Guinness World Records, originally (and for quite long) known as The Guinness Book of Records was, and to a large extent still is, one of the most famous and recognized organizations in the world, since its inception in 1955. Probably no household existed, at least in the western world, in the 70's, 80's and 90's, without at least one, often several editions of the eponymous book. In fact, year after year it was one of the best-selling books in the world, at least in those eras (and probably well into the 2000's), and often rather self-referentially appeared in the book itself as such. For many decades it was considered one of the best known and most respectable and trusted source of such information.
Perhaps the major reason why the yearly book was so popular and famous, and sold like hotcakes for so many decades, is that it, essentially, filled a role that the internet would fill in the 2000's: It was a way for people to get and read about tidbits of curious and interesting information. It was a very condensed collection of all kinds of records, many of which were impressive, amazing, interesting, curious and even hilarious. From the inception of the book series in the 50's up until the mid-to-late 90's there wasn't really easy access to such collected information, as the internet did not exist, and collecting such reliable up-to-date information would have been an insurmountable task for the average person.
And those two things were staples of the book series: Reliability and respectability. Indeed, the organization, for the longest time, had extraordinarily high standards of what they did and did not accept as world records, and what the requirements were for such records. The organization most often relied on reputable serious governing organizations or institutions in each category of record-keeping, such as sports organizations, regulatory organizations, universities, and so on.
Guinness also kept original records of things that weren't tracked by any other organization, and had likewise extraordinarily high standards of admission and reliability. For example, they would never accept such an original record (not tracked by any other reliable organization) unless there was a properly trained judge employed by Guinness witnessing the record and how it was being performed, so that it met all rules and requirements for being admissible as a world record. (Indeed, it was often very prominently displayed in any record-breaking event that a member of the Guinness organization was present, witnessing and judging the attempt.)
Then, in the late 90's and especially in the 2000's something happened that started making The Guinness Book of Records more and more obsolete by the year. Namely: The internet exploded in popularity, in availability to the masses, and in content.
Suddenly you didn't need to buy a yearly book to get some interesting tidbits about who has jumped the highest, or what the deepest unaided deep sea dive has been, or how heavy the largest dog has been, or whatever you want to know. A 5-second Google search will tell you directly. And in significantly more detail at that; much more than you could have ever hoped for just a couple of decades ago.
So, suddenly, The Guinness Book of Records was quickly becoming less and less relevant. Perhaps no better indication of this change is the of the name of the organization to Guinness World Records. While they still do sell the yearly book, the "book" part has nevertheless become almost obsolete. And with it, the whole organization has become pretty much obsolete.
And with complete obsolescence comes the "jumping the shark" (ie. a series that has fallen out of popularity trying new gimmicky things in order to try to stay relevant and popular, but in a way that only helps to accentuate how obsolete they have become) phase of the organization.
Indeed, the Guinness World Records has become essentially a sad joke of its former self. In order to try to stay relevant and outpace its own obsolescence, the quality standards of their records have gone completely out of the window, and they are accepting pretty much anything, no matter how ridiculous or cringy, as a "world record".
Indeed, if you search eg. on youtube for ridiculous Guinness world records, you'll find plenty of astonishing examples.
They have reached a point where they will accept almost anything as a "world record", no matter how fringe, how ridiculous, or how cringy... as long as you pay them a hefty sum of money. Indeed, in order to get something officially filed as a "world record" the only thing you need to do is to pay the organization a fee, which is something like 10 or 20 thousand US dollars, some employee of them will come to your "record-breaking" event, and if it seemingly succeeds, you got it. You got the dubious honor of being added to an endless list of useless ridiculous "world records" that nobody is interested in (other than, perhaps, to laugh at).
And that's, in fact, one of the major problems with the whole thing, and one of the main reasons why the organization is losing its reputation so quickly: These Guinness "judges" who go to an event to book it as a record are most often not any sort of experts on whatever is being done. It's just some random Guinness employee who may have zero knowledge of the thing being attempted, and will just accept it as a record if it superficially seems to meet some arbitrary requirements.
With the most ridiculous record-breaking attempts that isn't very relevant. Nobody cares.
Where it starts being more relevant is when they are presiding and judging over a more popular and serious hobby or event.
Such as video games.
Indeed, Guinness World Records has become rather infamous among serious video game competitors (including e-sports competitors as well as speedrunners) in that the organization has no expertise on the things they are judging, ie. video games as a sport and competition, in this case.
For example, they have accepted several times cheaters to their official records, and kept them there even after those were proven as cheats. They have used dubious corrupted sources, and then refused to strike the records gotten from those sources afterwards. In a quite infamous recent case they did in fact remove the world records of an infamous cheater... only to reinstate him after he threatened to sue the organization for defamation.
Guinness World Records has no integrity and its reputation is in shambles. Yet, they are still able to ride their fame from past decades and still taken seriously by too many people and organizations, who still feature them prominently and shove money at them in order to get the dubious honor of getting on their lists.
Guinness World Records, despite their attempts, have not been able to keep up with the times and compete with the Internet as a source of interesting information, and they have become completely obsolete, and are flying on fumes at this point, still trying to squeeze every last dollar out of gullible people before their inevitable collapse, unless they can come up with a way to completely revamp their strategy and keep up with the times, and become relevant and respectable again.
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