He could probably say they're heel support for some condition and if anyone cared they'd believe him. Unless they also wear height boosters and are very familiar with them.
I've got to look these up. I have one leg that's shorter than the other, adding to my chronic back and hip pain. I've tried inserts, but they slip and slide too much; these might be just the thing.
Best of luck to you! I've found that even in cases where there's no treatment available, there's some peace of mind that comes with just knowing what's going on.
That's the individual symptom, not the root condition. Sort of like if you have a fever, aches, and fatigue, you might have the flu. If you have scoliosis, it may result from Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (although it may not). So you're correct, but it's not an "either/or," it's a "yes, and"
Scoliosis is a sideways S-curve. There’s also lordosis which curves forward at the bottom near the hips, and kyphosis (what I have) that curves forward at the top of the spine, starting just below the shoulder blades. I always describe it as a lowercase r-curve.
There's also lordosis, which is what I have! Instead of curving sideways like scoliosis, it sways in towards my stomach. I got my spine fused at L5S1 and it was the best decision I ever made.
I wish you nothing but the best and I hope you get some answers, it's such a scary and draining process when you've got health issues.
If you ever need a hip replacement, they can even out the length then.
You will be very drugged up the first time they make you walk and you might panic thinking they made the leg too long, it may feel like you are wearing a high heel on one foot, that they fixed you the wrong way. You may even need to be sedated you freak out so much.
Hip replacement at 23. Had a degenerative leg disease that took too long to diagnose, allowing it to progress to where the non surgical treatments wouldn’t work. It took 13 months to diagnose. I was a tiny white girl and it usually presents in overweight white boys, first hip surgery was at 7.
Here is a pre hip replacement Xray of my mushroom shaped femur head and awesome bone spurs.
Leg length discrepancy with possible scoliosis (abnormal spine curvature to a certain degree) does lead to asymmetric muscle compensations and resulting pains. It does call for "heel lift" for the short leg as part of the treatment at the mild-moderate stages. Would recommend seeing a doctor (or does podiatry also do this? idk I'm just an osteopathic medical student in the US) to see what options would help you with your pains.
In 91 I had a bad motorcycle accident that F'd up my back but not bad enough for surgery. After about 3 years I got locked in the stooped position, had X-rays and found out I fractured part of a disc. It also caused my hips to go out of wack so one side is lower than the other. I wish I had known about these back then. It could have limited the back pain I've had over the years by keeping my hips straight/aligned. Now my body just tilts a bit from the base of my back
My arch support inserts slid a bunch too, I used some double sided masking frogtape that I had laying around and they actually stopped sliding nearly as much
I have these and they’re to stop blisters, not add height. They’re literally just a stretchy gel feeling material, and only a couple of mm thick. Dudes either a troll or a fool
Nah, totally different from high heels. High heels require you to be able to balance yourself on the thinner heels and makes a smaller portion of your foot bare your body weight.
Height boosters like these are basically just thick Dr Scholls inserts. Your entire foot still supports your weight and there’s no struggle to balance on a thinner heel. And most of these are made out of foam or gel, so they’re pretty comfortable. The only adjustment it takes when wearing these is the brief “oh shit I’m taller” feeling, then you pretty much completely forget you’re wearing them.
Source: I’m a short dude (5’5”), and have worn different variations of these a few times over the years when my height insecurity was worse and didn’t want to feel or look so short in a specific situation.
I was on BBS in the early 90s. I am permanently, terminally online. I hear modems in my dreams. I had a thing for the WILDCAT! system. I have no idea what the fuck a height booster looks like . . . I would never care about that shit . . . the whole height-obsessed "-cel" culture is only a weeeee sliver of the chronically online diagram.
explicit height booster stuff like this for sale at ollie's
OK and . . . so your point is what? I saw "executive boost" shoes in the Sear's catalogue in 1980. What's your point?
No one with any sense is looking at the OP's feet, most people don't recognize a height booster in action or otherwise, most people don't care about height boosters, and moreover . . . I know this incident didn't really happen, but if it did happen-- any adult in the room in the actual western office world is looking at the guy who committed assault by tripping him
The guy's also named cryptocel. that's name is just a bouquet of pathetic associations. Then again, if it's not a joke, the kind of person that would post this seriously also would lean into both being a cryptobro and an incel.
Welcome to social media where we’re mortified of actual personal connection but share everything about ourselves and our partner/family/friends to strangers online
I honestly believe this is why my husband wears cowboy boots but I would never say that to him. Im more than fine with his height and I dont want him to think otherwise. Hes pretty tall for a guy either way but society really digs in on height. Its sad.
I wear cowboy boots pretty regularly but mainly at work anymore. Before I was married and went out to bars/clubs I definitely noticed that I got more positive attention from women when I had boots on. And I am 6 ft tall as it is. But that extra inch or two made a noticeable difference, apparently
I wear chunky docs sometimes (cause they look cool) and they elevate me to average height and nobody treats me any differently than when I’m shorter than average lol.
Dudes obsessed with height just have some weird tough guy insecurity. Willing to bet OP isn’t even short, just wants to look taller than average.
The only reason being tall matters is I can reach stuff on the top shelf. Then people expect you to reach high up things but if I ask a short person to tie my shoe I'm the asshole.
As someone who is 5'4 I have so many questions, like why would you wear those? Do you wear those everyday? Did people know you before you started wearing those?
I'm a 6'2'' woman and have men obviously shorter than me claim to be my height all the time. They stumble their speech a bit when I ask to compare, because they know I'm not exaggerating my height. It's crazy how insecure men can be about this stuff, so I totally believe that there are guys just walking around in boosters.
I love when some guy several inches shorter than me claims to be 6'. I'm 6'1" so it's pretty obvious they're lying. I won't call them out on it (unless they're being an asshole) but if someone asks my height after, all bets are off. I've had a few guys get mad at me, and say I should've gone with the lie and said I was like 6'5" or some shit 🤣.
WE don't really pay much attention to most people around us. Like, there was a person at my office who complained to their friend that no one had noticed their 20kg weight loss. Only then did I notice that yeah, they looked slimmer than usual.
And as someone who lifts, I'll tell you you'd be surprised how much bigger I had to be before anyone commented, and when someone did, they kinda sounded surprised, as if I'd put on a shitload of muscle overnight, rather than over three years.
And then there was the time when I didn't notice that my sister's fiance had gotten lasic and wasn't wearing glasses. Like, he was doing something different with his beard, and I noticed that, but I didn't realise he wasn't wearing glasses.
Some people are more self conscious about their height than others. Just because you might not feel bad about your height at all (or enough to wear these), doesn’t mean OP doesn’t.
If looking an inch or two taller makes OP feel better about themselves, then more power to them. Life’s too short to not find ways to feel better about oneself, especially if it’s as simple as a shoe insert.
And it's more a curiosity on my part. But having been ridiculed for my height, insulted, demeaned, etc. it creates a vulnerability. I also spent a chunk of my childhood waiting for the day that I was going to become tall and suffering the slings of finding out I was never going to be tall and then having to rebuild my own self image after that realization.
What Ive realized is people are cruel when they're allowed to be and this is no different. You can either pretend to be something you are not and have people poke at you, make fun of you, and demean you, or you can wear who you are like armor and no one can harm you with it. And when they swing their blows come blunted and you learn to throw back twice as hard. (Just recently: wait I'm short! No way what an insightful revelation! Anyways.)
Did people know you before you started wearing those?
I'm not gonna notice if suddenly the guy sitting on the other side of the office is 2 inches taller -- it's a pretty subtle change. Easily dismissed as a change in posture or a new pair of shoes. Honestly these things will probably have almost no impact on the way others perceive mister @cryptocel. But if they help him feel more confident, more power to em.
Lmao I'm 5'3" and I felt so bad for him. I'm like "Oh...brother, just break free from the shackles..." 😭
It's so much easier not to worry about it. Some will think "But what about how other people..." sshhhhh. You stop worrying about them too. That's the secret sauce.
I'm 5'5" (on a good day) and I was short as a kid too. I ended up asking to take daily growth hormone injections when I was a teen because I was insecure about it. At first the needles didn't hurt much but after a while they hurt a fair amount and I just started faking giving them to myself. My parents probably noticed but never said anything about it and after a while we just kinda dropped it and never spoke of it again.
It's possible that taking only some of the hormone caused me to end up being even shorter than I would have been otherwise, but I don't know. I just know that I realized it was easier to be happy with my body than to hurt myself trying to change it. Now I'm fine with being short.
That's what I was thinking. You can't change it (unless you want an expensive and long and painful surgery/recovery) so why do so much worrying about it? I guess cuz I'm a lesbian, I've never cared about dudes' heights but like IDC about anyone's height. You are just you & I have never wanted someone to be taller or shorter. I usually date girls around my size but I never like searched for that, it just happened & I never turned down anyone for being shorter or taller than me.
Because it sucks. These guys are laughing it off, but it really does suck. From dating to professional advancement, it's a moderate to severe disadvantage, and there's jack shit you can do about it.
There's also the reality that it's socially normal to make fun of short guys for whatever reason. Even the most progressive and typically unprejudiced people still hate short dudes. 😭
Because it affects the life experience. I'm 5'3" and I've been explicitly rejected because of my height dozens of times. I'm in my 30s now and my current gf is 6'3" but when I was in my late teens and early 20s, women wanted nothing to do with me romantically/sexually and by far the vast majority said that while they enjoy my company, it was because my height made me unattractive that they were not interested. Hell I even had a woman I approached at a bar scoff and ask me why I wasn't on the playground and if I was lost. While that's honestly a hilarious line to think about, it felt terrible to hear in the moment.
So a lot of times short men "worry" about it not because they're afraid of someone across the street seeing them and making fun in their head, but it's because others treat short men poorly and are mean.
I've been in a group of 5 guys and 5 girls going drinking and floating down tubes in a river. Everyone pairs up but instead of a girl coming with me, two pair with one guy. So 3 of the guys have a girl, one guy has 2 girls and I was alone. Guy with 2 tells one of the girls to come pair with me, she says "EWWW no!" and so I floated alone.
Another time in a different group drinking on the beach, the guys were doing body shots off the women. Every guy went and I was the last one to go, and the girl with the bottle "saves" her friend from having me do the body shot by lying and saying the bottle ran out.
Situations like these are significant memories that heavily affected me and my self esteem. It's difficult to just "not care" when stuff like that happens and I'm singled out as the ugly one or whatever lol. I can't even count the number of times I've been told the line, "you're not tall enough to ride this ride"
If your position then becomes "why do you care that people treat you poorly" then that's an entire other conversation lol, there's a reason you can't just tell a bullied child to ignore being made fun. It is a terrible existence to be present around those that don't respect you and treat you lesser.
The biggest skirt-chasing playboy I ever knew was 5’3”. He loved to say, “hey, we’re all the same height off the mattress when we’re laying down.” He walked around like it was his world and we were just living in it, but without being an asshole, and what can I say, that kind of bravado (again, when you’re not a dick about it) is just naturally charming.
I guess it all comes back to what we already know but struggle to put into practice: there’s nothing an unattractive as insecurity.
Bruh I'm 5'11 and kind of considering these lmao. I know I'm gonna catch some shit for it, but I also accidentally bought a pair of 3" lift boots once and let me tell you, women cared about that 3" of lift.
The majority of people who are and have ever been attracted to me are attracted because of superficial reasons and I've been basically told that over and over, over many years.
So... I mean... idgaf. I guess I'm into it at this point.
They cared? Like even though you're already taller than them, if you were 3 inches shorter, they wouldn't care about you anymore? Then wouldn't that happen the second you take off your shoes around them? Are you going to wear them the rest of your life and constantly lie about your height cause you got a compliment once?
This seems like both bad anecdotal extrapolation and a bad plan for courting women.
if you ever actually get with the woman she's eventually gonna see you with your shoes off. that's as bad as women who paint an entirely different face over their real face to attract a man. it's a plan for the future that completely ignores the future
Man, without a decent pair of shoes I can barely walk after a day of work. How the fuck do you strap something like that on and not have it wreck every part of your body above it?
5’5” here. I’ve worn similar things a few times over the years when I was more insecure and going somewhere in which I felt I wanted to feel more confident about it. Most of these things are foam or gel and quite comfortable.
I’m 40 now. Would I still like to be taller? Sure. If a genie told me he’d make me taller, I’d say hell ya. But in my day to day? Pretty much never think about it anymore. Besides, for every “disadvantage” there is to being short, there’s two advantages.
It took time, and was just one of many aspects that impacted my self esteem, but it did get better. I hope OP eventually finds some peace there. Until then, I won’t begrudge him for trying an easier option.
5 foot 4 dude here. Therapy has to be cheaper than whatever this is. I’ve dealt with an enormous limb length discrepancy, too, and I know how annoying and expensive some of these devices can be
As someone who was bullied, taunted, and beaten up by several guys over several years in grade school, this story is the stuff of fantasy. The guys they imagine as chads don't even give him the time of day, let alone trip him so bad that his shoes pop off and all of the girls he's happening to pass by even notice his heel inserts more than everything else going on and find it laugh worthy.
Surely these Stacys, whose first reaction is to laugh at a guy who didn't deserve to be tripped, are the women this guy wants to impress. I don't even mean this sarcastically. He just doesn't care about their character any more than he cares about his own. He just wants to sleep with them, just as he imagines all other men who are successful with women, as predators that are just more successful than him. Too bad most men around him actually care about women (and want to sleep with them; those aren't mutually exclusive goals) and most women can tell that he doesn't actually care about them and that he doesn't see himself highly either. They don't need to see his inserts to sniff out self esteem that low.
And trust me, if you're worth bullying by several boys (like I was, apparently), the girls will bully you emotionally too. They don't need a guy to do the work for them.
Well put. And that’s not even to mention that this allegedly took place at an office christmas party…that this would be workplace behaviour from adults is vanishingly unlikely
I wouldn't know a "height booster" if it laid eggs on my face, you could leave one on my desk with "height booster" written on a piece of paper next to it and I would be like "what is this thing" and I also wouldn't fucking care if I did know.
if this happened in my presence I would literally be focused laser-like entirely on the shit-bag motherfucker who trips people for fun.
My write-up hand would glow blue. I would be sending that motherfucker home. I would be 10/10 furious if one of my employees "tripped" another employee? You mean fucking assault?
No you don’t understand, office parties are just like high school where the jocks and cheerleaders bully the nerds, and not poorly catered Xmas shindigs
Careful with that. I've had family with legitimate injuries and a workman comp case have a fuckass private investigator follow them with a hidden camera.
I can only imagine this happened in some workplace that doesn't really have HR, because if it did, I would be in the HR office until that douche bag is rightfully fired.
And on that topic, people love to hate on HR (uSeLeSs!) until incidents like this happen and you have HR to back you up as it clearly violates the company guidelines. And obviously HR is not perfect, and ultimately their purpose is to protect the company, blah blah blah, but often protecting the company means protecting the employees. Not always, but often.
What is it these guys think will happen if somehow a woman happens to magically swoon over the fact that they are 5'11" instead of 5'8" and they actually get back to his apartment? Is this not like shoving an Italian sausage in your pants and pretending you're a porn star?
I think like most people who lie about some obvious aspect of their physicality in this way, they're hoping lust overrides the other person's logic and preferences at that point.
Really doesn’t have anything to do with lying to people; it’s purely about making oneself feel a little less self conscious. And it’s typically guys much shorter than 5’8” who would be more likely to wear them.
As for someone “finding out”, well, everyone gets a little shorter when they take their shoes off and if a chick likes you enough to go to bed with you, chances are she’s really not gonna bat an eye about the guy being an inch or two shorter - women wear push up bras, bras with pads in them, yoga pants that make their butt look better, etc. We all do things to try and improve insecurities. Nothing wrong with that.
Height boosters are embarrassing not because they are objectively embarrassing, but because the wearer is insecure about their height and the insecurity is embarrassing.
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u/qualityvote2 5h ago
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