Many people exercise for one reason or another. Most forms of exercise, such as jogging or lifting weights, can be seen everywhere. However, many new and different workouts have also been invented over the years in an attempt to break the monotony and repetitiveness of typical exercise, sometimes with very strange results.

10 Prancercise

In 1989, fitness buff Joanna Rohrback was exercising down Hollywood Boulevard wearing ankle weights. She added rhythmic arm movements to her steps and was struck by the result that she described on YouTube as a “springy, rhythmic way of moving forward, similar to a horse’s gait.” Feeling that she was onto something, she dubbed her new workout “Prancercise.” In 1994, Rohrback wrote a book, Prancercise: The Art of Physical and Spiritual Excellence, which was not published. The entire idea ended up on the back burner for almost two decades.

For most of the 2000s, Rohrback was prevented from exercising due to an illness which lasted nine years. In 2013, however, she began to work out again, resuming her Prancercise moves and posting a five-minute video detailing the concept on YouTube. The video went viral, and soon, others began galloping down halls and streets and filming their own YouTube videos.

Rohrback’s book is now published, and Prancercise has its own website. In addition to physical exercise, Prancercise is also described as liberating practitioners from tired gym routines and allowing for self-expression. Prancercisers move to their preferred music in whatever way feels natural to them.

The unusual workout does have the benefit of being low impact and easily doable for most people. The use of ankle weights can make it a bit tougher. Prancercise isn’t high-intensity exercise, but it will get your heart rate up and can help beginners and people who are restarting exercise after a long hiatus (like Rohrback herself) to get used to regular activity.

9 High Heel Workouts

High heels aren’t always comfortable, and frequent wearing of them has been shown to have negative effects on the body. A 2011 study indicated that high heels may make women more likely to suffer osteoarthritis in the future, particularly in the knees. The shin muscles, quadriceps, and stabilizing knee tendons are placed under extra strain. So are the calves, which can be permanently shortened. The same is true for the Achilles tendon. In addition to the strain placed on all of those muscles and tendons, some scientists think that walking in high heels burns fewer calories because the shoes slow a person’s walking speed.

Exercising in such strenuous footwear might not sound like a good idea, but high heel workouts exist, and gyms even offer classes. These classes look much like a typical fitness class, except that everyone is moving around in high heels. One workout program, Heel Hop, bills itself as a means of reducing the pain and discomfort from high heels through strengthening the body. Other stated benefits include increased cardiovascular strength, a leaner lower body, a smaller waist, increased muscle tone in the legs, and improved confidence and dance skills.

Working out in high heels will indeed burn calories and strengthen the legs, though it’s argued that the visible benefits may mask underlying, long-term wear and tear on the legs. You might want to consider stretching beforehand.

8 Fifty Shapes Of Grey

Whatever your opinion on it, you probably know about E.L. James’s hugely popular Fifty Shades of Grey and the eponymous feature film. Now, there is a workout that features exercises based on the novel’s sex scenes. Fitness personality Kristen James (no relation to Fifty Shades’s author) has developed “Fifty Shapes of Grey,” a 13-exercise routine that can be easily performed with only a chair and mats. The sexual theme of Fifty Shapes is evident in the names of the exercises, which include “seductive squats” and “sexy scissors.”

Physically, Fifty Shapes of Grey primarily builds flexibility and core strength. The ultimate goal of the workout is to give you both the confidence and physical fitness needed to reenact Fifty Shades’s sex scenes in your own bedroom or to simply have better sex in general. Some of the exercises are performed standing on the tips of your toes, possibly because performing the exercises while wearing stilettos would be injurious.

7 Kangoo Jumps

The decidedly unique-looking shoes known as Kangoo Jumps (presumably a play on the word “kangaroo”) were developed in the 1990s for athletes to reduce the impact of vigorous exercise. Techniques designed to develop explosive strength can repeatedly place joints under strain equivalent to five times Earth’s gravity. Kangoo Jumps combat that strain by lengthening impact time enough to allow the muscles to properly absorb impact energy. Studies have shown that they reduce impact stress by as much as 80 percent while protecting joints.

When running on Kangoo Jumps, the entire foot strikes the ground, as opposed to the heel striking first, and is rebounded upward. Users have likened it to running on a trampoline. Running in Kangoo Jumps burns 25–50 percent more calories than regular running, and the core gets more of a workout from stabilizing the runner.

In more recent years, Kangoo Jumps have moved beyond athletic training and into more popular use. Bouncy dance classes have appeared in gyms, and Kangoo running groups and boot camps also exist. Gyms and classes aren’t necessary, however, as anyone can buy their own pair online. Though they make for a harder running workout, use of the shoes is said to be surprisingly easy to master. As of this writing, we do not know if anyone has attempted Prancercise while wearing Kangoo Jumps.

6 Europlate

How about a workout where you barely have to move? If that sounds good, then you might like Europlate, a type of machine featuring a vibrating plate upon which a user sits or stands in various ways. The plate vibrates at 30–50 hertz, and the vibrations cause muscles to contract and stretch like they would during conventional exercise, just more effectively. In fact, the producers of the product even claim that spending 10 minutes on a Europlate is equal to an hour-long workout.

These vibration machines supposedly provide many benefits. For one, muscles are exercised without the strain and impact of traditional workouts. Bone density, circulation, metabolism, strength, stamina, and muscle tone are improved. Fat is burned, and joint pain is reduced. The body is even detoxified through increased lymphatic drainage.

With vibration machines becoming more popular and appearing in more gyms, you don’t necessarily need to drop a few thousand dollars to gain access to one. There is debate over what benefits sitting and shaking on a Europlate actually provides, however. A 2009 study did show that obese women using vibration plates lost more weight than those using conventional exercise. But it’s important to use the machine properly for maximum effectiveness. If it feels easy, it’s not being done right.

5 Chair-A-Cise

Finally, there is a workout that you can do. Chair-A-Cise, like the name suggests, is done entirely while sitting in a chair. Personal trainer Daryl Madison developed the program as a means for anyone to benefit, regardless of their condition.

Many of the typical obstacles that may prevent someone from adopting a regular fitness regimen do not apply. If someone doesn’t have time to go to a gym, they can still do Chair-A-Cise at home or even on a lunch break. Hotels tend to have chairs, so frequent travel isn’t a problem. The program is also easy for beginners and people with injury or weight issues.

Exercising while sitting in a chair might sound counterintuitive, but Chair-A-Cise supposedly provides an effective workout, even for veteran athletes. (To be fair, Madison is certified by the American Council on Exercise and has over a decade of experience as a trainer.) Adding dumbbells to the movements and increasing the tempo can increase the program’s difficulty.

There are currently four Chair-A-Cise programs available, varying in time and intensity. For example, Chair-A-Cise Turbo is a short but intense version optimized for busy schedules. That one may work for reading KnowledgeNuts.

4 Zuu

High-intensity interval training has become popular in recent years, and Zuu offers a new and unique way to keep your heart rate up. Invented in Australia by Nathan Helberg in 2010, Zuu is gaining worldwide attention, with classes now also offered in the US, the UK, France, and Japan. Fans of the workout include Sir Richard Branson, sports teams, and militaries.

It’s probably no coincidence that Zuu sounds like “zoo,” as the workout primarily involves an instructor shouting the name of an animal and the participants moving like that animal for 30-second intervals. Some people also make the corresponding animal sounds. Among others, the moves include the gorilla, the frog squat, the bear crawl, and the iguana. Zuu also features a few movements that aren’t animal-themed.

As silly as Zuu participants may look, the workout is hideously effective. Fifteen minutes of Zuu can burn 500–1,000 calories. Exercisers are typically covered in sweat and may not even make it through the 15 minutes. To make it even more difficult, Zuu can be done while wearing a resistance harness, which has been compared to being on a human-sized leash. Classes tend to be quite a spectacle, but few participants care, citing how good they feel by the end of the workout.

3 Horse Riding Fitness Ace Power

Horseback riding can provide more of a workout than you might think. In terms of energy cost on the body, which is also known as “metabolic equivalent of task” (MET), riding a horse requires 5.5 METS on average. (For reference, sitting here and reading this article uses 1 MET.) The energy cost drops to 3.8 if the horse is walking and rises to 7.3, roughly equivalent to playing squash, at a full gallop. Regular riding has also been shown to improve muscular strength, particularly in the quadriceps and hamstrings. Cleaning the horse’s stall can provide moderate exercise, too.

Granted, horseback riding requires open space and, more importantly, a horse. Horse Riding Fitness Ace Power may change that, however. Using a seat like that of a bicycle, this Korean exercise machine rocks up and down in a manner meant to simulate the motion of riding a horse, which supposedly confers the benefits of horse riding. Users of Ace Power look as though they are hip thrusting in their living rooms. The suggestive appearance of the workout has drawn comparisons to the infamous Shake Weight.

Looks aside, there are also doubts about the machine’s effectiveness. It doesn’t mimic the movements of a horse particularly well and only moves in a single, repetitive way. The arms receive no exercise at all, and some fear that Ace Power could cause back problems. One could arguably get a slightly less repetitive workout from a bull-riding machine at a local bar.

2 Waterwalkerz

Spanning the line between exercise device and party favor, Waterwalkerz are endlessly likened to hamster balls for humans. Originally popular in China and Japan, they’re now showing up in other countries, too. People sealed inside the inflatable plastic spheres use them to walk across water in a manner that does indeed resemble a hamster in a ball. A device to inflate the balls is provided, and their plastic is durable enough to be used on pebble beaches without fear of puncture.

You can spend about 30 minutes inside a Waterwalker before you run out of air, assuming you last that long. Walking in one is not as easy as it looks. Even standing is a difficult balancing act. As shown in the video above, one TV reporter claimed that it would easier to fight Mike Tyson. Walking, running, spinning, and stumbling in the plastic balls provides a full-body workout, especially for the abdominal muscles. Waterwalkerz likely serve as a great way to tire out children at parties, too.

1 Pao Facial Fitness

Whether through conventional or unconventional means, there are many options available for those seeking a full-body workout, but what about exercise for the face? According to spokesman and world-class footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, Pao Facial Fitness fills that niche. A rather simple-looking device made from ABS plastic, Pao consists of a mouthpiece with two weights attached to long, flexible extensions. To use it, you simply place the center part in your mouth and shake your head up and down.

The shaking action is said to exercise the muscles of the cheeks so that a more youthful smile results. The greater and lesser zygomatic muscles are conditioned, as is the risorius muscle, leading to a better-contoured smile. The shape of the mouthpiece is also designed to force the lips into an “O” shape while using Pao, which works the orbicularis oris.

Pao’s weights come in 18, 23, or 28 grams, depending on the desired intensity of the workout. Shaking your head with Pao for 30–90 seconds twice a day is all it takes. If used properly, Pao can tone the face without straining the jaws and teeth.

Anthony’s tried a few odd workout experiments of his own, but he didn’t think to put them on YouTube.

Food is one of those things that transcends cultural boundaries. Everybody eats, and one of the greatest gestures of goodwill toward another person is sharing your food with them. But as much as we all love trying new dishes, most people would balk at the idea of slurping down an emulsified animal or a tortilla that’s literally crawling.

If you’re eating anything right now, you might want to stop.

10 Ptarmigan Droppings

Ptarmigans are large birds that live in the Arctic and look sort of like a more graceful version of a chicken. They’re a valuable source of food to the Inuit in Northern Canada because, unlike the Arctic’s migratory animals, they stick around through the harsh winters. In a region where hunters can go months without bringing in a large game haul, a readily available food source is worth its weight in gold.

Because of that, the Inuit have found ways to use every single part of the ptarmigan—even its feces. But ptarmigan droppings aren’t a trail nibble that you can pick up for a quick snack on your way to the closest seal nursery. There’s a very delicate procedure for making the dish taste right. Before anything else, the droppings are collected in winter and brought inside to thaw and dry out. (The fresh stuff doesn’t have the right flavor.)

Next, you need to kill a seal.

Cut the raw seal into chunks, chew on the chunks, and spit the chewed pieces into a bowl. If you feel like spitting some extra saliva into the bowl, it’s all the better. At this point, you can combine the dried ptarmigan droppings with the masticated seal meat, stir well, and drop in some rancid seal oil for extra flavor. According to people who have tried it, it doesn’t taste that bad.

9 Jumiles

Every November, families all over Taxco, Mexico, gather for one of the most important culinary celebrations of the year. During the festivities, the city comes to life. The tantalizing aromas of hot corn tortillas, fresh-ground chilies, and ripe tomatoes waft from building to building, and the markets pulse with vendors hawking their dishes to the visitors crowding their city streets. And if you stop at one of the many food stalls for a quick bite to eat, you won’t get away without a heaping handful of the main ingredient—live stink bugs.

Known as jumiles, these green, crunchy insects are a culinary treat in Southwestern Mexico. They appear en masse in November and stick around until the end of February, during which time the locals will harvest them by the basketful. Live jumiles are usually added to tacos, but they can also be ground into salsa, fried in their own oily secretions, grilled, roasted, toasted, or boiled. If you don’t want to wait, nobody will look twice if you simply pop a live jumile into your mouth. The taste is often described as “cinnamon-like.”

8 Shiokara

To unindocrinated Westerners, the pinnacle of Japanese cuisine is sushi. If you’re feeling really adventurous, you might try slapping your chopsticks down on some odori don, but that’s usually as far as it goes.

It’s a shame, because Japanese food gets much more diverse than that. Take shiokara, for example. Shiokara is seafood served in its own fermented entrails. The result is a sort of lumpy, chewy, pungent slurry in various hues of beige, depending on what animal was used to make the dish. The most common version is ika-no shiokara, which is made from squid, although there are dozens of different varieties. It’s usually served with booze, and the conventional wisdom is to take a large bite of shiokara followed immediately by an even larger gulp of sake or whiskey.

7 Cobra Hearts

On Mangga Basar Street in Jakarta, the cobra stalls open near sunset and stay busy into the wee hours of the morning. Here, customers can partake in one of Indonesia’s most unique and grotesque medicinal practices—a shot of fresh cobra blood mixed with palm liquor.

The setup is simple. Next to each stall is a cage writhing with angry black cobras. When a customer is ready, the vendor whips out his trusty butcher’s knife and lops off the head of the calmest cobra he can grab. Then, in front of the customer, the vendor holds the snake’s body upside down and squeezes every last ounce of bright red blood into a glass, all the while chatting about the myriad health benefits of the sanguine slurry. These include increased sexual stamina for men and firm breasts and clear skin for women, to name a few. These guys make up to $100 a night. After the snake has been completely drained, it’s filleted, and the meat hits the grill, shish-kebab style.

In Vietnam, cobra blood nightcaps get even more hardcore. The setup is mostly the same, but instead of lopping off the cobra’s head, they tear out the cobra’s still-beating heart and chuck it into a glass filled with the snake’s blood and a few shots of rice wine.

6 Bodog

Even in the 21st century, Mongolia maintains a strong nomadic culture that still practices the customs of their ancestors, many of which began in the era of the great Mongolian Khans. Faced with the ever-changing world outside of their isolated steppe between China and Russia, nomadic Mongolians have found ways to integrate patchwork technologies with their traditional way of life. It’s almost like stepping into the 13th century only to find that a time traveler has beat you to it: You travel on horseback to a small village, where children play barefoot and water is still pumped by hand. However, beside each round, tent-like ger is a gleaming solar panel, so goat herders can move around and still have electricity.

While much of Mongolian life has caught up with the times, some traditions are entirely unchanged from the way they were centuries ago. Bodog is one of these bastions of the past. Also called Mongolian barbecue, bodog is a dish made by cooking goat meat inside the goat’s own hide. It’s an intricate process that takes hours of preparation and still more hours of slow cooking. After a goat is killed and beheaded, it’s hung by the top of its severed spine while the chef painstakingly removes every bone, organ, and scrap of meat from the inside of the hide, taking care not to pierce the goat’s skin. The viscera is dropped in steaming hunks for the dogs to pick off the snow-dusted ground, while the meat and bones are laid aside and seasoned.

Eventually, the goat becomes an empty sack, which means that it’s time to start cooking. Hot stones from a fire are stuffed into the dangling limb cavities, followed by a layer of meat, and then more hot stones, layer by layer until the goat is full. Then, it’s tied shut at the neck and left to cook from the inside out. Periodically, the whole package is seared on the outside until the fur has burned off, and the former goat has become a white balloon inflated with the steam from the cooking meat’s juices. It is now a bodog.

5 Frog Juice

Peru is one of the most geographically diverse countries in the world. From the lush Amazonian lowlands to the windswept peaks of the towering Andes and down again to pearl-white beaches brushed like a painting along the rim of the Pacific, it’s a country that offers anything and everything, a visual casserole of nature’s most savage beauty. It’s the home of ancient Machu Picchu, the ice pyramid Alpamayo, and the mysterious Nazca lines of the Sechura Desert. It is, in most respects, a very cool place to visit.

But what isn’t cool is a tradition that you’ll find happening every day at open-air markets in Lima, the capital city. Here, vendors prepare a special concoction that has its roots in centuries of Peruvian folklore and mysticism—jugo de rana, or “frog juice.” Simply put, it’s a frog thrown into a blender with a dash of spices and herbs and a squirt of honey. It’s supposed to be good for everything from anemia to erectile dysfunction. When it’s made with an endangered species of frog called the scrotum water frog, it’s called “Peruvian Viagra.” However, any frog can feature as the main ingredient, and they’re used indiscriminately regardless of conservation status.

According to the BBC, vendors can sell over 100 of these smoothies each day, each one with a freshly blended frog as the creamy centerfold. The fact that the drink’s sale continues so openly is a prime example of the clash between tradition and modern conservation laws that’s become an issue in Peru of late. If 10 jugo de rana stalls are closed down one week, 10 more open up the next week. It’s an effort akin to staying dry in a hurricane by swatting raindrops, but if the practice isn’t curbed, enitre species of Amazonian frogs could go down the hatch in the time it takes to chug a mug of slimy, green, frog-flavored Viagra.

4 Wasp Crackers

At the beginning of 2015, a few photos started to make the rounds on the Internet. They showed a cracker with dead wasps baked right into it, sort of like chocolate chips. Far from being a hoax, these wasp crackers are real and apparently pretty popular around Omachi, Japan.

More of a fad than any kind of delicacy, the crackers are made from digger wasps that are harvested from the wild. The wasps are thrown into a pot of boiling water, dried, and then added to the traditional mix used to make rice crackers, or senbei. Supposedly, the idea was started by a group in Omachi who hooked up with a local bakery to create the crunchy treats. According to RocketNews24, a Japanese news blog, the wasps taste like bitter raisins, and the only real downside is that every now and then you might get a leg stuck between your teeth.

3 Dragon In The Flame Of Desire

China’s cuisine doesn’t beat around the bush. The food is vibrant, in your face, and full of life, a culinary kaleidoscope cultivated from centuries of historic tradition. According to the old Chinese saying, they’ll eat anything with four legs except a table, and our money’s on the six- and eight-legged critters, too. However, even in China, some dishes are considered a rarity. The Guolizhuang Restaurant has had a particularly hard time getting its dishes into the mouths and hearts of Beijing’s citizens for very good reason: They’re all made out of penis.

When you order a dish such as “The Essence of the Golden Buddha,” “Lotus Flowers with 1,000 Layers,” or “Dragon in the Flame of Desire,” what you get is an ox penis, a donkey penis, or a yak penis, respectively. Every dish on the menu is some sort of penis, except for the testicle entrees. The menu also offers a single dish made from tiger penis, although it comes with a hefty price tag of $5,700 and has to be ordered months in advance so that the relevant parts can be procured. If you aren’t sure which particular penis you’d prefer, you can order the “hotpot” which, with six types of penis and four testicles, is like the Applebee’s sampler plate of genitalia.

2 Snake Wine

If you travel anywhere in Southeast Asia, there’s a good chance that you’ll stumble across a bottle of snake wine at some point. Found everywhere from Ho Chi Minh City to Hong Kong, snake wine comes from a long tradition of holistic medicine. It’s said that the snake infuses the liquor with healing properties which can treat anything from skin conditions to arthritis. The medicinal effect is believed to come from the snake’s venom seeping into the wine.

Whether or not that’s true, there’s definitely something morbid about the sight of a curled-up snake floating in a jar of amber booze. According to Vice, the production of snake wine is even more unsettling. A live snake is coaxed into a bottle, and the alcohol—usually rice wine—is poured on top of it, drowning the snake alive. A shot of the stuff certainly packs a bite, but it’s not always from the alcohol. There have been several stories of people making snake wine at home, only to find the snake still alive after months of storage. In 2013, a woman in China supposedly went to the hospital when the viper in her wine leaped out and bit her.

1 Virgin Boy Eggs

For centuries, spring has hailed the arrival of one of the most revered traditions in Dongyang, China. As the weather warms, and the first signs of greenery begin to grace to hillsides, egg vendors make their yearly pilgrimage to the region’s elementary schools. There, they’ll find rows of buckets laid out for them, all ready to pile into their trucks for transport back to their market stalls.

Over the next few days, a new scent will fill the air. It’s the “smell of spring,” according to some Dongyang residents. And if you wander down the city’s streets, you’ll probably see large pots filled with eggs simmering in a clear, yellowish liquid.

It’s the urine of young boys.

Virgin boy eggs have been a part of Dongyang’s culinary heritage for hundreds of years. Nobody can remember how the practice came about, or why the urine has to come from boys, but that’s the way their parents did it, so that’s the way they do it. Once the urine is collected from schools (the boys are encouraged to urinate in the buckets instead of in toilets), eggs are dropped into the pots and boiled. Then, the eggs’ shells are cracked, and the eggs are dropped back in to soak for a few more hours. It takes a day to make a batch of virgin boy eggs, and they sell for twice the price of a regular boiled egg.

One of the great things about the internet is the way it opens up debate. Now we don’t just read a news story, we actively get involved below the line—broadcasting our opinion to millions. At its best, this sort of ‘below the line’ activity can throw up more interesting points than the article itself. At its worst… well, you only have to look at stories on any of these topics to see how opinions can polarize. For instance, good luck finding a rational debate on:

One of humanity’s most-enduring questions is: ‘is there a God?’ For millennia, people have fought and killed each other over the issue and wasted a ton of ink justifying their opinions. So you’d think by now we’d have learned to debate the question sensibly. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

The trouble is, both sides (atheists and believers) have their minority of fundamentalists who will do their level-best to ‘win’ the argument by being as condescending as possible. Atheists accuse their religious counterparts of ‘believing in sky fairies’ and compare religious upbringing to child abuse; while the religious faction simply resort to attacking the concept of science.

The weird thing is, most of us have probably met plenty of atheists and believers and never encountered a single lunatic. From personal experience, I know my Christian and atheist friends largely respect each other’s opinions and never try to ‘convert’ others to their side. In fact, watching a debate between these guys would likely be genuinely informative—so why is it only the diehards who ever make it onto message boards?

Around the world, there are dozens of ‘contested’ territories: Northern Ireland, Kashmir, the Falklands, Gibraltar and the Western Sahara, to name a few. Many of them have long, turbulent histories, periodically spill over into violence and one of them (Kashmir) nearly triggered a nuclear war. So why is it only the disputed Israeli/Palestinian border that whips up such emotion?

Let’s be clear here: I’m not saying there’s nothing to get worked up about. The situation is undoubtedly tense, not-helped by such things as rocket attacks on Israel, Israeli airstrikes, the seizure of Palestinian land and the violently anti-Semitic propaganda prevalent in the region. If you have to deal with it on a daily basis it’s only natural you’d form a strong opinion. But what’s puzzling is how the entire internet has chosen this specific land-dispute to jump onto—and invested it with such emotion that rational argument becomes impossible.

Tax is more-or-less a fact of life: none of us want to pay it, most of us don’t like what it gets spent on, but most of us use some of the stuff it buys—so we begrudgingly pay up. If we think about it much beyond that, it’s probably because we’ve either heard about some company refusing to pay a single cent; or some dumb government introducing a ridiculously unfair rate. But mention taxation on a message board and watch the lunatics come crawling out the woodwork.

Now, to be fair, I’ve voiced some strong opinions on tax on these very pages. So feel free to call me a hypocrite. But I’ve never argued for a one hundred percent tax rate or literally equated taxation with slavery—which is what you’ll hear on any forum devoted to the topic. Like everything else on this list, it seems to be only the extremists who leave comments on these articles: the beret-wearing Che Guevara wanabees and Ayn Rand worshippers.

As much as people like to get their hackles up at the thought of atheists and Christians or that chunk that comes out their paycheck each month, nothing compares to the vitriol evoked by feminism. Simply put: a good deal of the population seem to see the term as an invite to either spew violent misogyny or get into an oppression competition. And that’s before we even get onto the various strands of feminism that spend more time attacking each other than the patriarchy.

Now, if we’re being honest, there are some forms of feminism that really do suck. Equally, a lot of serious articles about ‘men’s issues’ often get shouted down under sarcastic calls of ‘lolz what about teh menz?’ But the sheer hatred feminism seems to stir up is way out of proportion to any of this. After all, the basic concept is something we should all be able to get behind. For example: do you think everyone deserves equal pay for equal work, the freedom to make their own life choices and to live without the threat of violence, no matter what type of genitals they have? Then congratulations: you’re a feminist.

There are two types of circumcision: male and female. Female circumcision is better known by its more-truthful name ‘female genital mutilation’ (fgm) and everyone pretty-much agrees it’s a really bad thing. Male circumcision, on the other hand, is an absolute powder keg.

That last link, by the way, goes to a representative article on the subject—if you have time, follow it and check the comments. That’s how most discussions about circumcision look: a whole mass of people screaming child abuse, threatening to call the police and comparing the practice to witch burning. To clarify: I’m not trying to take sides here. If you have a particular bugbear about this issue, that’s your opinion and I’ll respect that. But for the life of me, I can’t see why this particular issue might drive people into a howling frenzy. Yet venture below the line on any article mentioning it, and that’s exactly what you’ll see.

Sticking the word ‘Islam’ in an article is like lobbing a hand grenade into a hornet’s nest. Simply put: a lot of people have some very strong opinions on the subject—and they’re not afraid to let you know it. Unlike some of the entries here, the reason is pretty clear: a decade of news stories linking radical Islam to bomb attacks, assassinations and violent riots have left most of us in no doubt that we need to tackle religious extremism.

But debates on Islam rarely focus on ‘extremism’. For whatever reason, a vocal minority of our online community have gotten used to speaking about it as a monolithic entity: as if there’s no difference between, say, a moderate Indonesian leading a regular life and a Sudanese extremist. What’s weird is how this rarely applies to any other religion. Can you imagine someone seriously being unable to differentiate between Oprah and Fred Phelps because they’re both Christian; or between Jerry Seinfeld and a member of Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox community? Well, apparently that’s how some people view 1.6bn of their fellow human beings.

If there’s one thing the internet loves, it’s freedom of speech. We’re kinda libertarians in that respect: there’s little more likely to invoke the wrath of Anonymous than a serious attempt to curtail our right to it. However, it’s often taken as read that this freedom extends to anything and everything; and not everyone agrees.

See, although freedom of speech may be enshrined in American law—to the extent that even scum like Westboro Baptist Church are constitutionally protected—the same logic does not apply elsewhere. In Germany, for example, it’s a criminal offense to display a Nazi flag and you WILL do time for it. In France, denying the holocaust can get you a prison sentence. The online clash usually comes when American ideology crashes up against European—with neither side willing to accept their system isn’t ‘best’. So let’s be honest here: free speech may be an idea worth fighting for, but just because parts of Europe have taken a different route on certain subjects does not make them any less ‘free’. Minor restrictions do not automatically make an Orwellian dystopia—any less than total freedom automatically results in the anarchic Wild West.

Most scientists wish the public would get excited about their chosen field. Mention awe-inspiring concepts like string theory, Hawking radiation or gravitons to the man on the street and he’ll probably go out of his way to avoid you. For climate scientists, however, it’s a case of ‘be careful what you wish for’.

Thanks to decades of programs, books and blogs written on the subject, just about everyone now considers themselves an expert. And part of that expertise apparently involves shouting down the other side—bizarrely enough, for the exact same reason. Those who don’t believe in it see a vast conspiracy by scientists, liberals and other boogeymen to put us all in FEMA prison camps, while those who do see a vast conspiracy involving the Koch Brothers and big oil to manipulate the ‘sheeple’ into believing otherwise. It’s a perfect storm of paranoia centered around an issue most of us aren’t qualified to understand—and, every time someone brings it up, the sparks are sure to fly.

As you may have noticed, I’ve tried to maintain a largely neutral tone on most of these. That won’t happen here. For whatever reason, despite the mountains of evidence and eyewitness testimony proving otherwise; there are still people out there who honestly believe the holocaust was either exaggerated or simply didn’t happen. And their brand of mental sickness is virulent enough to infect the comments section of any article that cares to mention it.

There are a few things in the world that mark you out as a bad person; and denying the holocaust is one of them. It’s not just the extent of human suffering that occurred in moral blackholes like Auschwitz and Treblinka; or the sheer hatred required to send millions of Jews, gays, Poles and disabled people to certain death. It’s all that plus the stubborn refusal to learn from history—to pretend genocide never happened. And trust me, if there’s one mistake we never want to repeat from history, it’s this one.

Here it is: the most-divisive issue you will ever encounter. With feelings running so high on both sides, it’s impossible to take any sort of stance on abortion without seeing the entire comment section explode in your face—so I’m remaining one hundred percent neutral on this one.

You’re probably aware of the basic arguments. Pro-lifers believe with the utmost intensity that killing a fetus is as bad as killing a child. Pro-choice supporters believe with an identical passion that criminalizing abortion is State intrusion into women’s bodies, and completely incompatible with a free society. Politicians meanwhile try to search for a middle ground—a point where termination remains acceptable and a point where it unequivocally isn’t. But this is one argument that’s never going away: so long as there’s a human race it will continue to rage—and nowhere is this more apparent than on the internet. Now, I’m not going to make any value judgement on this, and I appreciate that people have strong feelings about it. But wouldn’t it be great if both sides could debate this and other issues—just once—without resorting to hysterical name-calling? I guess we’ll find out in the comments.