
Unheard History of Bodybuilding Forums - smn1234
https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-unheard-history-of-bodybuilding-forums-as-told-by-the-trolls-and-counter-trolls-who-made-them-huge
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gerbilly
Awesome thread, where body builders argue about how many days there are in a
week:
[https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=107926751](https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=107926751)

~~~
hbosch
Omg, this is awesome. I love this quote:

> "You don't count what day it is when counting days, I just explained that.
> If today is SATURDAY, it's not 2 days until SUNDAY now is it?"

The sheer concept that Sunday to Sunday = 1 week versus Sunday to Saturday = 1
week is kind of bending my brain.

~~~
hombre_fatal
"Sorry to hijack, but Josh dude how are you arguing with a calender?"

"He is in Josh world. The g'damn dumbest world in the universe!"

Classic. Reminds me of arguing Xbox vs Playstation as a teen on neogaf.com.

~~~
codesushi42
This whole article takes me back to the late 90s/early 2000s gaming message
boards when NeoGAF was simply "Gaming Age Forums".

A lot of shit talking, and some on-topic discussion about gaming every now and
then.

What a wonderful time to have been a teen.

~~~
baud147258
Shit talking/posting on gaming forums do still exists. I joined a 20-year old
forum 2 years ago and some thread are funny and some threads are on-topic

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cyberUltraFlex
Body building forums were really _weird_ places, back around 2002, up until
maybe 2004 when MySpace started to explode, and then, eventually Facebook.

I remember encountering at least one, and the passages I read tended to brush
up against a sort of dimwitted infantile fan fiction, mixing bizarre fantasies
with near-zero understanding of human anatomy and physiology.

One particular discussion that sticks out in my mind was something akin to a
12 year-old's musings (and it might, very well, _have_ been some little kid),
about how protein travels from a dinner plate all the way into the muscles,
and it was tempting to believe one person was sock puppeting the whole thread,
pretending to carry multiple sides of the conversation, as a sort of blend of
creative writing and performance art, but just based on the voice and tone of
the various replies, it really did seem like some sort of group fantasy role
playing session.

This was before I knew the true depth and breadth of furry subculture, and
eventually, once I became more familiarized with such facts of life, and
developed an understanding of the intersection of interests between fan
fiction and fur suit fetishists, I surmized that on some level, what had been
going on with all those body building forums was that a subset of the fur
suit/fan fiction subculture had begun to fantasize collectively about bulging
human muscles and oiled up skin, as if it were a form of fur suit, and then
took to authoring concept pieces, to role play within that context.

In the same way that ASMR is something akin to an alt-kink version of phone
sex, this sort of thing seemed to be likened to alt-cybering in an obscure
sub-genre of fur kink.

Anyway, that was the weird shit I remember bumping into back then. Now I
suspect it's all rolled into the general morasse of Facebook flotsam, diluted
and washed out. Maybe it's better that way... _Maybe._

~~~
chipperyman573
Why was this marked dead? It doesn't seem off-topic or anything.

~~~
pault
Green users often get their comments deaded. Possibly because they used the
word "sockpuppet" which would definitely be a heuristic for low quality
flamebait.

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oarabbus_
Bodybuildingforum is one of the most entertaining and influential places on
the internet. I honestly believe it to be on par with 4chan in scope of
"internet cultural influence"

~~~
aasasd
Yeah, one thing that helps to get the idea is the number of KYM articles that
point to that site as the source of memes.

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NeoBasilisk
It's always weird to see articles like this talking about traditional forum
sites as if no one uses them anymore.

~~~
HNLurker2
Maybe it will die out just like livejournal

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Scoundreller
> The articles used to have automatic comments sections after each, but the
> members were such know-it-alls that the site, despite paying staff very
> well, had difficulty retaining authors. Eventually, that particular place
> nuked its comments because these members were just the worst type of
> internet experts, and authors didn’t want their serious work to be followed
> by a thousand forum comments that begin with ‘well actually.’”

Well actually, author-marketers didn’t like paying money for an “article” only
to get trashed for it.

And site operators didn’t want “authors” to realize their “serious” product
placements caused a negative impression.

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paavoova
Elliot Rodger posted on the Misc subforum. In retrospect, reading his posts is
like a morbid dark comedy - the lack of social awareness, the insecurity, all
shone through to the point of feeling insincere. It could very well have been
a troll, there was no way to know. It's no wonder he barely aroused alarm
despite posting his ideologies on many a public forum including Youtube. He
indirectly mentions posting on Misc in his manifesto, and how he ultimately
failed to reach his fitness goals and the subsequent insecurities. I can't
help but wonder if people like him would be or have been better off without
ever coming across communities like BB forums. There's little to glorify, it's
not a part of internet "culture" to look fondly back on.

~~~
awareBrah
I actually posted in one of his threads. The sad part is I and I’m sure 99% of
miscers were convinced it was a troll post.

The stuff he wrote was so unbelievable that it seems to be designed to trigger
some members. I specifically remember a post where he bragged about having a
bmw and still had no luck with girls and he saw <some other race> in a Honda
with a pretty girl and he couldn’t believe it.

It was so outlandish it was impossible to take seriously.

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jayar95
Any miscers checking in?

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veryworried
Admitting to being a miscer might put you on privately run HN blacklists.

~~~
justtopost
Thats next level echochamber. Do people actually do this?

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veryworried
Yup, even custom css to help point out who you should downvote.

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strken
That's really interesting. Can you point to a github repo or chrome extension
or something?

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veryworried
These groups tend to be invite only and don’t publicly post this code as it
reveals usernames of people on blacklists, but if you search around discord
channels or some subreddits you might find them.

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beezle
The 90s also had the Weights mailing list. It was moderated so always a pretty
respectful place but the advent of web based forums ended it.

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adreamingsoul
Time is relative?

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HeyLaughingBoy
Jeez. No comments about tuna shakes?

:-)

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atomical
A really intriguing story related to bodybuilding is the story of DatBTrue.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/sports/doping-thomas-
mann...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/sports/doping-thomas-mann-
peptides.html)

He convinced a lot of people that he was an expert at all things science
despite using an incredibly immature writing style. It turns out he was a
lawyer!

~~~
robax
Tangentially related but, Zyzz was also a hugely popular member of the BB
forum. He was known as having one of the most desirable physiques and had a
big personality (he frequently posted videos of himself at the club).

It was then discovered he was using steroids, which caused some of the
community to hate him. He got booked for a reality show, but then died due to
an undiagnosed heart defect.

[https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/zyzz](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/zyzz)

~~~
whycombagator
You’re confusing bb.com with DatBTrue. Zyzz was not a member of the latter

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robax
Yeah, I could have worded that better. I know Zyzz was on bb.com only (well,
and 4chan).

