In today’s age of social media, liking what you like has become a way more “in” thing than ever before. Where once you simply enjoyed things and sometimes talked about them with others, it has now become a full blown fad to announce your fandom as loudly and proudly as possible. While this has been good for nerd culture, in that many once socially unacceptable hobbies are now entirely mainstream, the culture of fandom has caused some people to take their love of products or franchises to an entirely new level, and set the bar preposterously high for anyone who wants to make a name for themselves with acts of obsession in the future.
10. Two Men Eat at Chipotle for Over 100 Straight Days
Chipotle is a comparatively new company (founded in 1993) and only really exploded into global popularity this millennium. They have taken off in an age where people are increasingly concerned about what they are eating, where it comes from, and how it is made. No matter where you land in the debate regarding GMOs or organic foods, it’s clear that Chipotle has gone above and beyond to give people an alternative to your normal fast food eating experience. This reputation has given them a great many fans who consider themselves to be extremely dedicated to the brand. However, there are a couple fans in particular that took that devotion to insane new levels.
Two men, without consulting each other, both documented their experiences on social media of eating Chipotle for over 10 days straight. Both went to the press about their Chipotle addiction, and one of them suggested when interviewed that he would like to see if he could go an entire year eating Chipotle every day. To make the entire coincidence of the two pulling the same stunt even stranger, they both ordered variations on the Burrito Bowl every single time they were there, and while they ordered different meals, neither of them switched their order up once, the entire time. There’s no doubt that not only are they huge fans of Chipotle, they are also very much creatures of habit.
9. Man Changes His Name and Tries to Visit Every Starbucks Ever
Rafael Antonio Lozano, Jr. was a normal software engineer looking to spice up his humdrum lifestyle. He decided that he needed more than just a hobby, though. No, he needed a serious challenge that would take a lot of money, time, and effort to complete – something completely off the wall, that would challenge him to do things differently. This is around the point where he lost the label of “normal,” by the way. First, he decided that his given name was a bit too long and shortened it – legally – to just “Winter.” He then announced on his blog, and before long to the press, that he was going to try to visit every Starbucks ever opened.
To make Winter’s journey more difficult, however, and after Winter was well into his quest, Starbucks announced that they would be closing a lot of their locations. Winter knew this would make things much more difficult, as there were some he may miss, but he continued on undaunted.
As part of his ritual, Winter takes a picture of every Starbucks he visits and uploads it to his blog. He also drinks a cup of coffee at every Starbucks he visits – something that has come back to bite him in the past. On one single, particularly unpleasant day, Winter was trying to get through as many as possible in order to beat the closures, so he visited 29 Starbucks locations. You might think he would eschew ritual in this case, but he claims he indeed drank 29 cups of coffee that day, and regretted it afterwards.
8. Fan Goes to Absurd Lengths to Bring Back Crystal Pepsi
Kevin Strahle, who goes by the “L.A. Beast” on his YouTube channel, has made quite a name for himself in certain corners of the internet by taking on the most absurd challenges that people give him. He will try almost any food challenge you can think of, and has taken on incredibly painful physical challenges just to see if he can. More recently, he has been trying to see how long he can walk in a single day without collapsing from exhaustion, and claims he is training in an attempt to become the fastest person to walk across the United States. During one of his insane challenges, he drank an incredibly old Crystal Pepsi he bought on eBay, and before long this led him to putting together a full on effort to bring back the long forgotten soft drink.
The L.A. Beast organized petitions, auctioned art on eBay, mobilized his followers, and pestered Pepsi nonstop about the issue. Eventually, they responded to all of his relentless badgering and sent him a letter telling him that due to his efforts, Crystal Pepsi would indeed be returning. While it may or may not be a truly full, nationwide release like it was back in the day, it is clear that his efforts were not in vain. Strahle, who actually once drove delivery trucks for Pepsi before he became a competitive eater, is a huge fan of the company and gushed gratefully to them for bringing back his favorite drink. However, the “Beast” does not want to stop at just getting back Crystal Pepsi. He has expressed interest in petitioning to bring back products like Dunkaroos, 3D Doritos and Hi-C Ecto Cooler.
7. Blind Man Spends Years Beating Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Becoming disabled can be a depressing, debilitating experience. Many things that once came easy to you will now become incredibly difficult. And for many people, losing sight is one of their greatest fears when it comes to disability. For many people this is not only because of how debilitating it is to be blind, but because of all the things you won’t be able to enjoy anymore – like playing video games. However, while most people who were struck blind at 10 years old would become incredibly depressed and probably give up gaming, one dedicated young man decided that just because he couldn’t see, doesn’t mean he couldn’t still play games.
His name is Terry Garrett, and after he initially lost his sight, he started teaching himself how to play video games on sound alone. As you can imagine, this is an incredibly difficult way to play video games, but Garrett really wanted to be a gamer and so he never gave up. Eventually, he decided he wanted to tackle a game with more complexity and went for Ocarina of Time. For most people this would be an incredibly frustrating experience that would cause them to give up very quickly, but Garrett soldiered on, bravely doing his best to continue progressing through the game without being able to see a blasted thing. And, after five whole years of carefully playing while using only audio clues, he finally beat the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It may be many years after the game is relevant that he finally pulled it off, but it is still an incredibly impressive feat nonetheless.
6. Several Fans Spend Decades Working Out Insane Ocarina of Time Speedrun
Ocarina of Time, if you couldn’t tell from the previous entry, is one of the most popular games of all time, and was fairly revolutionary in its day. It has been picked apart and played over and over again by gamers throughout the years. However, while some fans like Garrett are content to play the game normally – albeit using only sound cues – there are some people who spend years of their lives learning how they can beat the game as quickly as humanly possible. Some of them even argue about the means of reaching the end, stating that if you jump straight to the credits with a glitch it doesn’t fully count because you didn’t really do any playing.
In one documented video (seen above) a fan who has been practicing speed runs for many years shows off how he is capable of completing the entire game in well under 25 minutes, which is incredibly ludicrous. He essentially uses the game’s poor memory management and other major coding design flaws to pull off massive exploits. Essentially, by tricking the game’s memory in incredibly complicated ways, he is able to teleport at one point all the way from the Deku Tree, to the last cutscene before the final boss fight. The gist of the method is that cutscenes are also tied to in-game teleportation, so they were able to exploit that all the way to the end due to programming holes the size of Texas. What makes this truly mind-boggling is that these speed run records are set by people who have been looking for glitches and other quicker exploits in the same game for many, many years and thousands of runs now, and many of them are still looking for quicker ways through.
5. Apple Fans Have Spent Weeks in Line Waiting to be First to Get the Newest iPhone
In recent years, at least since the death of Steve Jobs, the hype surrounding the newest Apple products has decreased considerably. However, this has not changed the fact that the Apple culture is already strongly entrenched, and once people get used to doing things a certain way they are unlikely to change. This means that there is still a very sizable group of people who will go to great lengths in order to obtain the newest Apple product before anyone else. We have all heard in the news that people will camp out days before in order to be the first ones to make the purchase, but it has become much bigger business than that since then.
To begin with, some people have been seen camping out weeks in advance of a new Apple product release, and fist fights have occurred before between the people waiting in line to buy the latest gadget. Despite the whole thing not making much sense, especially over an unnecessary phone upgrade, the trend seems to have only gotten worse, to the point where paid line sitters have become a real thing. Some people have allegedly paid homeless people to stand in line for them, and some entrepreneurs have set up line sitting businesses. This has, of course, caused some people to debate whether someone should really be allowed to keep their place in line if they aren’t personally, physically there. Either way, it shows that people will pay way, way over face value or spends days in painfully boring lines in the hopes they can have the latest incremental upgrade a few days, or even hours, before anyone else in the area can have it. Because at the end of the day, people are, essentially, idiots.
4. Steve Sansweet is an Over the Top Star Wars Obsessed Maniac
For those who haven’t heard of him, Steve Sansweet is a Wall Street Journal reporter who caught Star Wars fever and never looked back. At first it started small, like all hobbies do. He was interested in the new Star Wars and saw a booklet about it that had been thrown away by his coworker, and decided to keep it. Before long he became the ultimate fanboy, in a way that no fan of Star Wars may ever be able to equal. Sansweet’s collection was a thing of legend in the early days of Star Wars fandom, but in current days it has become so utterly gigantic that there is no way one person could properly keep track of it, or even store it in their house at all.
Sansweet’s collection has well over 300,000 unique Star Wars items, and many of them are very rare, such as specific items that were used for filming the movies themselves. His collection is so gigantic that it has its own museum that he calls Rancho Obi-Wan, located in California. Like most fans, one of his favorite things to do is talk about his collection and show it off to others, so he has made the ranch available for tours where he shows off his Star Wars collection and his impressive knowledge of the series itself. As he is very passionate about what he does, his tours take about four hours and guide you through all the highlights of his collection. There are many people who style themselves as incredible Star Wars fans, but there are very few people who can meet the dedication of Steve Sansweet.
3. Two Fans Know the Backstory of Game of Thrones Better Than the Author
Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson of Sweden have been obsessed with Game of Thrones since the first novel was released. The two of them have been constantly bouncing ideas and thoughts about the series and its history off each other every day since, and have kept a website with an incredibly detailed history, and continuity of the mythical world of Westeros. While this may come as a surprise to some, George R.R. Martin has admitted that he himself doesn’t know the history of Westeros all that well, and that quite frankly doesn’t have it all together enough to be assured that he can keep up proper continuity. And this is where his super fans come in to save the day.
While in the past that super fandom may not have been much help, things have certainly changed thanks to the internet. In fact, Martin himself now relies on Garcia and Antonsson to help him keep the continuity of his books straight. In essence, two of his fans are now the gurus for his own world’s history. The two of them also released a book on the history of the mythical world of Westeros, in cooperation with George R.R. Martin, which gives an account from an unreliable, in-world narrator of the events of Westeros in the ancient past. While some fans felt that the book left way too much uncertain, others have argued that this is exactly the style of Martin anyway and that an unreliable narrator actually makes perfect sense in his world’s historical records. After all, in Westeros, you can bet that any historical documents are greatly influenced by the propaganda of the current ruler.
2. A Woman Named ‘Beautiful Existence’ Eats Nothing but Starbucks for a Year
We all remember when everyone was talking about Super Size Me, when a guy decided to eat nothing but McDonald’s for every meal, for 30 days. At the time, everyone thought that this was an incredibly ridiculous feat. Some praised Morgan Spurlock for going to this much trouble to show how unhealthy fast food was, and others just thought it was a ridiculous stunt and, by the way, no kidding fast food is unhealthy, what a revelation! However, there is no question that he got an incredible amount of attention for his actions, which meant that it was bound to inspire copycats. What makes this next case in particular strange, however, is that this woman decided to eat for a year entirely from a place known not for their food, but for their drinks.
This lady actually calls herself ‘Beautiful Existence‘ (go ahead, get your eye rolls out of the way before continuing), and decided to take up the challenge of eating only at Starbucks – and any of their related brands in Seattle – for an entire year. The rest of her family did not join her on the challenge, but they all encouraged her to give it a try. She spent roughly $600 per month on her ridiculous experiment, and says that the most challenging part was on Christmas day, when she didn’t plan ahead and had to eat mostly crackers. While her weight did fluctuate some, she claims that she watched her calories and did not see any particularly significant gain, even when she turned to drinking more frappuccinos than usual. However, while she doesn’t feel the diet did any harm to her long term health, she was very relieved when it was over, and she could finally eat fried foods again.
1. McDonald’s Fan Visits the Golden Arches in 53 Countries
When some people travel the world they like to visit all of the biggest tourist sites – like the temples and monuments that have stood for thousands of years. Other people are there to see the latest nightlife and the beauty of modern architecture, or enjoy the landscape and scenery of another part of the world. And then there is James McGowan, who has had the travel bug for many years, but unlike most people, he has dedicated it to being a McDonald’s super fan. A native of Canada, McGowan is currently living in Thailand and takes the opportunity to jet around the world whenever possible and try out the latest McSpecial in another country.
So far, McGowan has eaten at McDonald’s in 53 separate countries, and has no plans of slowing down his hobby anytime soon. He has reviewed a hamburger with a scoop of mashed potatoes in Japan, salmon burgers in Singapore, super spicy chicken with rice in Thailand, and many more strange food items. For McGowan it’s pretty much about the novelty of it, so he isn’t really worried about his health. He explains that the vast majority of the time, he and his wife cook with fresh ingredients at home, avoid fried foods, and don’t drink or smoke. Eating strange McDonald’s food while traveling is, according to McGowan, his “one vice.”
1 Comment
#7 is the only one that’s impressive.