The dick running feud is the perfect internet drama to close out your week
We're proud to report that there are two — yes, two— dick runners named Claire who are popular for using fitness tracking apps to jog out phallic routes for the internet. The issue? One insists she came first, and she's calling for a "cease and dicksist."
The two women have gained Instagram notoriety over the past few years for their various penis-shaped running routes. Both of them call themselves "Dick Run Claire," and both meticulously plot out genitals of all shapes and sizes, phallic and yonic. It's like a massive, city-sized Etch-A-Dick.
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The Claires' online rivalry climaxed this week when one of them was featured in a Vice article, and the other saltily reached out on Twitter.
SEE ALSO:The Navy drew a giant dick in the sky"That woman follows me, and steals my runs," Claire Wyckoff tweeted, along with a request to write about "Dick Run stealing."
Claire Pisano, who posts screenshots of her runs under @dick_run_claire, got into dick running accidentally in 2015 when she got lost on a run while visiting her brother.
"I had posted it to my Facebook and obviously my friends thought it was funny so I just started randomly working in dickruns once in a while," Pisano explained in an Instagram DM. She says she didn't join Instagram until years later.
But according to Wyckoff, who changed her Instagram handle to @og_dick_run_claire to reflect the dispute, Pisano is a dick run plagiarist. Wyckoff says she started dick running in 2014, which is also when she began "pioneering it as an art form."
Here's Wyckoff's infamous handjob route — which she posted about a year and half before Pisano posted hers. Note that Wyckoff accounted for a testicular sprint, while the Pisano's route didn't include the balls.
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"Learning to read maps and manipulate the Nike+ app to run-draw the best schlongs possible," Wyckoff said in an Instagram DM. "Back then, GPS art wasn't even a thing so I think it took off partly cause of the hilarious subject matter but also [because of] the 'innovation' of it."
Wyckoff says she noticed Pisano commenting on and liking her Instagram posts in early 2018, and was at first flattered.
"I get a lot of people wanting to run dicks," Wyckoff said. "As they should! Dick runs for all."
But it bothered her when Pisano's account started going viral, with the same name and same concept. Both runners have also done strikingly similar vagina routes — dubbing the yonic jogs #pussyrun and #twattrot, respectively.
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"I work in a creative industry," Wyckoff said. "You don't steal another writer's joke ... when your ideas are currency, bitch stole my money."
To Pisano, it's all a non-issue because at the end of the day, it's just dicks.
"She can be upset if she wants, but dick runs are just funny and I don't think we should take it too seriously," she added.
On Twitter, Pisano insisted she follows the #dickrun hashtag, not Wyckoff. In a tense exchange, Wyckoff called out Pisano for commenting on one of her posts, proving that she knew about Wyckoff's work in dick running.
Tweet may have been deleted
Describing hashtags as "the biggest thing connecting users," Pisano explained that she wasn't "super engaged in any community" until the hashtag follow feature was released. She began liking and commenting on Wyckoff's posts as a way to get more involved in the dick running Instagram niche.
As Pisano pointed out, Wyckoff wasn't the first dick runner to begin with, and told Mashable that "there are a TON of dick runners" on Instagram. She nodded to the hashtag #stravaart as an example of how creative people can be with fitness tracking apps, and acknowledged that human beings have been drawing dicks on things for thousands of years.
"Which honestly makes sense, the running community in general has fun people," Pisano said. "So many accounts of random dick drawings or things that look like dicks ... we are just an immature race I guess."
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And she doesn't shy away from the fact that Wyckoff was the first Claire to dick run.
"Of the Claire’s no one denies you dick ran first, but neither of us was THE first to the dickrun," Pisano added in another tweet. "Luckily there’s enough road dicks for all of us."
But that's not enough for Wyckoff, who wants justice for her original dick runs.
"As far as I know, I invented it," Wyckoff asserted. It's not the fact that other runners are dick running that bothers her, it's that Pisano "is leading people to believe in interviews that this was her idea."
Wyckoff told BuzzFeed that she wants a battle of the dicks to settle this once and for all.
“I think we should have a dick run-off — a dickathlon," she said.
To Wyckoff, a proper dickathalon would require a panel of judges. Her picks are Jerry O'Connell, Kristen Bell — "a dick running fan since 2014" — and/or Stephen Colbert.
"We'd each run and be judged on different factors, just like a figure skater," she explained through DMs. The dick run rubric would include penis authenticity ("does it look like a dick?"), length and girth, and flair.
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"What extra did we bring to the table?" she asked in her hypothetical dick run grading system. "And by table I mean dick."
Although Pisano chose to stop engaging with Wyckoff and aggressive comments that "felt mean spirited," she's open to an "overall dick run community event."
To Pisano, the dick running point system would depend on whether the competition is in a city, where there's a grid system, or in a more rural area, which allows for less boxy and more creative dicks.
"It would be like a pumpkin carving contest," she reasoned. "The criteria aren't so stringent, it's just what the people like."
At the end of the day, Wyckoff wants everyone to "Run a dick, don't be one."
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