4

Bodybuilding Forums

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Bodybuilding is a lot more productive than becoming a Level 90 wizard, but about as useful for solving modern problems. In fact, it can cause more, because it's a brilliant pastime but a shitty identity. Which is how bodybuilding forums become Ecto Containment Units: electronic grids filled with raging spirits just itching to fling slime on people. The result is a powder keg filled with whey and testosterone. Which is also a pretty good physical description of the worst offenders.

via Know Your Meme
Even their memes make you want to LIFT your computer and hurl it out a window.

These forums created the "Do you even lift" meme, the only thing in the world that's worse when it's not ironic. Arguments explode like the herniated biceps brought ever closer by people pounding their CAPS LOCK keys. Some are incapable of counting anything they can't deadlift, and spend pages screaming about how many days there are in a week (no, seriously, that's a genuine argument that happened). Either that or the incredible mass of their gains really does distort the swole-time continuum around their workout schedules.

forums.bodybuilding.com
This exchange destroyed more keyboards than Hulk playing piano.

Losing an intellectual debate with a calendar is bad, but to get really pathetic, you need to hear them whining about women.

Bodybuilding
Thanks for the advice, bro.

3

Wrestling Site Commenters

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Go to the comments on any wrestling site, and you'll find fans accusing each other of being fans. Which you'd think was the entire point of the comments section, website, and multi-million-dollar industry. There could only be more layers to this imaginary world in which fans aren't cool if M.C. Escher advertised air conditioning.

Pixabay
"Ugh, BTX-9000, you're such a thermodynamics mark."

"You're just a Cena mark!" one will cry before claiming that HHH is objectively better, as if wrestlers grappled with fundamental forces of the universe. But wrestling can't be objective. Physics can't prove a DDT is definitely better than a Tombstone Piledriver, because Physics is too busy wondering why they don't just repeatedly hit each other with chairs if they're allowed to do that, until its granddaughter, Biology, explains, "Because it's more fun, duh."

It's this bizarre inversion where athletes are paid to pretend to fight physically, but the fans end up hating each other for real. If I like Alberto Del Rio and you like Cesaro, we're done! That's our entire requirement to enjoy all the matches! And we'll both enjoy one particular match even more! Discussing their relative strengths is fun, but criticizing people for being biased toward one wrestler over another is the most dangerous game a fan can play. Once you start examining the reality of wrestling, it collapses like a Spanish announcer's table. But that's what we end up with on every single wrestling comments section. Every comment, no matter how innocent or meaningless, ends up breaking down into this:

Via Wrestlezone

2

Park Trail Users

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Park trails are some of the most beautiful locations in the world. They have all the idyllic peace of the wild and all the modern security of not being devoured by hungry carnivores. Unfortunately, the whole point of a trail is allowing humans on. So of course we ruin it. Hikers, bikers, and horseback riders are locked in a low-tech version of Motorstorm: Wilderness Rift, a conflict for domination of the gentle pastoral strolls. It's Mad Max without the drought and a maximum of one horsepower.

Pixabay
"Don't look at me, I just work here."

They're ridiculously angry online, because it's ridiculous that any of their anger would be online. Their whole deal is being offline, all-natural, and accelerating away from a keyboard as fast as their chosen locomotion will allow. But when these groups come together on forums or social media, watching the ensuing hatred is like witnessing the death throes of an impending supernova. And what is the crux of 90 percent of these spats? "No, I know more about nature."

Outside Online
"We both like the environment, and we hate each other for it."

And they rarely begin without some comically large bias intact ...

Just Trails
Solid start.

Some have started self-destructively sabotaging the trails to win pointless fights in the shittiest possible example of our entire species. There are reports of potentially lethal wires strung across trails, or logs and rocks hauled around to hamper anyone on anything but foot. You'll notice that these strategies only make sense for the foot traffic faction. But these guerrilla tactics are only sane when cavalry is invading your country, not when you're sharing a public park.

Just Trails
"I know more than a few guys," usually means "I know one guy."

1

Katana Enthusiasts

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As with all of the items on this list, there are a few specific kinds of sword enthusiasts. The first and best of these are those who think that swords are awesome, because they are. Most of us are actually in that category, so high five. The worst of these are those who swing blindly in the direction of anyone who might dishonor their holy weapon of choice. Unable to act like the ancient warriors that they revere, they're forced to use more modern tactics. And by that, I mean they call people "retard" in YouTube comments.

YouTube
Just like the samurai used to do.

A lot of katana enthusiasts can be found in that second category. They're dedicated to a weapon several centuries out of date, but using Google alerts to check for attacks every five milliseconds. At which point they prove that their blades are useless in the 21st Century by trying to defend them at long range.

Pixabay
"Tawagoto o hanashite ita kikimashita!"

YouTube is full of katana demonstrations, and if you read through the comments sections, you'll find that absolutely no one except the person currently writing the comment knows how to use one. For instance, in this video, a man with the most infectious laugh on the planet acknowledges that he doesn't know everything about katanas, but wants to "mythbust" with them, probably because katana comments are like Superman comics: With every new one, the subject gets an incredible new power that makes it even more unstoppable and perfect. It's a bit presumptuous to "mythbust," but why get mad at him? He just wants to see if the katana can cut through stuff. "Fun? Nah," says the internet. "Let's make this punk regret all of his interests, and then argue about anime for no reason."

YouTube

The comments are often alternate history fanfiction. They explain how the ancient katana makers somehow invented nanotechnology by hand as they "folded" the metal ten million times. Never mind how they only folded it because they were using the shittiest possible metal, or how folding it more than 20 times makes it even shittier. The average katana wielder would be better off rolling up a newspaper.

Pixabay
Plus, every newspaper reminds you that it's 2016, aka "Katana Kryptonite."

They will pour out pages of bullshit about "five-body blades", and yes, that's a blade which can hack through five bodies in a single swing, because no weapon is worth anything unless it deals Dead Rising 3 levels of damage. It's also amazing how many amateur metallurgists just happen to wander by to spout more random numbers and imaginary metals than the Terminator franchise.

If you enjoy katanas because they're ridiculously cool, that's brilliant! Have fun! But if you must fantasize about a blade which can cut through anything, made with magical ancient technology, and utterly immune to everything we've ever learned about physics, just imagine lightsabers like the rest of us.

YouTube
You've got a dumb username, but your heart's in the right place.

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