World Building a Fat Earth

Alright here’s the situation. AiDungeon.io took down the abilities to share Scenarios, so I figured I’d send in one I’m attempting to make here but I need to do some worldbuilding first. Here are some questions I’ve been pondering recently and some of my thoughts on it:

1:
Adipo- is the prefix meaning fat, cracy- is the suffix meaning rule of. Ergo Adipocracy would be the rule of fat. Is there any discussion on how this form of government work or am I weird? Would it be like a democracy (meaning rule of many) but the fatter you are, the more votes you get (maybe a multiplier effect on your weight based on average (to encourage gain as the average would continue growing), maybe based on BMI (to not have to keep adjusting the multiplier effect on vote). Maybe an oligarchy (rule of few) were the fattest control the power (i.e. unelected or only the fattest are eligible to be voted in, or only fat people are eligible to vote) or like a Holy Roman Empire situation where the fattest few–or the families that were fattest consistently through history–get to elect the leader. Perhaps an Autocracy where the fattest rules until death (or perhaps someone fatter comes along). Anarchism is the final of the big four but anarchism is rule of none, and thus no one rules, votes, etc.

I came up with some ideas on my own:

Democratic:

Weighted Democracy - Each voter’s vote is multiplied by their weight based off the average weight for one’s sex and age.

Non-Adjusted Weighted Democracy - Each voter’s vote is multiplied by their BMI.

Oligarchic:

Democratic Adipocracy - The fattest people can run in each electoral district represent that district, seniority goes to the heavier. Only fat people can vote (who fat people are are defined in the respective constitution/charter). Adipocratic Democracy - The head of the fattest families and the members of historically fat families vote on the leaders.

True Oligarchic Adipocracy - Only the fattest people can run for election, heaviest win races now become weight gain; eating contests instead of debates are commonplace.

Autocracy:

Adipocratic Autocracy - The fattest person (willing) becomes the leader/representative, and only leaves office due to death, resignation, or challenge by heavier competitor.

Monarchist new succession type (not a form of government but succession variant for monarchies):

Adipogenature - The fattest child inherits.

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If every politician is fat, every celebrity, every scientist, every doctor, every attorney, every journalist, every tycoon, every judge. What about athletes?

Athletics are based off of a person’s fitness (except Sumo I guess). Take a look at a highly strenuous sport like football (as it is a sport I used to play). Lineman would no doubt be the same, if not heavier (instead of a o-lineman being 300 pounds they maybe in the 500s, maybe 600s even for tackles as they are typically the heaviest & tallest). But how would “skill” positions work? Quarterbacks are allowed to be heavy in certain systems. Take a look at Peyton Manning he’s around 6’5" 240 pounds. Sure not heavy, but have you ever seen him run? He relied solely on his arm. Then you got Cam Newton at 250 lbs, in his heyday he was trucking people, mobile, etc. The thing with Cam Newton is, he is all muscle. So if a quarterback that was the height of a mobile quarterback (5’10" to 6’3") and was say 250 to 300 pounds, and had to run would he be able to? I’ve seen big men run and it ain’t good. So in a world where fatness is glorified would it apply to those in the spotlight when it’d normally come to fitness? How about runningbacks whose entire existence is to run the ball?

Here’s a more international example, gymnastics is very fitness reliant sport. Have you seen a fat (not thicc) gymnastics competitor win anything? Sure they can compete but can they win?

Maybe everyone would be fine with worse athletes competing for the sake of the fattest competing. Maybe there’d be an unspoken–or even written–rule that makes a minimum weight (or body fat%) for the different leagues and the different olympics.

Also: In swimming it’s proven since fat is less dense than muscle, fat helps you float more and muscle has the opposite effect. That’s why you don’t see superbuff people swimming in the Olympics. Do you think for swims like Butterfly where you have to go under the water for each time, will it be slower since these 300-500 pound swimmers would be floated more. Also at the start of a race where the dive from their starts, will they be slower because the get to the top faster since people tend to swim faster underneath?

What do y’all think about the government style in a Adiparchy, Fatarchy, Fatocracy, etc? What do y’all think about athletics where everyone is fat? Will it the athletes be the only fit ones or would the ability of all players go down, or some third option?
This world building is going to be semi-realistic but feel free to comment stuff about magic and supernatural but I’ll preference semi-realistic to very realistic.

Here’s a scenario/prompt I got so far (just copy and paste when you do a custom prompt):

Fat Earth diverts from our own timeline in 19th century with the industrial revolution. The richer a person is, the fatter they were. Obesity became a status symbol of sorts. The fatter a person was, the more power they held. The heaviest people are people like the Royal Families of Europe and crony politicians. As time progress (with technology) obesity became more prevalent as life became more affluent. Obesity rates in the 1st world are high.

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I think that as a basis for governing it doesn’t make any more sense than “The Almighty Tallest” from Invader Zim. Actually trying to make it make sense is just going to make the joke less funny. There is no good way to make this serious, so instead you should lean into the joke.

Perhaps the mighty Earth King can’t be understood when they speak because their mouth is always full when in scene. Perhaps the character changes regularly and coronation celebrations randomly happen whenever you need them to. Perhaps it is all a ploy by the balloonminati to keep the population docile…

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(Gdi, I thought this was gonna be about the logistics of a flat Earth and how that’d realistically work, now I’m mad)

The most straightforward way to have a society that glorifies and selects leaders based on obesity is simply to have a culture that values access to resources. If you’re huge in this society, that signifies that you can have the ability to procure enough food to maintain your weight and all the technology, manpower, and healthcare needed to maintain such a lifestyle. It’s the same reason why a lot of animals have fancy display structures to attract mates: they take a lot of energy to maintain and can even put them at greater risk of predation, but the ability to survive and thrive despite this makes them desirable to the opposite sex. Except, here, it signifies wealth and influence.

Ergo, such a society chooses leaders based on weight not because fat in and of itself is valuable, but because it shows who already has all the power. Other high-ranking members of society, wanting to get a piece of the biggest guy’s (metaphorical) pie, will make allies and enemies, lobby their politicians, and run their businesses based around their public image, since their culture will value seeing your prestige on your waistline.

This will have a lot of fallout, of course. Because obesity will be a marker of wealth and power, the food and beauty industries will be interlinked and use fattening food as a selling point because customers will want to get fatter to show off and seem more prestigious than they really are. However, there’ll have to be a balancing act to this, or else the oligarchs of the world would make it too easy for the common folk to get fat and catch up to them, removing their ability to flaunt their power, so these industries will have to be deliberately rigged in favor of the elites.

TL;DR it’s easier to buy into a society that chooses fat leaders if those leaders are chosen not because they’re fat, but because of what being fat signifies.

Sports will have to be geared around the standards of a fattened-up society. Weight classes will probably be applied to a lot more sports not just because that’ll impact how hard the sport is, but also because a 400-lb guy who can deadlift 200 lbs in addition to his own body weight isn’t gonna be as strong as an 800-lb guy who can do so. Some sports will be obsolete (gymnastics, for example, will become impossible), and competitions that require low physical activity may elevate to Olympic levels of cultural prestige (chess, for example, or even eating contests).

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I think you’re onto something. If everyone is fat (or most at least) due to an abundance in resources, then there wouldn’t be people who are thin that are athletic–if that makes sense. In a universe where every who’s at least lower middle (or even lower) can afford to be fat, then why would athletes want to not be fat outside of the ability to breathe better. Not too many people who can afford to be strong or athletic (i.e. people who can’t afford to go to a gym, be a part of a team of some sort) get up into these high positions like the NFL, NHL, NBA, Olympics, etc. Even if they did, they would certainly bulk–or rather pig–out by they time they get to pros (due to scholarships). Not too sure how international sports work but I think the British soccer works as a tier based system. Like going from the Minors to Majors. Someone would definitely gain going from poor to pro athlete. I hope this made sense.

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I also wonder about healthcare…
Do people know that obesity in general is unhealthy when you take to major extremes like these elites would do in this timeline. Someone should’ve connected the dots, right? Do you think people would just turn a blind eye to this just to flaunt their wealth? There’d probably be this niche of doctors promoting dieting and stuff, but in this timeline they’d be suppressed by the elites as to not make people lose trust in their superiority of their weight. I think that makes sense now that I think of it…

What do y’all think about a healthcare system in a society that has obesity as a symbol of influence?

I have an idea for how the military could work but I would be interested in other’s ideas about how the upholding of obesity as a sign of influence.

You know how these kids of rich parents are able to be exempt from the draft in stuff. You could tell who went to war from their fatness, or lack there of. Sons of influential people often were able to skip out on the draft. So as the people would fight out overseas, disconnected from the life of luxury and excess, would slowly thin out but begin to gain more when they get home. They’d gain more because veterans do hold a higher status when they return from fighting. This status they could expand upon by running for public office, etc.

Also influential people almost never join the military so standards that we see today could still be in effect to an extent (maybe allowing exemptions of the standards for people who’d stick with it). The military wouldn’t be full of really fat people, they’d be full of people who range from skinny to fatter than the real world average but not 500 pounds something. The army would probably max out around 300 with officers weighing way more (cause influence).

Why do you guys think about the military in this alternate timeline?

So the thing is that humanity adapts based on its priorities; just about everything in this world kills you eventually, but our medical practice has advanced to the point of counteracting the things that we consider important. Athletic medicine is incredibly advanced and specific because we consider athletic activity to be important. In a world that values obesity, healthcare to counteract its effects would be far more advanced than it is today. People just tell obese people to get diet and exercise today because that’s not considered valuable on the world stage.

In the modern world of today we’re already developing access to genetic modification. In a world that values Obesity, that can be turned to its advantage. There are two primary ways that fat causes health issues; by getting places that it shouldn’t be, and just being too abundant for the structure of the body to support it. Fat gathering in arteries and around organs is a genetic predisposition; some people gather all of their fat subcutaneously, which is to say, just under the skin, away from the organs while others gather it viscerally, around the organs and in dangerous places. People with a genetic predisposition to visceral fat can be far lighter than you would expect before experiencing fat-based health issues, while those predisposed to subcutaneous fat can be much larger than normal in the modern day without any issues at all.

In a world that values obesity, genetic research would probably have gone into guaranteeing that most of the population is able to carry their fat healthily, by predisposing the population to gather their fat subcutaneously (which is also more hot anyway, that’s the fat that shows up the most the body), and also by reinforcing the skeletal, cardiovascular, respiratory and muscular structure to be able to more easily carry the weight without issue. Selective liposuction to remove visceral fat from around the organs (and likely to place it elsewhere in the body, considering the standards) is likely a common and, because of that, relatively affordable procedure. They probably have better technology for pinpointing and identifying fat distribution and where it needs to go to keep someone healthy as well.

You’d probably see a much higher immobility weight and generally more muscular strength in the humans of this world underneath all that fat. Deadlift competitions would actually probably be much higher-weight (if you look at them today, people who do powerlifting have a strong combination of fat and muscle already), and other strength-based competitions would actually probably be higher-end rather than lower-end, because fat provides energy as well as extra weight to push through. Body types probably play a lot into athleticism; Someone who’s pear-shaped is going to be stronger at arm-based physical activity, because most of their fat rests away from their arms, and their arm muscles have less to work through, etc.

My favorite would probably be how martial arts would affected; boxing and other combat arts would be altered significantly because there is generally both more weight behind the person striking, which makes the blows hit harder, but also more padding on the person receiving the blow. How that would alter the way that martial arts are developed in the world is unclear, but it would almost certainly cause some changes.

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Without a strong healthcare system, such a society will have a very high mortality rate and low life expectancy, which is going to harm all levels of society–even those who can afford the necessary medicine will have fewer subordinates to rely on. As such, an “adipocracy” needs a solid medical foundation to remain stable, or else very few members of society will live long enough to get anything done. Healthcare is not an obstacle to this society, but a keystone for its very existence.

If the entire world becomes fat at the same time, war will become really, really difficult for everyone, and if social standards favor obesity, then the necessary physique for war will be undesirable to most citizens and, depending on available resources, even difficult to acquire. At the same time, a military is necessary to defend a nation’s resources and borders, so a draft is probably necessary…unless technology allows the army other means of combat.

Vehicular combat will be more valuable, since driving a tank doesn’t require peak physical fitness so much as dexterity. This will be pretty expensive, but a world where the average citizen can afford to be obese probably isn’t suffering from a resource shortage. However, certain terrain is really difficult for even small vehicles to navigate, which is going to give second- and third-world nations an advantage against first-world countries. To avoid becoming sitting ducks, the adipocracy will need a different kind of fighting force, one which doesn’t even need human boots on the ground.

If technology progresses to the point where human-sized machines can be (affordably) deployed in lieu of human soldiers, then these first-world nations now have the upper hand, since they don’t have to lose lives to enemy fire and can keep their professionals alive to fight long after the drones they control have been destroyed. More importantly for this topic, it removes the need for soldiers to adhere to a standard of physical fitness for their work, and the pay they’ll likely receive will only add to their waistline.

I think the most popular sport in such a world is already staring us in the face: sumo. Other forms of martial arts, from boxing to HEMA, have a lot of emphasis on positioning, but that dimension of strategy will likely die off when the combatants lose a lot of mobility and agility. Sumo is already tailored around having really fat participants, so it’s only likely to rise in popularity as it becomes more accessible and relevant to the developed world’s culture.

@storymaker
In the modern world of today we’re already developing access to genetic modification. In a world that values Obesity, that can be turned to its advantage. There are two primary ways that fat causes health issues; by getting places that it shouldn’t be, and just being too abundant for the structure of the body to support it. Fat gathering in arteries and around organs is a genetic predisposition; some people gather all of their fat subcutaneously, which is to say, just under the skin, away from the organs while others gather it viscerally, around the organs and in dangerous places.

@Shugoki
I think the most popular sport in such a world is already staring us in the face: sumo. Other forms of martial arts, from boxing to HEMA, have a lot of emphasis on positioning, but that dimension of strategy will likely die off when the combatants lose a lot of mobility and agility. Sumo is already tailored around having really fat participants, so it’s only likely to rise in popularity as it becomes more accessible and relevant to the developed world’s culture.

I found this article the other day and found this pretty interesting. In this alternate timeline, there could be genetic modification but Sumo could offer a more natural solution, to say the least.

There could also be Sumo becoming a more worldwide support instead of being just being seen as a part of just Japanese culture. Sure it’ll remain a part of Japanese culture but it’ll surely grown intertwined into the fabric of Western cultures too.

I was doing a little research and it turns out there are two tiers of Sumo: 1) Amateur and 2) Professional. The Amateur is governed by an international organization while the professional league is solely in Japan. I may be wrong though because I’m not Japanese myself. So maybe national teams would pop up in say the U.S. or England but the goal would be the Japanese league–if that makes sense. So a goal of an aspiring Sumo wrestler would be go up to through amateur leagues (or collegiate in this timeline too) and then join the national leagues and ultimately end up in Japan. So I may write up a prompt for aidungeon for a Sumo Wrestler who wants to become the best in the world.

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If we’re not talking modern scenario, but more tribal, then the finnish discipline “Wife carrying” might actually make sense as a method of choosing a tribe leader. The candidate gets to show his prowes as an athlete and thus warrior and the size of the wife shows of his wealth. Not sure exactly how a winner would be chosen since it would need to take into account both the wifes weight and the speed of the contester. Normally the competition only tests time, with the weight of the wife determining the prize.

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one thought though. Does it have to be the Person in the high standing that’s fat. going off the part of the size being more of a frame of reference for their power why couldn’t have like a fat haram or something.
who’s to say the powerful have to be fat. I have seen in a few stories the wealth is more shown if having a pampered rare pet or something