This seems like a case of using an easily available proxy end point and cheerfully ignoring broader social issues. We are in the middle of an obesity crisis and

This seems like a case of using an easily available proxy end point and cheerfully ignoring broader social issues. We are in the middle of an obesity crisis and should be looking at the issue of "Fat People Hate" through the lens of morbidity and mortality. The typical post on Fat People Hate consists of a picture of a morbidly obese person overflowing the seat of their mobility scouter. The comments echo each other as the commenters say how disgusting the sight is. One topic for empirical investigation is whether the person in the photograph responds to the shaming by losing weight, or perhaps even gaining more. But typically the person involved is unaware of the existence of Reddit. There is a break in the causal chain and nothing to investigate. Another topic for empirical investigation is whether the (presumably) slim participants in the Fat People Hate sub-reddit maintain a healthy weight. One conjecture is that participants are exposed to extreme images of morbid obesity and become complacent about maintaining a healthy weight. They go on to become overweight and a proportion get fatter still and suffer serious health consequences. An alternative conjecture is that some of the participants feel social pressures in their daily lives to clean their plate, eat up, and not be a broccoli munching spoil sport. Fat People Hate gives them an opportunity to construct and maintain an identity as some-one who doesn't get sucked in by their local social pressure to over eat. They unexpectedly maintain a healthy weight, contrary to predictions based on their place in society. We can articulate an ideal for research in this area. It involves tracking down the participants in FPH and discovering records of their body weights. The important questions are: While they participated in FPH, did they buck national trends towards obesity? After FPH was banned, did they gain weight? We are actually interested in counting diagnoses of type 2 diabetes and toes amputated as a consequence of diabetic neuropathy. When we ask about the effectiveness of the ban on FPH we are actually asking about weight gained and lives lost. But when research question 1a asks: How were their activity levels affected? they are not talking about walking or jogging. They are talking about speaking.