Real T-Men Speak Out: Final Update

2009 August 26

By Matt Perryman

As in part 1 and part 2 of this little social experiment, I want to analyze some of the T-Logic that’s come out of the T-Muscle forums, in response to challenges made against the outrageous claims of their forthcoming “I, Bodybuilder” program.

The thread that was on-going was finally ground to a halt – posts from dissenting viewpoints stopped getting through the filter, allowing the Real T-Men time to revel in their stupidity.

I honestly never thought I’d see so many people that are not just dumb, but truly proud of being that way. This certainly isn’t a new phenomenon, and as much as I’ve been exposed to it, it really shouldn’t shock me – yet it still manages to do so.

The theme here is ongoing: stupid is too stupid to know it’s stupid. Or if you want to keep it scientific, the Dunning-Kruger effect is in full force. Combine this with a healthy dose of neurologically-wired confirmation bias and you’ve got yourself a recipe for disaster. Or laughs, depending on how you look at it.

By this point in my life, I’m long past the stage of trying to educate or convert this level of self-sustaining idiocy. I only wrote up this tiny series because, well, I’ll be honest: mainly because it made me laugh. But on a serious level, there are some people that will read it and actually see the stupid for what it is, so I’ll stick with that.

When we last left our intrepid morons, they were having a circle-jerk about how a steroid-using large-framed fat man with ATTITUDE! should be the shining example for all natural would-be bodybuilders.

In an interesting twist, Brofessor X seemed to take offense when the very same standard was applied to him. To wit:

Most people on the planet will never compete. I may never compete even though I would like to get under 10% body fat. Why? Because I do just fine in life looking the way I do right now and the ONLY people who seem to have a problem with my development…are little guys like you who will never put their picture up for criticism.

If not having sub-10% body fat allows you to surpass all of these “limits”, then why pray tell are there “limits”?

If walking around at a very comfortable “12%” means I get to be way bigger than my “Butt Ceiling”, then maybe I should be comfortable with “12%”.

I do believe we are still waiting on ONE of you to put a picture up to show us what being so highly evolved and intelligent has allowed you to create in the gym.

It is funny how none of you seem to be proud enough to show us. I mean, that’s down right strange.

I find it immensely hilarious that, when called on to apply his own standard – i.e., walk the walk or shut up – he starts to whine and complain. Special pleading is a funny case of stupid; the Brofessor’s standard of proof is that you must look the part. Yet when it’s pointed out that he doesn’t look the part, by bodybuilding standards, he gets upset.

To quote the Internets: LOL WUT?

The whining continued from another member, “Jacked Diesel”:

First of all, I am not a bodybuilder, nor do I claim to be one, nor are those remotely my goals. If you think I have 30%, or even 20% BF, you are smoking crack.

I used to be a rock solid 199, I have been bulking for 9 months and plan to continue to 260. My numbers are solid, I have posted pics and stats, there is no lie about who I am or what my goals are, if you want to laugh, then laugh, But I can promise you this, I will get bigger and stronger following the methods I have learned from fellow members on this site and at elite FTS than you ever will follow that cock sucker aragon’s chocolate milk nutrition plan.

Again, I powerlift, I dont bodybuild, but if you wanna keep it up, come back next year when I will be around a lean 250.

So again we have another: put up pics and walk the walk – just don’t ask me to do it! How dare people hold you to your own standards? Poppycock, I say.

Of course he falls back on the old “bodybuilder vs. powerlifter” argument, which is moronic in the first place, but let’s not forget he explicitly came into a thread to run his mouth about how you should have results to back up your claims. Considering he’s not a “bodybuilder” by his own admission, what’s he doing here exactly?

Oh, right – making himself look like the idiot he is. A shining example for the rest of the “low information” posters to follow.

There’s always some excuse for why they can’t be held to their own standards. In any case this was the chink in their wall of ignorance, and my chance to have some laughs. Here’s a quick summary of the exchange.

In response to someone defending the aforementioned “powerlifter”, I wrote:

Why does the double standard apply to him?

He criticized someone’s physique, then demanded others put up pictures – why does his own standard of evidence not apply to himself? If he’s going to apply a standard of evidence, he should be held to it himself.

Why does he get a pass because he labels himself a powerlifter? Going by Professor X’s standard, which seems to be accepted here, he should have as little say in the argument as anyone else; after all, he’s not a bodybuilder, right?

In other words, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Since the majority of posters in this thread have rejected any sort of objective standards, such as science and even analytical thinking, there’s not much else to rely on. By your own requirements, Jacked Diesel does not fit the bill.

If you don’t like those standards, perhaps you shouldn’t rely on them?

The idiot responded:

He was complaining that you guys have no proof you’ve even stepped foot in a gym. The guy looks awesome – 19″ arms at <20% bodyfat, just because he’s not “shredded” doesn’t make what he’s achieved any less impressive. The guy will probably have abs showing at 12% bf and probably sits at around 18%. So he’s no more than a short cutting phase away from being shredded anyway.

He may not be a bodybuilder but he has proven he knows what the fuck he’s doing. Somehow all of you have failed to grasp this.

Bbeing big and strong is now evidence of “knowing what the fuck you’re doing”? This despite the fact that I’ve known plenty of big and strong guys too stupid to close their mouths in the rain when looking at the sky. Someone’s physical status is not indicative of knowledge for a variety of reasons, yet the Real T-Men are too stupid and inexperienced to understand this.

This is evidenced by these guys thinking that 1) the guy in question is actually 18% bodyfat (his pics say low 20s at least) and 2) that he’ll be able to just keep bulking to whatever he wants and diet down to be super-awesome.

Also: an 18″ arm on a fat guy is not an impressive stat.

This just evidences the mentality in play here. They aren’t experienced enough or knowledgeable enough to know better, and it’s even worse because they base their goals on what steroid-using Brofessor X tells them they should be doing. Their ideals and perceptions have no bearing on reality. It’s the equivalent of an ostrich burying its head in the sand.

I want to clarify myself: I have absolutely nothing against steroid use. If you want to use, and you’re not doing it to enter tested competitions, have at it. I completely understand why people use AAS and have no problems with it. Where I do have a problem is when a none-too-bright juice-head assumes that his results will generalize to the natural population when he’s running a gram of test.

PRO-TIP: You’re on steroids for a reason – because they provide a rate of gains and (GASP!) a higher ceiling of muscle mass than is possible for naturals.

Or the other equally stupid notion that you can point to outliers as evidence. They’re called outliers for a reason.

Anyway, that continued for a few rounds of me applying their own T-Logic (TM) against them, and the whining kicked in full force.

It got really good once our “18%” [sic] powerlifter posted his numbers. He was claiming nearly a 300 lb overhead press, but the numbers in his journal revealed a 455 deadlift and a 370 squat.

Of course there were excuses for that, too. He’s coming back from a layoff, he hurt his back, blah blah blah – basically anything to avoid owning up to the fact that he’s fat and weak. Oh and he even had the “I used to lift X” line that’s a classic among guys that played football in high school.

PRO-TIP: Nobody cares that you piled on 600 lbs and did a curtsy with the weight while your football coach didn’t know what “squat” meant.

There were no videos of any lifts, mind you, which is probably because the press was garbage. I know guys that can legitimately bench press in the high 400s and low 500s that can’t overhead press 300 lbs with good form. The “with good form” caveat is important, too. I’m not in the habit of trusting Internet Lifts as evidence, especially when they don’t fit with the overall picture.

Another gratuitous aside: I’m not one to trash other lifters as a rule. I think that’s bad form in a lot of ways. My rationale in this instance: 1) they brought the discourse to this level to begin with and 2) I’m applying their own standards to them to make the point. Under normal circumstances I’d not badmouth this guy at all, not just because it’s bad form, but because ad hominems are just a crappy argument. I can trash these guys without even mentioning their lifts or their physiques.

However since that’s something these kiddies have yet to realize, and they don’t seem to respect anything else, I figure it’s open season.

Back to the story, this guy has “clean bulked” (hahahahhahaha) from 200 lbs to almost 240 lbs. With a 455 deadlift and a 370 squat. So I hammered that home; I told him that I could out-squat and out-pull him by a good margin.

Well if that didn’t push all the buttons. He laughs at me and tells me I couldn’t, despite no evidence to the contrary (I actually have vids up on YouTube of a full-depth easy easy squat with 375, and a deadlift for a double with 545, but I digress).

The funniest part is that even now, weighing 91kg/200 lbs, after 6 weeks of dieting and dropping 5.5kg, and having only come back to back squats in the last month (I’ve been front squatting since I tore an adductor back in December), I’m still stronger on both the squat and pull than this guy.

So by the standards these guys hold everyone else to, I’m the thread champion. But oh no, delusional fat guy decides that certainly can’t be true. Which again illuminates my point: this was never about being right or being knowledgeable or any of that. It’s about believing what you want to believe.

The special pleading and the ad hominems were never anything but a defense mechanism that would let them keep on believing that they’ll be able to do the impossible.

That’s about the time the censorship squad banned everyone that wasn’t a Real T-Man and locked down the thread, which actually went on about three pages longer than I thought it would. Usually they tend to really clamp down on people making sense.

Oh and there was a good bit of funny about the mods passing through posts after removing anything relating to the fact that TC lied about rejecting Alan Aragon’s articles. It was in fact T-Mag that came to Alan and asked him to write for them – he hasn’t given them an article since. For a full explanation, read this.

Sadly a lot of censorship went on so much of the good posts are probably gone now. However I did make a mirror of the thread at the point it was locked, so I’ve got a copy of it just in case it goes bye-bye.

So what have we learned from this little fiasco?

• T-Mag has no ethics at all, from the top down. They’ll lie about authors, they’ll lie about their products, and they’ll moderate the hell out of the forum so that nobody can point it out.
• The average idiot really is depressingly stupid, not only lacking intelligence, but lacking in self-awareness. These guys don’t just lack critical thinking ability; they actually have thought processes that encourage stupid.
• The average idiot really has no idea of what he should realistically expect to gain without drugs. Instead, they think that a large-framed drug-using fat guy is the standard that they should judge themselves against.
• Defensive fat guys live in a dream world, and probably cry themselves to sleep at night because a 200 lb guy out-lifts them.

Regarding the muscle mass limit, Lyle wrote up a good review of the Pope/Kouri study on fat-free mass in naturals and drug-users, which I chimed in with on that T-Thread. It’s worth a look, and it does dispute a lot of the T-Logic with regards to limits of NATURAL muscle mass.

Until the next shit-storm.