I, too, am butthurt about scams. Not this situation though, I mean the real ones.

Anything involving swimming. It's low impact exercise, plus floating might be an advantage.

I agree with your first point, the gainer should explore this lifestyle with a supportive partner and try not to lay the responsibility for their needs at their relatives' feet, if possible. That's just being considerate. The part about burdening society though, I've heard that argument from fatphobic people before, and the problem with it is that it doesn't apply the same standard to any other medical issue. If we're to start questioning how deserving people are of medical care based on whether they were at fault for needing it in the first place, that opens the door to a pretty dark place.

Diabetes is a lifestyle disease based on diet, so do diabetics deserve taxpayer funded insulin? Do smokers deserve treatment for lung cancer? Should athletes be treated for spinal injuries? If someone becomes disabled due to a car accident that was preventable, do they have a right to a wheelchair? Should drug addicts get medical intervention to prevent an OD? The number of medical conditions that are at least partially caused by the patient is staggeringly high.

Another issue with the argument is that anyone paying into the system through taxes should be deserving of the benefits that come from the system they are helping to pay for. In that way, taxes should at the very least be a sort of life insurance for tax paying citizens, otherwise what is the point of paying in the first place? As a society that doesn't like to be thought of as cruel, we also try to extend those same benefits to people who are unable to pay taxes, because most people would agree that every person is deserving of having their basic survival needs met, regardless.

Also, the wider impact on society of some people choosing to gain a massive amount of weight is negligible, especially since it's such a niche interest that very few people will actually attempt. I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of people who need obesity-related healthcare are not doing so intentionally. That's not an ethical point, but it's still true. It's like saying that if everyone who went to the moon took home a pebble as a souvenir, then eventually there would be no moon rocks left at all. Might be true in a hypothetical fantasy, still absurd given the reality.

I want to send photos to someone through a message, but there doesn't seem to be any attachment button, and it looks like messages are text only. Is there any way to send a photo through the site without uploading it to your profile?

I'll try to rephrase. I hope you get free of your situation and find the guy you're looking for. You deserve a break. The kind of guys you want are out there for sure. However, they're actually pretty rare. Like exceedingly rare, probably less than 1 in a million. Those kind of guys know how valuable they are too, so they're very picky about who they spend time with, since they have their pick from lots of interested women. That also makes them extremely cautious about people who want to take advantage of them, so they are guarded against everybody. The type of ad you made sounds enticing, but would raise too many red flags. Maybe you should change your approach. Try contacting people directly so you can build trust first before laying out your situation. Also, most people have to search for years before finding mr. right, so maybe try to find an alternative means of escape on your own. Personally, I'd be very interested, but I'll just have to keep you in mind in case I ever make over 6 figures someday, lol. Good luck

Good point, and I have noticed something similar regarding trauma. I agree that it depends on how they deal with it. For some, trauma is debilitating, and can lead to depression, kill their self-esteem, and they become apathetic about what happens to them, so food becomes an escape. I think that's probably most of the people who end up on My 600 lb life filled with regrets. In that case, encouraging them would be unethical because you'd be taking advantage of their weakness to help them do something that they know is self-harm, but they don't care about their own well-being. It's similar to how we view drinking alcohol, consent means less when judgment is impaired.

But for others, trauma can shape who they are, even as they move past it. Our personalities are influenced by our own life experiences, good and bad. It doesn't make their desires any less valid. As a personal example, I have had some pretty horrible experiences surrounding work. At this point, I don't trust any employer not to steal from my wages. These experiences have influenced me to want to start my own business. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that decision, even if something negative played a role in influencing it. The same can be true for weight gain.

I think it has to do with having special interests. If you can obsessively fixate on Pokemon, you can also obsessively fixate on kink. lol

Fetishes - gotta catch em all!

Finally, there's virtue ethics, which is based on the idea that everyone should cultivate good personality traits (virtues) and act in accordance, while avoiding bad traits (vice). "Be the change you want to see in the world". Actions are only morally good if they reflect the moral ideal. Of course, the first question is who decides what counts as a virtue? There doesn't seem to be a definitive answer. Some have a personal role model, others trust in religious scripture as a guide, others take a philosophical approach. But in our case, let's just assume that Aristotle got it right the first time. He had a whole chart of virtues and vices. According to him, the 12 virtues are:

Courage or bravery in the face of fear,
Temperance, moderation, and restraint in the face of pleasure or pain,
Liberality or generosity with money,
Magnificence, industriousness, or doing something worthy with wealth and opportunity,
Magnanimity, humility and nobility with one's honor,
Proper ambition and pride in accomplishments,
Patience and good temper,
Truthfulness and honesty,
Wittiness and good humor in conversation,
Friendliness,
Modesty,
A sense of justice, and righteous indignation in the face of injury.

So let's see, helping someone to gain massive amounts of weight is self-indulgent, shameless, and probably a tasteless use of money (all vices). However, it also involves generosity, ambition and pride, courage to face the risks, and needs both honesty and patience to make such an arrangement work (all virtues). I haven't read deeply enough into Aristotle to find out if he had a system for weighing competing virtues against each other, but let's take the more conservative route and assume that someone must have every virtue all the time in order to avoid being unethical. So according to that standard of virtue ethics, encouraging someone to immobility is indeed morally wrong. But then, so is any degree of gluttony or even exploring kink in general, which display the same vices. The big question here is are you willing to live by that strict moral code and apply it to every situation? Will you try to avoid all forms of self-indulgence? The fact that your vices may be to a lesser degree than others won't excuse the fact that you are basically committing the same sin just by being part of this community.

So yeah, I guess it's up to everyone to decide for themselves, but unless there is some kind of rational foundation behind your ethics, it's pointless to hear about them.

Ok, but how do you actually know when something is ethical or not? It seems like most people just go with their gut instinct and use "ethics" as a post-hoc justification. Does it feel right? Then it must be morally good. Does it sound icky? Then it must be unethical. I'm sure I don't have to point out that something as important as society's ethical code shouldn't just be left to emotion, so let's think through this for once. Broadly speaking, there are three major schools of thought about ethics.

Consequentialist or utilitarian ethics says that ANY action is ethically good so long as it is reasonably expected to have a positive outcome. By that they mean that it increases the overall amount of happiness while diminishing the overall amount of suffering. But whose happiness should be prioritized? If you want to go far into utilitarianism, you could say that immobility is unethical because it removes a worker's ability to contribute to the greater good. Of course, that's a pretty extreme position because it assumes all of us are obligated from birth to put personal interests aside in order to spend our lives working for the collective. But ignoring that, the wider impact on society of a couple pursuing this lifestyle is minimal either way.

What about the happiness and suffering of the gainer? Both of those are highly subjective terms that mean something different to everybody. You should know that there are many people out there who seriously want to become that size and live that lifestyle. For them, being immobile makes them happy, and the health issues don't seem like suffering to them. Encouraging them might be like helping them achieve a lifelong dream. If their lifestyle of choice is denied to them because other people "know better", then they will end up living a longer life for sure, but one full of sexual repression and regret. The only argument against it in that case would be if their immobility caused more suffering to other people than the gainer would suffer from giving up on their dreams. Like if they have children or if they had an elderly parent that was depending on them for care. So according to consequentialism, encouraging the right person in the right situation to immobility is morally good, because it increases their happiness and diminishes their emotional suffering.

Next, deontological ethics places emphasis on individual liberty as a value. The underlying belief here is that everyone is born with certain natural rights that can never be granted, only taken away. Speech, religion, right of assembly, bodily autonomy, and property ownership to name a few. So deontology focuses on creating a system of rules and boundaries that allow for the most amount of people to seek fulfillment in their own way. As long as everyone is playing by the same fair set of rules, then anything that results is considered a fair outcome. Underpinning all of these rules is the basic idea that you're in the clear so long as you do not cause harm to others without their consent. The majority of all laws are based on this concept. So according to deontology, as long as there is informed consent, then encouraging someone to immobility is morally neutral, because everyone involved wants to participate. Moreover, interfering with their desires could be seen as morally wrong because they did not consent to having their autonomy taken away.

It's not just flavor fatigue for me. If I eat too much of the same flavor, I start to feel really sick like I might throw up. But I can make that feeling go away and keep eating if I switch to a different food. I don't feel like that from being overly full either, usually I'll just end up with uncontrollable hiccupping if I go past my capacity, lol