6 Snobby Claims That Science Has Officially Debunked

6 Fancy Running Shoes Do Nothing

BAM. You find yourself in a sporting goods store. The "bam" sound you just heard was a guy knocking a weight off the top of a high shelf. Before you looms a massive shelf of running shoes of every variety, price, and color: from human-fat white to involuntary-bile-secretion green to gangrenous-injury black. The prices are just as varied, including $35 shoes that are basically just burlap wraps around your feet and a $220 designer series made out of yak leather. Well, that's no fucking contest at all, right? Clearly the $220 black ones, right? Because black is the color of night and mystery (both of which describe you) and yak leather is better than normal leather because yaks are cows that got really into their grunge phase.

And, sure, it's "a lot of money," but what is money next to the health of your pelvis, and your knees, and your feet, and probably your spine and stuff? Nothing! In fact, if you think otherwise, you're probably an idiot!

Pshaw. Right. Say the snobs.

The Wonderfully Vindicating Science

Oh, sorry snobs, just one thing: no studies have ever found that expensive shoes reduce the chance of injury. Turns out a lot of the running jargon -- like the word "pronation," which describes how much your feet curve as they hit the ground -- is just distracting, and relying on specific shoes to "fix" issues can cause further injury. There's also the weird psychological trend toward seeking out danger: studies have found that when runners buy expensive shoes with fancy padding, they end up with more injuries, probably because they feel invincible.

So, what's the answer? Turns out you just have to listen to what your feet are telling you. But then you have to learn that language of the feet.

5 Organic Food Isn't Any Healthier

BLAMAGAZOO. Now you're in a grocery store. I've teleported you again. That "blamagazoo" was the sound of a cashier's childhood dying. Before you looms shelves of food, stretched out like a thousand tiny, can-shaped people standing at rapt, dignified attention for you -- the Infuser of Judgment, He Who Decides What Is Eaten. The God Mouth. Some of the food is marked "organic" and some isn't, which, gosh, that seems like the easiest decision in the world since you really shouldn't eat inorganic matter like plastic or candy corn.

Ugh. Now I'm being snobby. Everyone knows that "organic" just refers to food that was created without synthetic growth hormones, antibiotics, or other unnatural chemicals. And you don't want that gross stuff in your body, right? This is your body! It's a goddamn temple!

Haha! How foolish the snobs are. How foolish indeed.

The Wonderfully Vindicating Science

Turns out that, as far as nutrition goes, organic fruits and vegetables are no better than the alternative. The reason you see so many conflicting results on these studies is, simply, because the nutritional quality of different vegetables varies so much, based on sheer jack-doodle-dancing chance. One carrot could have three times as much Magic Eyesight Dust as the carrot growing next to it, just because the vision fairy sneezed on it extra hard that June.

You guys are following me, right? Sometimes I wonder if my parents just made up all the mythology they taught me.

And it's not just fruits and vegetables: this Washington Post analysis went through all the known literature about every type of organic food and found repeatedly that, again, the differences were inconsequential. Organic food had the same or comparable health risks as its hideously unattractive non-organic twin. Turns out that food is just food, snobs, and all you can do is ritualistically and habitually eat it in a vain effort to stave off the grim specter of death.

Haha. Snobs.

4 Having a Tidy Desk Doesn't Necessarily Make You a Better Worker

SCRUNCH. Now you're in your childhood home. The "scrunch" you heard was the sound of your head crashing through the drywall. Sorry about that; I sorta screwed up my calculations there. But I know the pain in your head is nothing compared with the feeling of irritation when your parents used to hassle you about your desk and room not being properly cleaned up! I mean, their bookshelf was always so organized, even though it was like three times as big as your desk, and how is that even fair? Right? Right? What snobs your parents were!

Back before they got "too good" for living on their own and started needing hoity-toity 24-hour care to survive and to remind them what their names are. But boy will they be embarrassed when you show them ...

The Wonderfully Vindicating Science

Turns out that a messy desk can be a great boon for your creative drive. It's not that tidiness is bad, just that neater habits and messier habits both have their own strengths: messy people tend to be more creative, while tidy people tend to eat more healthily and give to charity.

So suck it, mom. It's me, mom. Can you try to remember just this once?

Please?

3 Coffee Is Actually Bad for Creativity

SKWORP! Now you're in a coffee shop. The "skworp" you heard was holy mother of Christ I teleported you inside the barista. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh Jesus Jack-Hammering Mohammed, I need to-

SKLURP!

OK, you're clear. No, I don't think he's going to be OK! I need to get rid of the body. SCUMP. There we go. OK. Where were we?

You're surrounded by the unwashed hoards of pretense. Nowhere is there more condescending arrogance and foolhardy buffoonery than the American coffee shop. The walls are lined with Macbook Pros, adorned with snowboarding stickers probably, being dutifully tapped at by smirking goons wearing fedoras and scarves and wool coats. That one! The guy with the ascot and the ironic Good Charlotte shirt! He looks intense, like he's typing on his next screenplay, but I bet if I went over there and looked it'd just be a Facebook chat window.

How do I know this? How can I be so judgmental of coffee shop snobs?

The Wonderfully Vindicating Science

Because caffeine doesn't actually make you more creative! Turns out that caffeine makes you more focused, makes concentration easier, and staves off weariness -- and those are all things that move you away from being creative. New ideas and exciting solutions to problems require a wandering, unfocused mind that will leap nonsensically from, say, space travel to cowboys or Sherlock Holmes to 1980s sketch comedians or your favorite childhood board game to the fact that you have hundreds of millions of dollars that you need to spend right now before anyone starts asking questions.

So, everyone sitting around in your coffee shops, acting all pleased with yourself and being arrogant: you're nothing but a silly, silly snob, and you just got straight debunked. C'mon, Strawman Audience Surrogate. We outta here.

2 Marijuana Also Makes You Less Creative

BAM. We're back on your couch, chilling with your bro Skylar. The "bam" you heard was the door to your studio apartment slamming shut, since we walked here, because I need a minute to fiddle with my teleporter machine. Your coffee table is covered in schematics and blue prints stretching back to your second year in high school. Skylar reaches into his massive wool coat and pulls out a small glass bowl packed tightly full of The Devil's Lettuce. He takes a long drag and, grinning as he exhales, says, "Yeah, son -- let's design ourselves a drag racer."

This is the only way he knows how to work. Weed frees the creative mind, you see, and anyone who doesn't enjoy it is just afraid of the strange and unfamiliar thoughts that it gives your brain unmitigated access to. At least, according to the snobs.

The Wonderfully Vindicating Science

Turns out that the ol' Greenery for the Scenery is more likely to inhibit creativity than stimulate it. After scientists gave marijuana-using subjects varying doses of THC before administering a creativity quiz, they found that the higher doses had a negative impact on the ability to make connections between ideas and generating solutions for problems. As for why people think marijuana makes them more creative, well, it probably has something to do with the fact that they're high.

As for why it has the reputation -- well, I don't know for sure, but I think it probably has something to do with self-medication. We already know that mental illnesses are closely related to creativity and likely to go undiagnosed. We also know that marijuana is a common tool for self-medication among the anxious and depressed.

Hear that, Skylar, you goddamn snob? You don't use marijuana for creative pursuits! You're just self-medicating for an undiagnosed mental disorder! Your quality of life is never as high as it could be if you got proper care, you goddamn snob! Hey, I'm talking to you! Skylar! Skylar!

I think he fell asleep. Let's just go.

1 Giving Up Booze and Meat Won't Make You Live Longer

Floof! Now you're at work. That "floof" that you barely heard was me opening and closing the time-and-space-tunnel, because I've gotten really good at this. It was hard, too -- I put a lot of time into getting good at this machine, and I don't mind talking it up a bit, so just back off. Anyway. You're sitting at a table eating your lunch with your co-workers, and as you cram a 12-inch-long cheesesteak sandwich dripping with thick, translucent-brown heart-stopper gel, you see what your co-worker is eating. You know the one. The healthy one.

The one that eats salads and carrots and fruit and drinks tea because his body is a temple. And on top of being generally healthier and more attractive, he's probably going to live longer than you. AHHHHHH SNOOOOOOOOOBS!!!

The Wonderfully Vindicating Science

Nope, turns out that abstaining from red meat and alcohol will do little to stave off the grim reaper, because, in the end, as Neil Gaiman wrote in Brief Lives, we all get a lifetime. Nothing more, nothing less. Even if you control for outside factors, like previous damage done by heavy drinking or other unhealthy living habits.

Don't you see, snobs? Any attempt to better yourself is a fool's errand, because, in the end, it's the oldest joke ever told that'll be your undoing. Your own filthy body, the rotting prison of your mind is your own true master. Nothing you enjoy or value will ever matter. No matter how hard you care for your physical form, no matter how desperately you cling to the people close to you that you love, you're still gonna die. Then you'll rot and pass into memory and, shortly thereafter, disappear from that as well. In hardly a tick of the clock it will be exactly as if you never existed.

So suck it, snobs. We win. FIST BUMP.

JF Sargent is an editor and a columnist for Cracked with a new piece here every Tuesday. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

For more from Sarge, check out 5 Ways Tech Companies Let You Know They Think You're Dumb and 5 Reasons We Will Always Blame the Victim.

Are you on reddit? Check it: We are too! Click on over to our best of Cracked subreddit.