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Do you ever do a Dead Hang? It’s not a pull-up or a chin-up, it’s just grabbing the bar and hanging for as long as you can.

I had to work up to my full weight, but then I’ve been increasing the time I hang. I’m up to 30 seconds on most days. I take three deep breaths, then begin. The first ten seconds are fairly easy. My grip is solid and it’s not that difficult, yet. Somewhere around fifteen seconds a voice shows up, and it’s not the kind that announces itself. It’s calm, almost reasonable. It says: “You could let go now, you’ve made your point. This is getting uncomfortable and there’s no particular reason to keep doing it.”

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This morning I was doing curls. I count left-right as one rep, so my 75-rep target means 150 individual counts. On a good morning, when I can muster the energy, I get up to a 150 count (75 per arm). Most mornings I’m good for a 100 count (50 per arm). The muscles aren’t the problem. What makes me want to quit is tedium. The monotony of counting to 150 while my mind wants to be anywhere else.

I noticed something. I’d never noticed it before. I was paying attention this time.

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When doing a curl, you grip the dumbbell, you lift, then let it back down. It’s a fairly simple concept. Gravity pulls the weight down, you pull it up and (if you’re doing it right) when you lower it, you go slowly, defying gravity the whole time. The key is Tension.

It’s not about the weight, but the resistance. Go fast and gravity does most of the work for you. Go slow and every inch of the movement costs you something. The slower you go, the harder the muscle works, and the harder it works, the more it builds. Nobody ever built a bicep by letting gravity do the reps for them.

Tension is not the enemy of exercise. Tension is the point of exercise.

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The Booger Head

Every other creature in this bestiary wears a disguise. The Enthusiastic Ambivalent pretends to be a Skeptic. The Pontificating Ignoramus pretends to be an Expert. The Compassionate Hatemonger pretends to be a Guardian. On down the line, each one has a false identity, a costume that lets them believe they’re something nobler than what they actually are.

The Booger Head has no costume. He knows exactly what he is. He doesn’t care.

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The Angry Sloth

Her timeline is a war zone. Every post is an emergency. The government is destroying democracy. Children are being put in cages. The planet is on fire. Fascism is here. If you scroll back far enough (you won’t have to scroll far) you’ll find that last week’s extinction-level crisis has already been replaced by this week’s, with no apparent resolution to either.

Now check her real-world activity. Has she attended a city council meeting? No. Written a letter to her congressman? No. Volunteered for a campaign, organized a neighborhood watch, donated to a legal fund, or done literally anything that requires standing up from the couch? Also no. But she is furious, and she needs you to know it.

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There’s a difference between an insult and a logical fallacy.

When Donald Trump Jr. stood at a Saudi business summit in October 2025 and called No Kings protesters “older and fatter,” that was mockery. The room already agreed with him. Nobody in Riyadh was deciding whether American protesters had a point. He was playing to a friendly crowd. Rude, sure. Not a fallacy.

When mainstream outlets spend a news cycle calling a president “fascist,” “racist,” and “mentally defective” to millions of voters still forming opinions, that’s something else. The audience can be influenced. The label can replace the argument. And if the label sticks, the argument never has to be engaged at all.

That’s what separates the fallacies in this article from schoolyard name-calling. A personal attack only works as a logical fallacy when it targets someone in front of an audience that could have been persuaded by their argument. No audience, no fallacy. Just rudeness.

That’s today’s category. In Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 we covered fallacies that dodge the point, rig the question, cook the books, and substitute pressure for proof. Those at least pretend to be about the argument. Today’s fallacies drop the pretense. They’re about you.

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If you’ve been following American politics for the last few years, you’ve watched the word “existential” get beaten to death. Existential threat. Existential crisis. Existential danger to our democracy. Biden used it. Harris used it. Every cable news anchor with a teleprompter used it. They used it so often, and so loosely, that your average American who wasn’t already familiar with the term would be forgiven for concluding it means “imaginary.”

They do this with everything. Oligarchy. Anti-democracy. Fascism. They grab a word and bludgeon the public with it until the word loses all meaning. And there’s an irony so thick you could cut it with a knife: the people screaming about oligarchy are funded by billionaires. The ones screaming about anti-democracy spent years trying to remove a democratically elected president. And the fascism crowd is demanding that everyone march in lockstep or be denounced. Is it ironic? Un-ironic? Both. The words are accurate. They’re just aimed at the wrong people.

That’s what every fallacy in this article does. In Parts 1, 2, and 3 we covered arguments that dodge the point, rig the question, and cook the books. Today’s fallacies skip the evidence entirely and apply pressure instead. An authority said it. Everyone believes it. It feels true. It’s always been that way. It’s only natural. None of these are reasons to know something is true. They’re reasons to feel like you don’t need to check.

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