“Y-you’re just trolling because you’re asking me to actually attack your argument instead of trying to poke holes in your story telling”
Honestly you’re being painfully childish here. I would really appreciate you approaching what I’ve said with the maturity and grace to not over analyze the exact specific of how I worded something I posted on an internet forum.
^^^ That. ^^^
If you’ve never been fit before, I’d recommend giving exercise a shot. A few weeks weightlifting or stretching can do wonders for things like fatigue in the day, as well as alleviate a lot of the common “I’m tired” symptoms like a bad back or joints.
OK, you owe me a keyboard!
Wait, wait, wait.
Back up.
You left out where you got the idea that I would be going into a gym in the first place.
If you can’t crack open a walnut with your cock, you might as well be a woman.
I mean lets be real here I’m tired of all these so called “men” walking around high and mighty while us poor walnut farmers struggle to make ends meet on account of their laziness
You did a shit-ass job of making the point you’re now claiming you were trying to make.
If your real complaint was nothing more specific than “People shouldn’t try to carry things that are too heavy for them because it endangers themselves and the people who are helping them carry the things”, that would have been fine. But that wasn’t what you said.
[QUOTE=elliott]
[…] the point of the thread wasn’t the arbitrary number I picked in the OP to demonstrate my point.
[/quote]
Like I said, that shit-ass job of point-making is all on your OP. I hope you checked to make sure those goalposts were within your lifting capacity before you started trying so assiduously to move them.
[QUOTE=elliott]
I’ll definitely say the average guy should be able to pick up at least 200 lbs though because its really not a heavy weight
[/quote]
:dubious: I thought you said that “arbitrary number” wasn’t the point, and here you are insisting on it again.
[QUOTE=elliott]
Do you want to defend people being unable to move safely because of being out of shape
[/QUOTE]
Your pathetic retreat to concern-trolling about the general public-health aspects of physical fitness is unconvincing. If that’s really what you were concerned about, then you shouldn’t have phrased your OP as basically a thinly disguised boast about “Nyah-nyah, I can carry half a heavy couch upstairs” [or at least its smaller top weight till I set it down on the landing] “and a bunch of weaklings that I don’t consider real men can’t!” [or at least they can’t stand on the stairs supporting most of the weight of the heavy couch after I’ve set down my “half” on the landing.]
“What you’ve said” is determined by “the exact specific of how you worded” what you said, dickwit.
And if “posting something on an internet forum” to you means “just randomly blowing off steam without having to worry about being called on the sense or consistency of what I actually said”, well, welcome to the Straight Dope. I don’t think you’re going to like it here.
Okay, that one earned you a “Welcome to the Dope.”
Welcome to the Dope! 
Shit, I know people here who come in and bitch about the Boards couple times a week for ten-fifteen years!
It’s not might fault that a grown man can’t decipher meaning from text unless its directly spelled out. I’ve had things published before so I like to think I know at least the basics of writing.
You can call it concern trolling or say I’m not being specific enough for a rant thread if you want, but my point still stands: I don’t like that the lack of fitness in society causes people to ask me help them move and also causes them to hurt themselves. I’m not fit, by any “official” metric I’m barely an intermediate lifter, but I’m still far stronger than the average person which is just sad because you could be 70% as strong as me in 3 months and 90% in a year by working out for 3 hours a week. Yet people still see me as the strong guy and rather than take basic care of their body they expect me to make up for their inability to take care of themselves. Would you expect me to cook for a friend who has trouble feeding himself properly? Would I be a dick for thinking that a friend who is 300 lbs needs to lose weight? Would I be a double-idiot for not wanting to drive someone to the hospital because they have weekly appointments because of their weight?
Where’s the line where I’m an asshole for expecting people to truly be independent and take care of their health?
And as far as 200lbs being arbitrary: It is. I’m saying its 200 lbs because 300 lbs is quite heavy and I wouldn’t expect the average person to be able to support that. 100 lbs is relatively light and I’d expect most people to be able to carry 100 lbs easily. The point of 200lbs is its a weight where the average person would be able to hold it but not necessarily move or maneuver the weight.
What is the pathology of a person who drops a couch on his “friend” and then goes onto the internets to cuss him out for being a pussy? Sounds pretty something-opathic to me. Is there an effective treatment for that kind of disorder?
I mean, I think I would be inclined to empathize with the guy, and I am a jerk.
For all time, there has been the guy who drops the couch, and the guy he drops it on, the eternal shlemiel/shlimazl unity, the oneness of misfortune.
Not all schlemiels are assholes.
No one’s physical characteristics need defending.
If someone is asking you for help then there are factors that might be valid to take into account in deciding whether to help him or her, but not whether you think they deserve it for not “being fit.”
Being concerned about a loved one’s health is a completely different issue than berating that person or refusing to help that person.
You have several times stated your standard as one that qualifies a person to be “a man.” What makes you think that your evaluation of a person’s skills or abilities have anything to do with being a man? And why do you treat not being a man as something undesirable? Are human beings that are not men inferior to those who are?
Bwahahahahaha, you know nothing about this board Jon Snow!
CMC fnord!
I highly doubt that as few who actually lift would be so laughably ignorant.
For the curious here’s a set of standards for the bench. For the average 165 pound male untrained expected is 120, novice 150, intermediate 185, advanced 255.
But hey, if the only point is that moving a bulky heavy leather couch with built-in recliners up a set of stairs with turns is a job that an amatuer mover should think twice about attempting, then hellya. Of course the person put most at risk was the poor schmuck on the bottom end as the op was an idiot as well as an ass.
We have professional movers in this thread; my experience was as a teen working part time with some professionals. Gave me great respect for the pros. The job is less brawn than having some moving smarts. You don’t start up the fricking set of stairs until you have the crap already cleared out. You don’t start up until you have you path of turns already planned out (which requires some significant visuospatial skills). You never leave one person holding the bottom of a heavy couch on a set of stairs by himself (or herself for that matter) no matter how strong he is.
“L’il John” (amazing how anyone who goes by “L’il John” is always a freakin’ beast) was a genius. Yeah he put me on the bottom but he had the ability to control the couch from the top any time he wanted. He always knew exactly what angle we needed to come each turn and doorway at ahead of time. How he fit things through, with not a scuff, was a thing to marvel at.
The problem with that couch move was likely not lack of strength; it was lack of intelligence and respect for the difficulty of the task undertaken.
Glad that the op’s idiocy did not kill or otherwise seriously injure the friend. Yeah, if you can’t be arsed to even clear out your path before you start moving a couch up the stairs you should be hiring a professional.
(The op is a schmiel; he guy he “helped” was a schmazel: A schlemiel is somebody who spills his soup and a schlimazel is the person it lands on.)
I’d disagree. If you’re out of shape, you’re knowingly harming your body and I think you should have to defend the burden you place on society as a result. But that’s an ethical dilemma related to things like health insurance so w/e
My decision to help someone isn’t based on them being fit. My decision to be happy to help is based on whether they are though. If you’re just using me because you’re too cheap to hire some movers AND you’re too out of shape to guarantee that me and you can safely do this job, I’m gonna be upset
I didn’t berate the guy
I’m mostly just memeing because I thought it was funny that people got so caught up on this weird minimum amount of necessary masculinity I set as an example for visualization purposes. Being a man, woman, agender, w/e isn’t a result of your fitness or life choices. You can be a masculine woman or effeminate guy and that’s cool, but I’d still hope you’re taking care of yourself enough to not drop a couch on yourself
What’s the pathology of someone who asks there neighbor to do shit for them for free and doesn’t even use their free labor properly?
I don’t really see how I’m an idiot? We had our plan in place. I’d guide the couch around the home while he walked straight. The only hitch was the stairs. We ran into problems because a third party managed to obstruct our path in the interim between us leaving the domicile and returning with the couch (~5 minutes). You can argue I wasn’t professional enough or whatever but it wasn’t a particularly hard to carry couch, we just got caught up in a string of bad luck and I’m frustrated that someone nearly got hurt because of their lack of fitness.
Also a 185 bench for a single isn’t “intermediate” in the coaching world. Intermediate is when linear gains stop, which for most guys will be much closer to 225.
Hell, you can’t even figure out what the person you’re allegedly quoting actually said (irrespective of your elementary blunder in assuming that any such person is bound to be a man). Nowhere in this thread did I use the phrase that you’re falsely attributing to me in the above quote.
[QUOTE=elliott]
I don’t like that the lack of fitness in society causes people to ask me help them move and also causes them to hurt themselves.
[/quote]
Fine. The fact that your OP didn’t clearly explain what it was you don’t like, but instead came across as thinly veiled bragging about your own strength (which isn’t mitigated by your subsequent humblebragging about your strength being only “intermediate” but nonetheless far superior to that of the “unfit” persons you’re sneering at) is your fault, not ours.
And what do you mean by suggesting that “the lack of fitness in society causes people to ask you to help them move”? Are you under the impression that even very fit people generally move house all by themselves, carrying those several-hundred-pound couches up and down stairs entirely unaided? Do you imagine that if everybody worked out to at least an “intermediate” level of strength, they would no longer need help moving?
If you actually have “had things published”, all I can say is that I sincerely sympathize with your unfortunate readers in trying to make their way through what you think constitutes a coherent and sensible sentence.