“That’s probably not good for you.”
“STFU,” I replied in non-acronym form, as I chugged the remainder of my Merlot.
“I mean, not right before you go to the gym.”
Had he been a fleet of wild horses with Gos’s face, he couldn’t’ve dragged me away from my nightly libations. I mean, my hypocritical boyfriend at the time who’d keep a cigarette in his mouth whenever I dragged (zing) him on a jog with me might have been right. But I was a college undergrad at the time, which obviously meant I either knew everything or just wasn’t open minded enough to hear it – my mind was open for 90% of my day as I sat listening to professors and reading the books that corresponded with their classes. By the time my day was ending, I was over learning lessons. Whether they applied to technical editing or the larger meaning of life was immaterial to me. A goblet of consciousness alteration was all I wanted because healthier tools had yet to be taught to me. Besides, I was being healthy, I reasoned: A.) I’m drinking a form of grapes and B.) I’m going to the gym in like fifteen minutes. Aside from that, anything else you had to share with me better be a refill or a one liner I could understand in my hazy state.
And those one liners seem to be the only way to get through to anyone nowadays.
Even when it comes to sharing important information, we want one line: a whole study distilled into a single title, like “wine will replace working out.” Because a recent one was mutated and made ubiquitous online, wherein they’ve contorted the information to concoct the following formula: an hour at the gym and a glass o’ spell cast Jesus water are synonymous. There’s even a phrase that’s circulating: “Consuming a glass of red wine has the same physical performance, heart function, and muscle strength benefits as working out for an hour at the gym.” Mind you, that’s not an actual quote from the studies that’ve been done up in Canada. But this is: “Resveratrol, naturally found in red wine, has numerous health and heart-positive benefits, including improved physical performance, heart function, and muscle strength.” So people take that and run with it. However, as a miserly skeptic, I remained unconvinced that my ex or these misleading article titles were right.
(Espesh when the citation links Hogwarts style vanished, only to lead me to that “404 not found” site on every damned copycat article.)
So… is resveratrol in wine form really a replacement for perspiration?
Does it really mean I shouldn’t’ve strapped on my kicks and hit the calibrated rat wheel?
Not necessarily. Well not as soon after imbibing as I was doing in the old days (but I didn’t need a lab to sort that out for myself – just a good projectile post-cardio ralphing-in-the-bushes sesh). Yet, you can take anything out of context and turn it into what you want. In this case, a study done on wine and its health benefits has transmogrified into the story of: “Science says you can sit on your ass and drink wine! LULZ” because people share articles online, their friends only read the title (which I’ve learned from sharing stuff I’ve actually written – and from being guilty of actually doing it myself) while ignoring the content, and then share based on an extracted bit of information that was only ever intended to lure you into reading the whole thing. It took me a bit to get unlazy enough to accept this gem of a fact: Article links aren’t tweets. They lead to the bigger story. And the bigger story here, if you read it, doesn’t say you’ll get all the same benefits as you do at the gym – just the listed ones. Even that – though it may seem like a lot – still doesn’t cover the whole picture. Also, it’s not a direct quote. Also, they say it’s a compound found in red wine – not that a glass of red wine will accomplish those things. Also, there are no links. This is when it’s appropriate to question if what we’re reading is legit. Because by now, you realize the trending article isn’t telling you enough to add it to your belief system. Thus, you go into your internet machine and read the story behind the condensed story. Which I (following the lead of more popular article writers) will condense down too – but I’ll do it with actual quotes from the horse’s mouth:
So, I’ll finish with the same angry acronym I launched at my ex at the start of this piece:
STFU. With a slightly different meaning:
Stop Trending Fictional Upchuck.