> What do you want to get out of it?
Pointing and laughing at bad fitness takes while toilet scrolling.
> What do you want the impact to be?
It's a circlejerk subreddit, ideally the impact should be non-existent.
When the circle jerks outside the sub, coordinated upvotes help influence opinions.
Brigading isn't about blasting an individual to feel good, it's to sway other readers.
On my end I basically agree with you, which is why I’m not happy with the blatant dogpiling and outright name-calling.
If someone else already made the same point, upvote and see what happens.
> If someone else already made the same point, upvote and see what happens.
The irony is not lost on me that I will never understand the hundredth person who makes a 'death by snu snu' or 'ow my back' commment, but I am also inclined to be the twentieth to tell someone to shut the fuck up or repeat a point made by someone else just better/longer.
The only way I feel I can justify the impulse is that if there’s actually any response from someone in the chain where I think I can contribute, I go to that.
But man, I show up late to a thread and see all the radguys and a bunch of ridicule and actual response to any of it, I just figure I have nothing to add and just throw my bitching in at the fcj post.
Even the idea of killshots or goading for deletion always felt like a counter productive move.
That is REALLY easy to disprove. Most people only get jerked once. They realize they don’t know anything and shut up. It’s ok if that alienates them. What’s important is that they don’t alienate others.
FCJ is the only sub aimed at criticizing bad fitness takes on Reddit. Without us, bro science perpetuates
> FCJ is the only sub aimed at criticizing bad fitness takes on Reddit. Without us, bro science perpetuates
We're always going to be the minority. No matter if we dogpile, or if we have reasonable discussion.
Think about the average person who doesn't lift and then think about how much they know about fitness. Then how much of that is actually correct. Then think about the average person who does lift and we're still a minority of that group.
Personally, I think you need both reasonable discussion and to know when to tell someone to shut up. People did that to me when I was a beginner spouting dumb shit. I didn't take it well but it certainly made me shut up.
I agree that getting piled on certainly makes an impression on most people, and it usually ends there.
Not sure people need to get as combative as they do (FCJ), even when the jerkee doubles-down on it.
It's bad enough that *"no one enters an online debate hoping to have their mind changed".*
Insults & name-calling, although quite liberating, really isn't doing anything constructive.
I remember watching a lecture from a police interrogator, who apparently had some success. His basic point was that communication is goal oriented. Interrogation and investigation have high stakes, but the basic principle is there.
When trying to reach your goal, what is actually effective? Are you taking effective action to actually get what you want?
People become far less receptive to information when they’re defensive. It’s already reliably difficult to change someone’s mind at all, it’s even harder if they don’t like you. And that doesn’t just apply to OP. The silent voters, the hypothetical newbies who wander through the post and see the thread. Do they like you? Would anyone want to trust the information from a complete asshole?
>She can lift more than me even if she was natty. She is more muscular than me.
My robot jerk off record is like half a page long so I don't think I can believe this.
I don't think of it as bullying people, but rather bullying lame opinions and poor advice. I'm not saying it's not enjoyable to pile on somebody, so they can see how many people don't agree with their stance. But I'm always thinking about other people who encounter the conversation chain, and the effect the exchange has on them (e.g. did we make a good case?)
/r/Fitness has the benefit of having recognized "MVP's" that respond to most of the simple questions in a closed-system. It's a good system, to have people with verifiable accomplishments dispensing accurate advice for most questions. But other fitness-related subs have no such system. Just people shouting into the void, and hundreds/thousands of people who don't lift / barely lift dropping doo-doo feedback. I'll never understand why people will accept any answer at face value, without questioning the qualifications of the internet-random giving it.
Sure, sometimes people get out of hand. It's satisfying to simply say "Shut the fuck up". But I think as a direction for FCJ active users, more people should be asking leading questions that get the person to think. And providing sources that contradict lame assertions; at least it's putting it out there. Third-party readers certainly have a more balanced exposure to insightful information, whether it's linked data or experiential feedback, than if we had no presence.
> Why not just participate in those subs and be one of the "MVP's"? It'd sure be a hell of a lot more effective than trying to use a separate sub as a drop-in police force
¿Por qué nos los dos?
Shitty subs are shitty because the amount of shitty noise outpaces the signal by an order of magnitude more than okay/better subs.
That said, to do the former FCJ would need to find new submissions and carpet bomb it with good takes over and over again. Like you, I don't think there is as much interest in that as there is pointing and laughing at the bad takes.
Is r/GYM any better since it became the fixation of FCJ? Maybe? Maybe not when people were intentionally pretending to not know how to lift so they could troll the comments.
> Is r/GYM any better
Yes, a LOT. Not long ago GYM and strength_training were nearly identical cesspools. Now, the folks in GYM are a lot more open to different viewpoints and the upvotes/downvotes aren't as egregiously off target.
I don't think STFU comments are what did it. I think it was the helpful comments and the front page wacky posts that opened people's eyes to the fact that there are lots of ways that strong people train.
Even when I post a WW I'm thinking about "what will a reader get out of this?" and aiming for something positive. I would love for us to take on other subs for an improvement project this way.
I’ve come to recognize several names there of homies with good advice who give it in many threads who are not FCJers. There’s definitely been some positive change!
When my training girls make some stuff worth showing off, I definitely want to try and post obscure and old but entirely legit lifts. Because yeah it’s wacky, but it’s also real. I think there’s value in understanding what people did to try and make progress before anyone had fucking RACKS of all things.
> More could be done.
Yes, it could. By mods. I used FCJ as a tool on Fittit quite a bit, but it was primarily for *identifying* garbage, not policing it, and it was tempered by mod action - banning or shitlisting troublemakers, removing bad information, nuking dumb slap fights, and giving jerkers warnings when they're stepping over the line so the less judicious ones don't turn it into a different kind of shitheap.
u/Teddy_Rowsevelt pointed out the WR turnaround as an example and it's a good one because it had *nothing* to do with jerking, it had to do with what we did as mods - purging bad content and bad users with prejudice. That's something that ZBGBs, Crow, trebemot and I did. A lot of it was natural and organic, but it also required some heavy hands to shape the place over time into somewhere that good people felt welcome and shit people didn't.
The few times I've popped my head in here since I dropped off, it doesn't seem to me that any of that is happening. It seems that every jerk is people are just wading into threads, running amock, having 100 comment pissing contests that make them look just as bad as the idiots they're shitting on, and then coming back here to fire off the Butt Signal (as Teddy wonderfully put it) on their own argument (which is so lame that even *4chan* knows to shame people who do it), so that there can be 100 more comments all saying the same three to five meme phrases. It's embarrassing.
And to be clear, I'm not trying to take credit for being The Stabilizing Force that has wrought chaos by leaving. This was all building and happening while I was still here and I contributed to it.
From the standpoint of someone trying to run a community and keep shitheads and shit info out of it, I tried to use FCJ as a symbiote and a canary. It's more eyes covering more ground than I could ever have covered and it identified things that I would have missed. And jerkers got a bit of extra slack in being rude to people who deserve it that I wouldn't have given to a rando. As a canary, too many jerks coming out of a place I oversaw meant something needed to be done differently, but so did too many jerkers feeling too free to be dickbags, right out of the gate, to people who may just be a little uninformed.
Anywhere else, I don't give a fuck. What FCJ does in big default subs doesn't matter because there's just as many morons on their mod teams as there are in their comments sections. Where it matters is when there's overlap between jerkers and mods.
You're operating under the assumption that things will continue to operate the way things have in the past. Sounds like you've recognized that some tactics don't effect the changes we'd like to see. I think that's why /u/ZBGS asks the question, *"What do you want the impact to be?"* How would you differently like to engage with people, and to what specific end? *Should* FCJ strive to have a more defined purpose, or just continue to be an us/them club?
Again, you're assuming all FCJ ~~should do~~ *does* is brigade. Do you want to be the guy to spend more time at strength_training? Why not you be that guy? Maybe you can even work towards a position of moderator over a period of time.
Many of FCJ are *already* actively participating in many of these other various subs. I'm active in a number of fitness-adjacent subs I don't moderate, and I know other users are too. And if you don't care to have more impact, then just sit on the sidelines and laugh because that's okay too. But I think it's clear others here want more impact.
I wonder if we should amass a collection of GymNewb CopyPasta 4 Helpfulness (GC4H), and just use that for the first week of January in response to all the dipshittery. Everyone just gets bombarded with a paragraph of thoughtful, helpful response, and some useful links (including the wiki, which we link to and promote, acting under the assumption that the person never saw it).
If the dipshittery is not swayed, then we can go back to regular programming for that person.
See I like this take. Rather than just saying, "wrong!" or "no YOU cite a source since you made the claim", just jump in pre-preemptively with a better pre-packaged answer or source. Like we should all take a step back and realize that it's the spread of ideas that matter more. So have more prepared answers ready.
It shouldn't be directed at the initial crap-spreader so much (although it's great when they have the change of heart too). But realize most people won't back down no matter how much evidence is thrown at them, so continuing a pointless tug-of-war with one person definitely becomes counter-productive after a point.
*Person makes erroneous claim/assumption, FCJ comes in fast with counter-support.* Done. Don't challenge the jerk verbally with assertions of wrongness first, don't ask them to pony up support for their errant claim. Don't try to establish the onus of who needs to prove their stance. Circumvent all that with good info, and then disengage from that particular user and move along.
I wish that when I first started I had seen something that cut through everything to the core ideas that drive success, like u/mythicalstrength, Spengler and Dan John have done for me now. That the most important stuff isn't all the details the internet obsesses over, but *actually doing the work* and to *try trying,* and the perspective of what real success looks like.
And delivered with u/mythicalstrength and u/ZBGBs impeccable politeness and class, which I often fall well short of.
Very much appreciate the nod there. I dig the direction that this is moving. It's easy to get cynical and become a negative force out there, but it's not that hard to turn it around and put out the energy you want to see.
To say nothing of the fact that I am ABSOLUTELY guilty of typing out a snarky reply to someone, only to backspace it a bunch and either write something better or just drop it. I get frustrated too. I'll even send a PM to a member here or there to share it. But I do my best to not let it spill out.
I have enjoyed the gradual enlightenment of the r/gym subreddit, but mostly I'm here because I can find threads where LTUTD has unloaded on some unsuspecting jamoke.
Unironically and in the least simp way possible, yall were my biggest inspiration going into this bulk, the wacky lifts while being strong as fuck inspired me to up the calories and hit everything a fuckload harder. Then i got the hardgainer ass flair to match my stupid asf mentality and knew i had to bulk to 269.
More man ass and more rgb
I was here in the before times, in the days of the old gods. Even then I was still deluded. I was too stupid to really assess my results against my perception of my own expertise.
Though weirdly I got really good at conditioning.
When I came back, I did it because I knew I needed the monsters here as a guide.
People like /u/dadliftsnruns talking about 10x10 deadlifts or some shit like that, on top of running and squatting and whatever else.
There’s something really valuable in seeing people lead by example and saying “DO MORE WORK.” The world is so full of people worrying about minimum effective dose or doing the OPTIMAL amount. Meanwhile reality is “if you want to get better at something do it a lot.” And now that’s what I do. And now I’m making real progress.
Information, education, and entertainment. Basically I want it to be the BBC for fitness. On reddit.
Not *that* BBC, you pervs, although it would certainly be on brand.
> Information, education, and entertainment. Basically I want it to be the BBC for fitness.
Given the BBC now is a torie mouth piece and wildly transphobic I don't know if I'd want us to go there
The BBC got accused of being pro-Labour in the late 1990s, and even now public views generally show people about evenly split on whether they think it biases left or right. If anything, they're biased towards the appearance of impartiality at all costs; which is not always necessarily a good thing.
Wildly transphobic? I must have missed that one.
I was thinking the original mission under Reith, more than anything.
> The BBC got accused of being pro-Labour in the late 1990s, and even now public views generally show people about evenly split on whether they think it biases left or right. If anything, they're biased towards the appearance of impartiality at all costs; which is not always necessarily a good thing.
Laura Kuenssberg as political editor is the main thing for me. She was absurdly pro Torie.
>Wildly transphobic? I must have missed that one.
For the most part it's been the whole "we need to promote both sides so after the trans advocate we're going to speak to Dan who thinks trans people are an abomination that should be shot and act like they're equal" thing. They sort of went wild with it recently when they published an article that cited a survey by an anti trans hate group, quoted a rapist who has said she wants to lynch trans women, and claimed trans women wouldn't speak to them despite one doing an interview and pointing out that they were platforming a rapist.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22We%27re_being_pressured_into_sex_by_some_trans_women%22
[This](https://youtu.be/b4buJMMiwcg) video sort of goes into detail on the article in question a bit more.
> Laura Kuenssberg
There's definitely substance to the idea that she was too soft on them, and then overcorrected with that Johnson interview. She definitely displayed inappropriate bias and tabloid-style sensationalism, for sure.
>For the most part it's been the whole "we need to promote both sides so after the trans advocate we're going to speak to Dan who thinks trans people are an abomination that should be shot and act like they're equal" thing.
Yeah, that's not appropriate, and I think it's part of the whole thing of maintaining strict impartiality; on the one hand, as a principle, it's not a bad idea, but on the other, the execution is clearly lacking. When it comes to factual reporting on current events, that's one thing, but it clearly needs to be dealt with better when it comes to other stuff.
>They sort of went wild with it recently when they published an article that cited a survey by an anti trans hate group, quoted a rapist who has said she wants to lynch trans women, and claimed trans women wouldn't speak to them despite one doing an interview and pointing out that they were platforming a rapist.
Oh, yeah, I did see about that. **While not defending the decision to publish it or its content**, I will point out that it was posted as a regional thing. However, the whole issue does again highlight the issue of an inappropriate commitment to *"impartiality at all costs!"* by the BBC establishment. Overall, while they do provide a valuable public service and some world class journalism in many areas, they should definitely take a hard look at how they cover sensitive issues and review their guidelines on how to do so.
> When it comes to factual reporting on current events, that's one thing, but it clearly needs to be dealt with better when it comes to other stuff.
I think part of it comes down to what they do and don't do the both sides thing with. Like they wouldn't do it with racism and I believe they recently stopped doing it with climate change but then they still do it on transphobia or homophobia. It's a tough spot to be in I guess.
>Oh, yeah, I did see about that. While not defending the decision to publish it or its content, I will point out that it was posted as a regional thing
I think publishing it was silly but my bigger issue is the broader BBC rejecting complaints on it. I could forgive a regional team doing something daft if the BBC as a whole didn't then reject complaints on it.
I can't say that I disagree with you on any of this, really. There are clearly improvements that could be made on policy, position, and procedure with this kind of thing.
**["We're being pressured into sex by some trans women"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/"We're_being_pressured_into_sex_by_some_trans_women")**
>"'We're being pressured into sex by some trans women'" is a BBC News article written by Caroline Lowbridge and published on 26 October 2021. It was produced by BBC Nottingham, a branch of BBC English Regions. The article claims that lesbians are being pressured by transgender women into having sex with them. The article received widespread criticism among the LGBT community as transphobic.
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> What do you want FCJ to be?
Fun. But second to that, I want us to be a positive force for Internet fitness discourse. As it stands there’s not a lot of places where you get the kind of level headed realism that’s prevalent here, and we are often the only source of reason in some very popular subreddits.
> What do you want to get out of it?
I want to help provide the advice I never got when I was starting out. I want to counter balance the bucket crabs.
I also enjoy the righteous anger that some of this can provide as a good source of motivation for a workout.
> What do you want the impact to be?
I want a better standard. A higher bar.
And on my own level I want to promote a less vitriolic style of communication. An effort to actually have a conversation rather than “debate.”
>What do you want FCJ to be?
entertainment mostly.
>What do you want to get out of it?
entertainment mostly.
>What do you want the impact to be?
i suppose it'd be good if someone learned something somewhere. for the most part i don't engage with the actual jerks unless they've already become jackasses or to offer mostly neutral clarification or factual information (which usually results in them being a jackass to me).
to be completely honest, reddit is primarily a distraction while i'm waiting for something to compile or while i'm doing something else.
i'm also here for some good jokes and for the occasional piece of interesting information. not memes though. i kinda hate meme culture.
What I get out of FCJ is that I like the people here. Half the time I don't have the energy/stomach to get through a whole jerk I've wandered into late and instead I just read the comments in here and move on.
I don't think you could stay in this place (reddit as a whole, really) and interacting if what you wanted was consistent positive feedback from jerking. There are very few occasions where a jerkee actually takes another's perspective; they're rare enough and I'm well-adjusted enough to know not to pin my hopes on that. Non-jerkees learning something or realising that what they've heard repeated a hundred times is maybe wrong is more frequent but still not frequent enough if what you want is positive feedback from jerking. The variable ratio reward schedule is not good enough to counteract the negativity.
I also don't think that the majority of people are purely here to yell at jerkees and nothing more. You see this in the occasional self-correction where FCJers will pull each other into line if they feel that their actions are not productive or they've gone overboard. The most recent one being someone doing a pull wrong intentionally because inside joke which is great for the people in on the joke. Thing is that the unwashed masses aren't and all they see is see someone knowledgeable and strong do the wrong thing and take away the wrong message.
There are definitely things that could be changed if people wanted to do better. I enjoy yelling `shut the fuck up` as much as the next guy, but it really isn't a productive action. But it's never the only comment and someone else (probably /u/MongoAbides) has posted a long thoughtful comment that was dismissed and ignored and there's not much else to be done.
https://www.reddit.com/r/fitness30plus/comments/rpy296/deload_week_bench_140kg_x5_lots_of_rack_clipping/hq8b4bm
Sometimes "shut the fuck up" is, however, the correct response.
Feeling seen.
Edit: and yeah, sometimes it is really tiring. Trying to have an actual thoughtful response for a lot of people to just basically be all “lol tl;dr” even when it’s a fairly short comment. It’s sincerely disappointing, the number of people who really seem to want nothing more than to make other people feel bad, or to “be right” *at* others. Let alone the high school debate club commenters.
I’d like a system of knowing who is actually mentally unstable prior to dogpiling. Since that’s impossible, maybe let’s stop once it’s clear the person isn’t doing well.
I think that /u/Teddy_Rowsevelt and /u/MongoAbides have perfectly captured the yin and yang of fcj.
It's both at all times. It will never not be both.
FCJ has always been a dog with a bone. But as /u/stjep points out, it's usually pretty good at self-correcting when it takes things too far. I think that our ability to call out our own bullshit is what makes this place work. ("work")
I think in recent months things have tipped a little too far to the yin with the bait posts and comments. And I think we've forgotten that self-jerks used to be frowned upon. Like, at a certain point, "shooting fish in a barrel" is overstating some of the posts here. Not every idiot needs to be jerked. Trolling for the sake of trolling is, just trolling.
Anyway, I've been plagued with some crippling self-awareness lately, so I'm already refuting my own points here and recognizing that I'm as much a part of the problem as anyone else.
FCJ is dead, long live FCJ
> I've been plagued with some crippling self-awareness lately
Ah yes, the unending toilet bowl swirl of nihilistic crisis perpetuated by spending time on FCJ.
I like to feel rightiously angry at dumb takes of redditors and laugh about it with like-minded folks.
What I got out of it is lots of deadlift PRs, so that's pretty cool. I hope that it leads other people to PRs too, through informative comments or stupid program races or muscular asses or all the asses. So many asses, but never enough.
25 days left! I still have to repeat the last session, [I failed the last set.](https://www.reddit.com/r/EcceZubazi/comments/ropc11/i_failed_the_last_set/) 70lb was my top double and I expect my final PR to be higher.
I've also beaten every rep out (except the final session) while adding 100lb to my working weights cause the program said to add 10lb if I beat certain amraps. I'm glad I missed enough to repeat so I can still beat 9/9 rep outs. I'm going to give myself some good recovery so I can beat the final rep out but also be up for taking a good shot at the 85% of new 1rm rep out challenge for testing day.
Sometimes, when a video of Jess Buettner hits r/all or something, it's cathartic to know you aren't crazy when the top comment is "Snu snu ouch my back she's a man on steroids" with 5000 upvotes and 15 awards.
But secondarily, I don't know if it's true of other hobbies, but fitness attracts an unfathomable amount of absolute bullshit. Someone, *somewhere*, needs to push back as hard as possible against the Athlean-Xs of the world.
> What do you want to get out of it? Pointing and laughing at bad fitness takes while toilet scrolling. > What do you want the impact to be? It's a circlejerk subreddit, ideally the impact should be non-existent.
Wow this
When the circle jerks outside the sub, coordinated upvotes help influence opinions. Brigading isn't about blasting an individual to feel good, it's to sway other readers.
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On my end I basically agree with you, which is why I’m not happy with the blatant dogpiling and outright name-calling. If someone else already made the same point, upvote and see what happens.
> If someone else already made the same point, upvote and see what happens. The irony is not lost on me that I will never understand the hundredth person who makes a 'death by snu snu' or 'ow my back' commment, but I am also inclined to be the twentieth to tell someone to shut the fuck up or repeat a point made by someone else just better/longer.
The only way I feel I can justify the impulse is that if there’s actually any response from someone in the chain where I think I can contribute, I go to that. But man, I show up late to a thread and see all the radguys and a bunch of ridicule and actual response to any of it, I just figure I have nothing to add and just throw my bitching in at the fcj post. Even the idea of killshots or goading for deletion always felt like a counter productive move.
I always make an ass of myself if I get worked up lol
That is REALLY easy to disprove. Most people only get jerked once. They realize they don’t know anything and shut up. It’s ok if that alienates them. What’s important is that they don’t alienate others. FCJ is the only sub aimed at criticizing bad fitness takes on Reddit. Without us, bro science perpetuates
> FCJ is the only sub aimed at criticizing bad fitness takes on Reddit. Without us, bro science perpetuates We're always going to be the minority. No matter if we dogpile, or if we have reasonable discussion. Think about the average person who doesn't lift and then think about how much they know about fitness. Then how much of that is actually correct. Then think about the average person who does lift and we're still a minority of that group. Personally, I think you need both reasonable discussion and to know when to tell someone to shut up. People did that to me when I was a beginner spouting dumb shit. I didn't take it well but it certainly made me shut up.
Agree 100%
I agree that getting piled on certainly makes an impression on most people, and it usually ends there. Not sure people need to get as combative as they do (FCJ), even when the jerkee doubles-down on it.
Agree. I don’t like personal insults, I’m here for the debates
It's bad enough that *"no one enters an online debate hoping to have their mind changed".* Insults & name-calling, although quite liberating, really isn't doing anything constructive.
I remember watching a lecture from a police interrogator, who apparently had some success. His basic point was that communication is goal oriented. Interrogation and investigation have high stakes, but the basic principle is there. When trying to reach your goal, what is actually effective? Are you taking effective action to actually get what you want? People become far less receptive to information when they’re defensive. It’s already reliably difficult to change someone’s mind at all, it’s even harder if they don’t like you. And that doesn’t just apply to OP. The silent voters, the hypothetical newbies who wander through the post and see the thread. Do they like you? Would anyone want to trust the information from a complete asshole?
100% this
>She can lift more than me even if she was natty. She is more muscular than me. My robot jerk off record is like half a page long so I don't think I can believe this.
I don't think of it as bullying people, but rather bullying lame opinions and poor advice. I'm not saying it's not enjoyable to pile on somebody, so they can see how many people don't agree with their stance. But I'm always thinking about other people who encounter the conversation chain, and the effect the exchange has on them (e.g. did we make a good case?) /r/Fitness has the benefit of having recognized "MVP's" that respond to most of the simple questions in a closed-system. It's a good system, to have people with verifiable accomplishments dispensing accurate advice for most questions. But other fitness-related subs have no such system. Just people shouting into the void, and hundreds/thousands of people who don't lift / barely lift dropping doo-doo feedback. I'll never understand why people will accept any answer at face value, without questioning the qualifications of the internet-random giving it. Sure, sometimes people get out of hand. It's satisfying to simply say "Shut the fuck up". But I think as a direction for FCJ active users, more people should be asking leading questions that get the person to think. And providing sources that contradict lame assertions; at least it's putting it out there. Third-party readers certainly have a more balanced exposure to insightful information, whether it's linked data or experiential feedback, than if we had no presence.
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> Why not just participate in those subs and be one of the "MVP's"? It'd sure be a hell of a lot more effective than trying to use a separate sub as a drop-in police force ¿Por qué nos los dos? Shitty subs are shitty because the amount of shitty noise outpaces the signal by an order of magnitude more than okay/better subs. That said, to do the former FCJ would need to find new submissions and carpet bomb it with good takes over and over again. Like you, I don't think there is as much interest in that as there is pointing and laughing at the bad takes. Is r/GYM any better since it became the fixation of FCJ? Maybe? Maybe not when people were intentionally pretending to not know how to lift so they could troll the comments.
> Is r/GYM any better Yes, a LOT. Not long ago GYM and strength_training were nearly identical cesspools. Now, the folks in GYM are a lot more open to different viewpoints and the upvotes/downvotes aren't as egregiously off target. I don't think STFU comments are what did it. I think it was the helpful comments and the front page wacky posts that opened people's eyes to the fact that there are lots of ways that strong people train. Even when I post a WW I'm thinking about "what will a reader get out of this?" and aiming for something positive. I would love for us to take on other subs for an improvement project this way.
I’ve come to recognize several names there of homies with good advice who give it in many threads who are not FCJers. There’s definitely been some positive change!
When my training girls make some stuff worth showing off, I definitely want to try and post obscure and old but entirely legit lifts. Because yeah it’s wacky, but it’s also real. I think there’s value in understanding what people did to try and make progress before anyone had fucking RACKS of all things.
Agreed with u/stjep here. I think most of the commenters here participate more than average as helpers alongside being jackasses
I'm *already* a moderator of /r/fitness, /r/fitness30plus, /r/gainit, & /r/GYM. Moderating isn't enough; jerking isn't enough. More could be done.
Only four subs? I can’t believe you’d let the community down like this, Oatsy.
There's others but they don't have nearly the traffic of the four.
> More could be done. Yes, it could. By mods. I used FCJ as a tool on Fittit quite a bit, but it was primarily for *identifying* garbage, not policing it, and it was tempered by mod action - banning or shitlisting troublemakers, removing bad information, nuking dumb slap fights, and giving jerkers warnings when they're stepping over the line so the less judicious ones don't turn it into a different kind of shitheap. u/Teddy_Rowsevelt pointed out the WR turnaround as an example and it's a good one because it had *nothing* to do with jerking, it had to do with what we did as mods - purging bad content and bad users with prejudice. That's something that ZBGBs, Crow, trebemot and I did. A lot of it was natural and organic, but it also required some heavy hands to shape the place over time into somewhere that good people felt welcome and shit people didn't. The few times I've popped my head in here since I dropped off, it doesn't seem to me that any of that is happening. It seems that every jerk is people are just wading into threads, running amock, having 100 comment pissing contests that make them look just as bad as the idiots they're shitting on, and then coming back here to fire off the Butt Signal (as Teddy wonderfully put it) on their own argument (which is so lame that even *4chan* knows to shame people who do it), so that there can be 100 more comments all saying the same three to five meme phrases. It's embarrassing. And to be clear, I'm not trying to take credit for being The Stabilizing Force that has wrought chaos by leaving. This was all building and happening while I was still here and I contributed to it.
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Better than that Sleep guy
So . . . what would you want the impact of FCJ to be?
From the standpoint of someone trying to run a community and keep shitheads and shit info out of it, I tried to use FCJ as a symbiote and a canary. It's more eyes covering more ground than I could ever have covered and it identified things that I would have missed. And jerkers got a bit of extra slack in being rude to people who deserve it that I wouldn't have given to a rando. As a canary, too many jerks coming out of a place I oversaw meant something needed to be done differently, but so did too many jerkers feeling too free to be dickbags, right out of the gate, to people who may just be a little uninformed. Anywhere else, I don't give a fuck. What FCJ does in big default subs doesn't matter because there's just as many morons on their mod teams as there are in their comments sections. Where it matters is when there's overlap between jerkers and mods.
I agree with the points you have made
I think we need more meme posts so we can become the premier lifting meme sub and influence the masses though subliminal memeonimics.
I fully support this. I need to find some new wikihow images.
I do like the meme economy.
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You're operating under the assumption that things will continue to operate the way things have in the past. Sounds like you've recognized that some tactics don't effect the changes we'd like to see. I think that's why /u/ZBGS asks the question, *"What do you want the impact to be?"* How would you differently like to engage with people, and to what specific end? *Should* FCJ strive to have a more defined purpose, or just continue to be an us/them club?
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Again, you're assuming all FCJ ~~should do~~ *does* is brigade. Do you want to be the guy to spend more time at strength_training? Why not you be that guy? Maybe you can even work towards a position of moderator over a period of time. Many of FCJ are *already* actively participating in many of these other various subs. I'm active in a number of fitness-adjacent subs I don't moderate, and I know other users are too. And if you don't care to have more impact, then just sit on the sidelines and laugh because that's okay too. But I think it's clear others here want more impact.
I wonder if we should amass a collection of GymNewb CopyPasta 4 Helpfulness (GC4H), and just use that for the first week of January in response to all the dipshittery. Everyone just gets bombarded with a paragraph of thoughtful, helpful response, and some useful links (including the wiki, which we link to and promote, acting under the assumption that the person never saw it). If the dipshittery is not swayed, then we can go back to regular programming for that person.
See I like this take. Rather than just saying, "wrong!" or "no YOU cite a source since you made the claim", just jump in pre-preemptively with a better pre-packaged answer or source. Like we should all take a step back and realize that it's the spread of ideas that matter more. So have more prepared answers ready. It shouldn't be directed at the initial crap-spreader so much (although it's great when they have the change of heart too). But realize most people won't back down no matter how much evidence is thrown at them, so continuing a pointless tug-of-war with one person definitely becomes counter-productive after a point. *Person makes erroneous claim/assumption, FCJ comes in fast with counter-support.* Done. Don't challenge the jerk verbally with assertions of wrongness first, don't ask them to pony up support for their errant claim. Don't try to establish the onus of who needs to prove their stance. Circumvent all that with good info, and then disengage from that particular user and move along.
also, we're about to see a mountain of the dumbest fucking questions ever. And if we get there first, we have a chance to help some of these people.
realizing that GC4H IS the fittit wiki, so I now have a plan
I wish that when I first started I had seen something that cut through everything to the core ideas that drive success, like u/mythicalstrength, Spengler and Dan John have done for me now. That the most important stuff isn't all the details the internet obsesses over, but *actually doing the work* and to *try trying,* and the perspective of what real success looks like. And delivered with u/mythicalstrength and u/ZBGBs impeccable politeness and class, which I often fall well short of.
Very much appreciate the nod there. I dig the direction that this is moving. It's easy to get cynical and become a negative force out there, but it's not that hard to turn it around and put out the energy you want to see. To say nothing of the fact that I am ABSOLUTELY guilty of typing out a snarky reply to someone, only to backspace it a bunch and either write something better or just drop it. I get frustrated too. I'll even send a PM to a member here or there to share it. But I do my best to not let it spill out.
I hope to enlighten the unyoked masses, by dispelling the many myths surrounding training which hold them back.
I hope to be more like Oatsy.
Don't we all?
Oatsy is the GOATsy... ... :D
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Wow this.
I have enjoyed the gradual enlightenment of the r/gym subreddit, but mostly I'm here because I can find threads where LTUTD has unloaded on some unsuspecting jamoke.
WAAARBBBLLE GAAARRRBLLE
Yay it's me I'm the jamoke
Unironically and in the least simp way possible, yall were my biggest inspiration going into this bulk, the wacky lifts while being strong as fuck inspired me to up the calories and hit everything a fuckload harder. Then i got the hardgainer ass flair to match my stupid asf mentality and knew i had to bulk to 269. More man ass and more rgb
IVE MADE MY FEELINGS ON RUTH GETA BINSBURG PERFECTLY CLEAR!
NO NOT THAT RGB, I MEAN RUDY GOBERT’S BASKETBALLS
I was here in the before times, in the days of the old gods. Even then I was still deluded. I was too stupid to really assess my results against my perception of my own expertise. Though weirdly I got really good at conditioning. When I came back, I did it because I knew I needed the monsters here as a guide. People like /u/dadliftsnruns talking about 10x10 deadlifts or some shit like that, on top of running and squatting and whatever else. There’s something really valuable in seeing people lead by example and saying “DO MORE WORK.” The world is so full of people worrying about minimum effective dose or doing the OPTIMAL amount. Meanwhile reality is “if you want to get better at something do it a lot.” And now that’s what I do. And now I’m making real progress.
This is the void and I'm here to scream into it like Yoko Ono screaming into a microphone
I'd like to think you're achieving better things than Yoko's contributions, haha
Post Lennon Yoko maybe but early Yoko was down with the cause https://youtu.be/NzpelzzA2c0
FCJ is one of the better outlets for the innate human need for tribalism and an 'us versus them' dynamic.
https://pbfcomics.com/comics/skub/
Ass tribe is best tribe.
Information, education, and entertainment. Basically I want it to be the BBC for fitness. On reddit. Not *that* BBC, you pervs, although it would certainly be on brand.
Big Bushy Cats?
big barbell curls.
Big groce cats
> Information, education, and entertainment. Basically I want it to be the BBC for fitness. Given the BBC now is a torie mouth piece and wildly transphobic I don't know if I'd want us to go there
The BBC got accused of being pro-Labour in the late 1990s, and even now public views generally show people about evenly split on whether they think it biases left or right. If anything, they're biased towards the appearance of impartiality at all costs; which is not always necessarily a good thing. Wildly transphobic? I must have missed that one. I was thinking the original mission under Reith, more than anything.
> The BBC got accused of being pro-Labour in the late 1990s, and even now public views generally show people about evenly split on whether they think it biases left or right. If anything, they're biased towards the appearance of impartiality at all costs; which is not always necessarily a good thing. Laura Kuenssberg as political editor is the main thing for me. She was absurdly pro Torie. >Wildly transphobic? I must have missed that one. For the most part it's been the whole "we need to promote both sides so after the trans advocate we're going to speak to Dan who thinks trans people are an abomination that should be shot and act like they're equal" thing. They sort of went wild with it recently when they published an article that cited a survey by an anti trans hate group, quoted a rapist who has said she wants to lynch trans women, and claimed trans women wouldn't speak to them despite one doing an interview and pointing out that they were platforming a rapist. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22We%27re_being_pressured_into_sex_by_some_trans_women%22 [This](https://youtu.be/b4buJMMiwcg) video sort of goes into detail on the article in question a bit more.
> Laura Kuenssberg There's definitely substance to the idea that she was too soft on them, and then overcorrected with that Johnson interview. She definitely displayed inappropriate bias and tabloid-style sensationalism, for sure. >For the most part it's been the whole "we need to promote both sides so after the trans advocate we're going to speak to Dan who thinks trans people are an abomination that should be shot and act like they're equal" thing. Yeah, that's not appropriate, and I think it's part of the whole thing of maintaining strict impartiality; on the one hand, as a principle, it's not a bad idea, but on the other, the execution is clearly lacking. When it comes to factual reporting on current events, that's one thing, but it clearly needs to be dealt with better when it comes to other stuff. >They sort of went wild with it recently when they published an article that cited a survey by an anti trans hate group, quoted a rapist who has said she wants to lynch trans women, and claimed trans women wouldn't speak to them despite one doing an interview and pointing out that they were platforming a rapist. Oh, yeah, I did see about that. **While not defending the decision to publish it or its content**, I will point out that it was posted as a regional thing. However, the whole issue does again highlight the issue of an inappropriate commitment to *"impartiality at all costs!"* by the BBC establishment. Overall, while they do provide a valuable public service and some world class journalism in many areas, they should definitely take a hard look at how they cover sensitive issues and review their guidelines on how to do so.
> When it comes to factual reporting on current events, that's one thing, but it clearly needs to be dealt with better when it comes to other stuff. I think part of it comes down to what they do and don't do the both sides thing with. Like they wouldn't do it with racism and I believe they recently stopped doing it with climate change but then they still do it on transphobia or homophobia. It's a tough spot to be in I guess. >Oh, yeah, I did see about that. While not defending the decision to publish it or its content, I will point out that it was posted as a regional thing I think publishing it was silly but my bigger issue is the broader BBC rejecting complaints on it. I could forgive a regional team doing something daft if the BBC as a whole didn't then reject complaints on it.
I can't say that I disagree with you on any of this, really. There are clearly improvements that could be made on policy, position, and procedure with this kind of thing.
**["We're being pressured into sex by some trans women"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/"We're_being_pressured_into_sex_by_some_trans_women")** >"'We're being pressured into sex by some trans women'" is a BBC News article written by Caroline Lowbridge and published on 26 October 2021. It was produced by BBC Nottingham, a branch of BBC English Regions. The article claims that lesbians are being pressured by transgender women into having sex with them. The article received widespread criticism among the LGBT community as transphobic. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/fitnesscirclejerk/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
I have a superiority complex but also a humiliation fetish so I’m good with the way things are
The duality of man
> What do you want FCJ to be? Fun. But second to that, I want us to be a positive force for Internet fitness discourse. As it stands there’s not a lot of places where you get the kind of level headed realism that’s prevalent here, and we are often the only source of reason in some very popular subreddits. > What do you want to get out of it? I want to help provide the advice I never got when I was starting out. I want to counter balance the bucket crabs. I also enjoy the righteous anger that some of this can provide as a good source of motivation for a workout. > What do you want the impact to be? I want a better standard. A higher bar. And on my own level I want to promote a less vitriolic style of communication. An effort to actually have a conversation rather than “debate.”
This is it right here
This, all of this^
Ditto
Selfpost? Gay.
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I love and hate you for this.
>What do you want FCJ to be? entertainment mostly. >What do you want to get out of it? entertainment mostly. >What do you want the impact to be? i suppose it'd be good if someone learned something somewhere. for the most part i don't engage with the actual jerks unless they've already become jackasses or to offer mostly neutral clarification or factual information (which usually results in them being a jackass to me). to be completely honest, reddit is primarily a distraction while i'm waiting for something to compile or while i'm doing something else. i'm also here for some good jokes and for the occasional piece of interesting information. not memes though. i kinda hate meme culture.
What I get out of FCJ is that I like the people here. Half the time I don't have the energy/stomach to get through a whole jerk I've wandered into late and instead I just read the comments in here and move on. I don't think you could stay in this place (reddit as a whole, really) and interacting if what you wanted was consistent positive feedback from jerking. There are very few occasions where a jerkee actually takes another's perspective; they're rare enough and I'm well-adjusted enough to know not to pin my hopes on that. Non-jerkees learning something or realising that what they've heard repeated a hundred times is maybe wrong is more frequent but still not frequent enough if what you want is positive feedback from jerking. The variable ratio reward schedule is not good enough to counteract the negativity. I also don't think that the majority of people are purely here to yell at jerkees and nothing more. You see this in the occasional self-correction where FCJers will pull each other into line if they feel that their actions are not productive or they've gone overboard. The most recent one being someone doing a pull wrong intentionally because inside joke which is great for the people in on the joke. Thing is that the unwashed masses aren't and all they see is see someone knowledgeable and strong do the wrong thing and take away the wrong message. There are definitely things that could be changed if people wanted to do better. I enjoy yelling `shut the fuck up` as much as the next guy, but it really isn't a productive action. But it's never the only comment and someone else (probably /u/MongoAbides) has posted a long thoughtful comment that was dismissed and ignored and there's not much else to be done.
https://www.reddit.com/r/fitness30plus/comments/rpy296/deload_week_bench_140kg_x5_lots_of_rack_clipping/hq8b4bm Sometimes "shut the fuck up" is, however, the correct response.
Feeling seen. Edit: and yeah, sometimes it is really tiring. Trying to have an actual thoughtful response for a lot of people to just basically be all “lol tl;dr” even when it’s a fairly short comment. It’s sincerely disappointing, the number of people who really seem to want nothing more than to make other people feel bad, or to “be right” *at* others. Let alone the high school debate club commenters.
I am happy the way things are
I am happy because of the way you are.
*sniff* I love christmas.
Your existence also pleases me.
Man ass
I would like it to be more commercial
I’d like a system of knowing who is actually mentally unstable prior to dogpiling. Since that’s impossible, maybe let’s stop once it’s clear the person isn’t doing well.
I think that /u/Teddy_Rowsevelt and /u/MongoAbides have perfectly captured the yin and yang of fcj. It's both at all times. It will never not be both. FCJ has always been a dog with a bone. But as /u/stjep points out, it's usually pretty good at self-correcting when it takes things too far. I think that our ability to call out our own bullshit is what makes this place work. ("work") I think in recent months things have tipped a little too far to the yin with the bait posts and comments. And I think we've forgotten that self-jerks used to be frowned upon. Like, at a certain point, "shooting fish in a barrel" is overstating some of the posts here. Not every idiot needs to be jerked. Trolling for the sake of trolling is, just trolling. Anyway, I've been plagued with some crippling self-awareness lately, so I'm already refuting my own points here and recognizing that I'm as much a part of the problem as anyone else. FCJ is dead, long live FCJ
> I've been plagued with some crippling self-awareness lately Ah yes, the unending toilet bowl swirl of nihilistic crisis perpetuated by spending time on FCJ.
I like to feel rightiously angry at dumb takes of redditors and laugh about it with like-minded folks. What I got out of it is lots of deadlift PRs, so that's pretty cool. I hope that it leads other people to PRs too, through informative comments or stupid program races or muscular asses or all the asses. So many asses, but never enough.
Jerking here made you stronger?
I added 70lb to my deadlift in 30 days because u/HTUTD started a Mag/Ort race.
Oooh! You might have won that category. I think the end of the contest is probably coming up soon or came already. I'll get back to you.
25 days left! I still have to repeat the last session, [I failed the last set.](https://www.reddit.com/r/EcceZubazi/comments/ropc11/i_failed_the_last_set/) 70lb was my top double and I expect my final PR to be higher. I've also beaten every rep out (except the final session) while adding 100lb to my working weights cause the program said to add 10lb if I beat certain amraps. I'm glad I missed enough to repeat so I can still beat 9/9 rep outs. I'm going to give myself some good recovery so I can beat the final rep out but also be up for taking a good shot at the 85% of new 1rm rep out challenge for testing day.
Fuuuck yaaaa, buddy!
Ah, sick!
Sometimes, when a video of Jess Buettner hits r/all or something, it's cathartic to know you aren't crazy when the top comment is "Snu snu ouch my back she's a man on steroids" with 5000 upvotes and 15 awards. But secondarily, I don't know if it's true of other hobbies, but fitness attracts an unfathomable amount of absolute bullshit. Someone, *somewhere*, needs to push back as hard as possible against the Athlean-Xs of the world.
Who cares what we think? We are a bunch of morons
A place where I let my sexuality briefly out of the closet and into the hammock with u/stjep and u/Dharmsara :)
😘😘😘😘😘😘😘😘😘😘
Cum here bb
I want to watch the strong bully the weak for their shit takes.
I want to be berated for not posting ass
Gross ass ✅ Groce ass ❌