Really, CRACKED? Really?

[TW for fat hatred.]

Have you ever been to the humor website CRACKED? It's one of those places full of interesting tidbits of mostly useless information. I've gotten lost there for hours, reading article after article, and laughing all the way through.

Tonight, I read 6 Lies About the Human Body You Learned in Kindergarten. Since their lists count down to #1, I enjoyed the first five. Yep, I knew that the tongue tastes things pretty much equally everywhere; yep, I understand neuroanatomy enough to know about elasticity; yep, I know that there are many more than just 5 senses. And then I reached #1: Your Metabolism Makes You Fat or Skinny.

The image that follows this subtitle is a montage of a slender, muscled man on one side sitting in front of a plate of raw spinach, a fat man on the other side shoving a huge burger into his mouth, both superimposed on an image of fat-creased skin. The article predictably goes on to characterize fat people as gluttons who eat far more calories than they can expend, as time bombs to a horrible fat-related death and as incapable of accurately reporting their true caloric intake. Naturally, since CRACKED is fond of including hilariously subtitled images, there are six images of either fat people, food, or fat people eating food. I'm not going to paste any of the subtitles here; they're easy enough to find if you really want to read them.

In short:

Calories in != calories out. I'm not a machine.

Fat people live just as long as "average" [sic] people. Quit conflating fitness with weight, please.

Individuals are a better witness to their experiences than strangers are. Calling fat people liars because your experience/culture/really bad interpretation of scientific research tells you that 99% of fat people eat themselves into fatness is an extremely dishonest and stigmatizing approach that serves only to inflate ego and marginalize fat people.

To preempt the commentary that CRACKED is a comedy site and therefore shouldn't be taken seriously, bigotry of any kind does not happen in a void. Each instance reinforces prejudice and hostility.

P.S. If you choose to read the article, for the love of all that is holy do not read the comments.