The Man Who Broke Fitness Culture by Making It More Broken cover art

The Man Who Broke Fitness Culture by Making It More Broken

The Man Who Broke Fitness Culture by Making It More Broken

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In this episode of Dumbify, David Carson explores the magnificently dumb—and disturbingly genius—world of Fake My Run, a website that generates completely fake, wildly convincing workout data. But this isn’t just a prank. It’s a philosophical takedown of fitness culture itself.

Created by 26-year-old Dutch developer Arthur Buffard, Fake My Run lets you “exercise” from the comfort of your couch while racking up imaginary marathons through Antarctica. It’s funny… until you realize it’s also true. Because in a world where people pay strangers (Strava mules!) to run on their behalf for social clout, what even counts as real anymore?

Arthur didn’t build an app—he performed a reductio ad absurdum, pushing fitness culture to its most ridiculous extreme and holding up a mirror. The reflection? A species more obsessed with posting their run than running it. David follows this thread to its wild conclusion—and even runs a weeklong social experiment of his own.

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Dumbify celebrates ideas so weird, wrong, or wildly impractical… they just might be brilliant. Hosted by David Carson, a serial entrepreneur behind multiple hundred-million-dollar companies and the go-to secret weapon for companies looking to unlock new markets through unconventional thinking. Dumbify dives into the messy, counter-intuitive side of creativity — the “dumb” ideas that built empires, broke rules, and ended up changing everything.

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