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3bJDCUY https://ift.tt/3aALGqV

lunamarina/Shutterstock

Memes about gaining weight during quarantine are everywhere, and they’re body-shaming at its most insidious

As soon as it became clear that the only way to mitigate the impact of the novel coronavirus was to isolate and stay indoors, talk of the “quarantine 15,” a horrifyingly timely update to the “freshman 15,” was inevitable. Stuck inside our homes with only Netflix and snacks as comfort in the middle of what is arguably the most uncertain time in modern history, many of us were more worried about getting fat than contracting an illness that makes it so difficult to breathe that you might die.

It manifested, of course, in memes. One popular meme depicted a woman rolling her floured belly onto a cutting board like yeasted bread dough. “So after this quarantine, will the producers of My 600 Pound Life just find me,” another meme wondered. Self-described fitness experts shared at-home workouts, with posts detailing how to use one’s own body weight and the canned goods we’ve all stockpiled to stave off isolation-related weight gain. Some fitfluencers suggested putting on actual pants, the kind that button, every couple of days to make sure that you’re not gaining weight, because your comfy pants will “make you believe that all is well in the kingdom.” All together, it adds up to a neverending trickle of body-shaming.

It almost makes sense. In the middle of a global health crisis, why shouldn’t people try to stay as healthy as possible? But, of course, there is nothing healthy about diet culture, which encourages everything from orthorexia, or an obsession with “clean eating,” to other forms of disordered eating in its pursuit of thinness above all else. These memes function as a shroud for the obvious harm that diet culture does to all of us. More than that, these jokes hide diet culture’s insidious connections to classism, body shame, and a multibillion-dollar industry that stands to profit from all of us deeply hating ourselves.

First, jokes about the horrors of getting fat are a direct and painful jab at people who are actually fat in the present tense. All of us that exist in “before”-picture bodies are keenly aware that many people would rather be dead than fat. There’s nothing like seeing your thin friends react with disgust to photos of bodies that look just like yours. Every time you share one of those memes, you let the fat people in your life know exactly what you think of them — that their bodies are disgusting, and you’ll do just about anything, including periods of literal starvation, to avoid looking like them.

And diet culture doesn’t just harm fat people. It reminds all of us that we are not good enough, that being just a little bit thinner and more toned is the key to happiness. Quarantine-themed workouts targeting “problem areas” like chubby arms, bellies, and thighs remind us that the things we are told to be self-conscious about are, in fact, not good enough. Weight Watchers and NutriSystem literally would not exist without stoking fears that the couple of extra pounds that come with disrupting normal life will transform everyone into fat, shapeless monsters.

What’s so frustrating about all of this self-torture is that science has told us, over and over, that it is extremely unlikely to work. Somewhere around 95 percent of all dieters will eventually gain back all of the weight that they lost. Often it will be more, because dieting trains our bodies to hold on to every single calorie like it’s the last one we’ll ever eat. Diet culture isn’t successful because dieting works, it’s because it’s designed to set you up to fail. If it were, in fact, possible to “lose all the weight and keep it off,” we wouldn’t all be dieting all the damn time.

And don’t think that the industry doesn’t see this moment as an opportunity. Multilevel marketing shillers and snake oil salesmen immediately realized that this is their time to shine, hawking everything from quarantine-friendly diet plans to vitamins that will allegedly prepare the immune system to fight off the novel coronavirus. As a journalist, I’ve been pitched everything from bone broths to protein powders that will allegedly boost my immune system while warding off weight gain.

Most crucially, many of us aren’t sitting indoors just watching Netflix and relaxing. For the millions of people who have lost their jobs in the service industry and beyond, these are not times of abundance and leisure. People are having a hard enough time figuring out where their next meal is coming from, and shaming them because that meal is a package of ramen noodles or a fast-food burger is at best a dick move, and at worst a classist punch-down at people who are doing their best to survive. Admonishing working parents feeding their kids what they’ve got instead of veggie-packed bento boxes they can’t afford is as cruel as it is pointless.

Being stuck indoors, socially isolated and inundated with diet culture bullshit, is particularly fraught for people who are struggling with disordered eating habits. These unhealthy eating patterns are much more common than we think, and aren’t limited to the clinical diagnosis of illnesses like anorexia and bulimia. The leap from dieting to disordered eating is often not that dramatic, and because being stuck indoors can limit access to mental health treatment, it’s a good idea to err on the side of not being a complete asshole to those who are stuck at home, suffering in silence, enduring countless jokes about the weight that people are terrified to gain.

What we should really be doing right now is figuring out how to stop fighting with our bodies every single day. That is a productive use of this time, especially considering that no amount of starvation or exercise is going to make this pandemic feel any less scary, and no amount of thinness can protect any of us from contracting COVID-19. What is possible, though, is using this time to be a little bit nicer to both our own bodies, and the bodies that we are told are not good enough.

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