You know, Rip, you spend a lot of time talking to people about why what their Silly Bullshit is wrong and why strength in the basic barbell lifts is what matters most. In doing so, you wind up spending a lot of time explaining how/why getting strong through the basic barbell lifts will help them with their "goals" For example in this video, you spend a fair amount of time talking about baseball. I know it was intended as illustrative point, but you did it; theres no such thing as "baseball strong," just "strong". In debunking "functional strength" you endorse "strength"
As a silly, vain Gen- Xer who came of age during the bodybuilding mania of the 80s, during the era of Rambo and Schwarzenegger in the movies, and in the era just after the golden age of bodybuilding, I remain interested in aesthetics and bodybuilding. I am now interested in Powerlifting thanks to your influences and those of this site. I wasted years (decades?) of youth trying to develop my body and enhance my aesthetics through nonsense and shitty training and exercise section. But I saw so much more growth, progression and aesthetic improvement from following the SS program that I can confidently say that Starting Strength is the BEST Bodybuilding program for novice lifters and for person without elite, natural genetics (i.e. persons for whom any silly bullshit causes strength and growth). Starting Strength LP is obviously NOT a program for IFBB pros or other elite stage-ready competitors, but it does provide the foundational strength, and just as importantly the knowledge/understanding of the programming and training processes that are necessary if one wants to develop and build their physique into something larger, rounder and more muscly than it was. As the great Ronnie Coleman - a fellow Texan, I should note - once said "Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder but nobody wants to lift any heavy ass weight." What Mr. Coleman is saying is that you got to get stronger before the improvements to the appearance will come - you got to get strong! (unless you're a morbidly obese pig, in which case just losing a couple hundred pounds of adipose will make you look better. Or a woman)
Everyone - except you, I understand - you're an outlier - everyone wants to improve their appearance even if its tertiary or lower on the scale than strength, health, endurance, usefulness, longevity and other performance measures. As you seek to grow the SS brand (and Godspeed to you - you're not the prophet we deserve but thankfully you're the one we got) you're missing out on a huge percentage of the market by not educating the masses to understand that great strength and the resultant muscular size (and not being obese) is what causes enhanced aesthetics. I know you don't care about bodybuilding and aesthetics per se; but you don't care about baseball either. Spend a little time posting some videos and discussions about aesthetics and how SS and strength is the essential foundation of improving your physical appearance. Make looking jacked and swole a plank in the SS platform.
I know that some losers allegedly do the program and they complain about the results. But You (or the minions) need to explain that either A) they didn't do the program as written, OR B) they have shit genetics (narrow shoulders, wide pelvic girdle, etc.), OR C) they failed to control their diet and got fat, OR D) they fucking failed to understand that SS is just step one of improving their aesthetics and what they are supposed to do next is take their new SS-earned strength and move into intermediate and/or advanced training programs using the "heavy ass weights" they can now hoist to build and develop aesthetically weak areas, but remembering that progression and overload/rest and recovery as taught by the SSLP will always be crucial to improvement.
SSLP will never become a bodybuilding program and its definitely not one of the company's goals. I get it. But educating the consumer - both men and women - how strength must be built before aesthetic improvements can come seems critical.
Thanks for all you do and please take this as a constructive comment from a devoted nutswinger.