If someone talks smack about you, and you don’t like what he says, the absolute dumbest way you can go about proving that you really, honestly, totally couldn’t care less what the guy had to say is to act like Elliot Hulse did when someone else had the audacity, the bare-faced cheek, to question his bro-science:

Now I happen to know a little more about this issue than most. You see, I’m a big fan of Elgin Mones and his highly sarcastic, utterly irreverent attitude towards fitness “gurus” and bro scientists. He had a good routine going in which he would mock fitness fads and gurus through his YouTube channel. And he was very, very good at it.

He reserved particular scorn for CrossFit, in my opinion with very good reason. Unfortunately, the CrossFit top brass got rather annoyed with the fact that Elgin was mocking them (quite effectively, it must be said) and decided to shut down his YouTube channel.

If they thought that this would shut him up, they could not have been more wrong. Elgin simply started up his own blog and is currently back-porting all of his old videos mocking fitness fads and gurus to it.

Then Elliot Hulse got in on the act, and proceeded to spend twenty freakin’ minutes eye-f***ing the camera while going off on a long, impossibly convoluted stream-of-consciousness rant that left even his own fans utterly confused and not a little irritated at having their time wasted. The net result of Elliot Hulse spending all of that time telling people just how little he cared about some “puny” Asian dude making fun of him is that, of course, everyone knows that he really didn’t like it. And a lot of his fans lost a great deal of respect for him because of it.

I respected Elliot as a powerful lifter. Check out the videos of the guy lifting weights- he is a fully legitimate, immensely strong lifter who squats 405lbs like it’s baby weight and deadlifts 600lbs for chuckles. I didn’t have much patience for his commentary because I always found him to be quite long-winded and not necessarily all that informative. Now, though, I have to say that I have far less respect for him than I did before this storm in a teacup.

And that is the lesson of this particular kerfuffle. If someone says something about you that you take issue with, the dumbest way you can possibly respond is by pretending not to be butthurt about it while making it plainly obvious to all and sundry that you are, in fact, butthurt. You’ll end up making a fool of yourself and you’ll give credibility to the japes and jibes of the one who sent you up in the first place.

If someone mocks you, either accept it with good grace, punch his teeth into the back of his head, or walk away and don’t let it bother you. Whatever you do, don’t act like a guy who’s off his meds and then air your ranting for all the world to see.