Is this not just a matter of "the joke of the times?" Whatever is currently trendy can almost certainly be found referenced in every front page thread. Currently it's DJT, previously it was the FPH, etc. The masses shift targets, but fixating on a current trend seems pretty steady.

Isn't it just the fact that comments like these result in being banned?

You're confusing making fun / criticisms of with hatred. Fat acceptance movement is absolutely batshit insane, it promotes unhealthy lifestyles, it causes early deaths, it costs billions of dollars, it increases everyone's insurance costs.

I'm yet to see anything of scale on reddit/voat that represents hate of fat people, and not of the lifestyle or the dumb ideas that the movement comes up with.

The subreddit was literally named /r/fatpeoplehate.

That is definitely not true. Nobody who read posters cackling about "hamplanets" could honestly believe that.

And again you're confusing making fun of with hatred.

I can make fun of my wife and my kids and my friends, call them funny names. It doesn't mean I hate them.

> I can make fun of my wife and my kids and my friends, call them funny names. It doesn't mean I hate them.

That may be true. But it's also very clear to those that visited the sub that FPH was far beyond just "funny names" and definitely lived up to it's name.

You realize you keep getting the name wrong? The phrase literally means "the things that fat people hate".

I would completely agree with you if the sub was named IHateFatPeople or FatPeopleSuck.

That is not the most obvious interpretation and I don't see any evidence for it except that it would be convenient to your argument if it were true.

I would not post on a forum called "my stupid bitch wife" or call her that online.

The surest way to get a fat person to change his evil ways is by public shaming and cruelty. When has that tactic ever failed?

I'd say the comparison between "fat people should stop feeling bad about being fat and live their lives" and "inferior races should be exterminated" as similar positions is specious.

Can you demonstrate that "fat acceptance" is deadly? I certainly have seen proof that Nazism is.

That's not apples to apples. Nazism is deadly, as it obesity (neither universally). Accepting people regardless of weight seems safer, and reaching out to people with questionable beliefs strikes me as productive.

Obesity is obviously deadly and fat "acceptance" is just as disastrous as meth acceptance. In fact, obesity kills far more than meth.

But my greater point is that we are obviously all okay with negative social stimulus (shaming et. al.) to curb bad behaviors. This is how virtually all social conditioning works and it's part of how we have a civil society. I don't think it's a good idea to decide some negative behaviors should be immune to negative social stimulus. Apply the same rule to everything, one way or the other.

It apparently costs the global economy around 2 trillion a year due to various causes

http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/20/news/economy/fat-obesity-cos...

"fat acceptance is deadly" ≠ "obesity has costs to the economy"

Edit to add: 'yjftsjthsd-h points out that this isn't an apples-to-apples comparison. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15224303) In this entire thread a lot of people are unknowingly or willfully talking past each other. That's the tough part about heated issues like this. Actually taking the time to break down and listen to each other to understand where we're coming from first—even if we don't agree with the conclusions on the other side—is fundamental to us having a useful, constructive discussion.

Obesity is a negative for both the individual and society. The fat acceptance movement is terrible because being fat isn't some sort of permanent, genetic condition that's out of people's control. You control what you put in your mouth and how much exercise you get, it's a choice.

Should we have an ignorance acceptance movement, where we don't push people to educate themselves? That's a choice as well.

The fact remains that 95% of people going on diets to lose weight aren't successful in keeping it off long-term and the only method that seems to show significant success is surgery. I find it hard to believe that the only problem here is that fat people aren't aware they're fat. Harping on it in the way you're advocating just discourages people from doing anything healthy, since, you know, if getting slim is all that matters, why bother exercising if you're still fat at the end?

That's the thing, you're fighting the straw man, "evil ways" is your invention. Wrong and unhealthy and costly ways is what I'd say.

I'd say that tactic (criticisms and making fun of) worked in many instances.

Except fat people already know all those things. And also most of what this is about isn't that level of neutral, but at least not hurtful criticism. Most of it is of the "ugh let's all point and laugh at the gross fatty" variety.

But, in fact, fat people are constantly made to feel bad, without any evident slimming as a result.

Only, it would seem, in Western culture. In places like Japan, fat shaming is absolutely brutal and is a significant part of the reason that they have less obesity. (Source: Conversations with Japanese people, in Japan, about why Westerners were so fat.)

I've spent time in Japan too (I majored in Japanese and I lived there for a year), and, while Japanese people don't have very much tact about body image issues, I find self-reports like that very unconvincing. Japanese people will also wax poetic about the uniqueness of their having four seasons, which would probably be news to most of my fellow New Englanders.

There are a lot of other things different about Japan (most people walk more and drive rather infrequently, food portions are smaller, the actual foods eaten are not the same, for instance) than just how tactless or not Japanese people are about weight. I bet if you looked at Nikkei with Japanese immigrant parents you would see rates of obesity that looked much more similar to American ones than Japanese ones too.

In addition, although it's a slower creep, Japan is seeing average BMIs go up.

I know "correlation/causation" feels like a dead horse, but I would want far better evidence that there's an actual link and not just confounding factors (ex. diet).

I'm really surprised anyone could be so obtuse as to associate a community called "fat people hate" with hatred of fat people.