Is it bad I felt genuine joy?

Hoo boy. Earlier today I took my Adderall and was waiting for my food to finish before starting homework when I got into an argument with random people online on TikTok.

There was a video of a female powerlifter benching with an incredibly high arch in her back. For context, my understanding of a valid powerlifting bench is as long as your butt is on the bench, arches are fully fine. What she had ended up with her getting a range of motion of about 1-2 inches, which is understandable why it’s kinda crazy. The problem I had was this was just a girl posting her PR, not even in a competition – she wasn’t trying to flex on anyone, wasn’t putting anyone down, and almost all the comments were men making fun of her for having an arch.

This weirdly got to me, as in my eyes women are typically more flexible than men. Men also typically have more muscle mass. If a girl is flexible, why not utilize that? I ended up telling two guys who responded to my comment talking about how people are hating for no reason to send a video of them arching their back that much since they said it was too easy. (Obviously, none of them did) One of the guys however kept commenting back and forth, and he called her a “disappointment to powerlifting” and talking about how she was doing it all wrong. As we argued a bit back and forth, three big things came up:

  1. He had been benching for about a week – how insane is it that a guy who has a week of experience decides that he knows more than a POWERLIFTER, just because she was a girl and lifting less weight

  2. He called me a pussy for having a dress in my profile picture (me in my maid outfit) and also said I obviously don’t bench

  3. I looked at his profile, and he mentioned he couldn’t bench 225

Guess who just recorded a video of them benching 225?

I don’t mean to talk so much about the gym, but with the relevance of feeling a lack of achievement about it – this felt like a genuine gift from god. Being able to shut someone up on the internet (he stopped responding after I posted the video in response) was fucking BLISSFUL. I felt genuine joy putting that dude in his place.

Well, it turns out that when you reply to a comment with a video, it gets shown in people’s FYP. I originally planned to delete the video since I saw it pop up on my profile, but I decided to leave it up for a little bit so the guy could see it. It’s been 6 hours, and the video has about 5.7k views.

I got a ton of positive comments, and I also got a lot of hate comments. I weirdly loved the hate comments so much more, I had someone call me a pussy for starting off weak and playing tennis (lol). I find it funny that my getting into an internet argument got 15x the views of the video I spent hours editing and filming (let alone flying to Canada for).

I find it weird that I finally feel proud of this achievement after getting hate comments, and also being able to shut a random guy up. I think this is the closest I’ll be able to get to the gym reaper or kevdog lol.

Situation: I feel ok, but maybe for the wrong reasons.

Thoughts: I’m worried that this is temporary, and I’m going to revert to being depressed soon enough.

Feelings: I feel fear, dread, and anxiety.

Behavior: I don’t enjoy the time I am “happy”.

I don’t even know why I write a sentence here

Thoughts: Hooray! That’s how life goes. Ups and downs! Enjoy the ups while you have em.

Feelings: I feel content, and calm.

Behavior: I chill, and probably am happier for even longer.

Love you dude, I’m glad you can use this blog to be an unsavory person – it’s nice to have that outlet. Love you Ithaka ♥