To go totally opposite to gluttony, Guinness also no longer records the longest hunger strike or period of fasting…again, doing so isn’t really in the best interest of the person getting the record. As the company puts it, “This is such a sensitive and difficult area to monitor, we do not accept public applications for this category.” While the publicly documented 16-year hunger strike endured by Indian women’s rights activist Irom Sharmila received global recognition, as The Guardian reports, due to the very political nature of such protest activism, the record-monitoring body typically declines to get involved in any way.

Non-protest fasts and diets, meanwhile, are right out — awarding recognition for such attempts can promote dangerous eating disorders like anorexia, and no one wants to do that, especially in a record book that’s supposed to be all in good fun, recording the highlights of nature and human endeavor — and the weird pastimes of our fellow humans.

Guinness knows that human nature can be fickle and a little cruel — after all, they discontinued the “heaviest pets” categories just in case someone actively encouraged their pet to become dangerously obese.

But letting Rover have all the snacks he wants in the hopes that he’ll become chubby enough to set a record isn’t where everyone draws the line. Sadly, humans are not always kind to their domesticated animal buddies. They’ve been forced into some pretty inhumane sports over the centuries, and Guinness wants no part in continuing that. So it no longer tracks so-called “accomplishments” in a wide range of animal-related sports that can be considered cruelty to animals.

Examples of these activities include, as Guinness points out, fox hunting, where early records were kept for things like largest fox killed, most people on an organized hunt, and so on. Other banned animal-related records include cock fighting and bull fighting. One particularly controversial record attempt was by an 11-year-old Mexican boy who claimed the title of world’s youngest bullfighter — going against several Guinness rules at once, all related to children and animals, as The Telegraph relates. Another category that’s banned from the book, as PETA recounts, is elephant polo. Yes, that is apparently a thing people do.

Once again, safety comes into play in determining which records get to stay in the book — today, there are no more Guinness World Records for driving dangerously! In the past, a variety of driving feats were recorded, notably high-speed competitions that didn’t take place on a dedicated track. For example, cannonball runs, where drivers compete to see who can cross a certain area (usually a country) fastest are no longer allowed, as they can cause serious danger to the drivers and others on the road. The company notes that it stopped tracking “high-speed circumnavigations,” as it calls the category, in 1996. It was just too dangerous — and too open to legal consequences — to celebrate achievements that likely involved breaking national speed laws.

Guinness does, however, still keep track of both closed-circuit driving challenges and fuel economy runs, such as a 2018 record set by students at Duke University for the world’s most fuel-efficient car. Cannonball runs and high-speed cross-country driving does still take place, but Guinness does not acknowledge or report on it. As the Daily Mail reports, less traffic on the roads during the coronavirus pandemic enabled certain stunt drivers to make a New York to Los Angeles run in record time in 2020, crossing the United States in 25 hours and 39 minutes at an average speed of 112 mph — very much illegal and very much what Guinness doesn’t want to promote in its pages.

It’s called Guinness World Records for a reason! Although the company originally looked separately at the various countries within the United Kingdom — England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland — it no longer does so. As the company points out, when it expanded to become an international endeavor, Guinness stopped keeping track of country-specific or regional records.

That also means that “excessive qualifications” are also outside the purview of the Guinness Book of World Records. Is something notable just because it’s done by a person with a disability? Nope, doesn’t qualify, according to the official rules. Is it too specific and not likely to “create international competition,” as the company puts it? Your application will likely be rejected. But given that there are some highly specific categories, you may still be okay! For instance, as Insider notes, you could plank for more than eight hours or watch a single movie more than 100 times. Not specific enough for you, but still within Guinness guidelines? Try taking on a record like “most apples held in own mouth and cut by chainsaw in one minute.” As Good Housekeeping reports, you’d need to successfully saw through eight without lopping off your nose.

Guinness no longer actively monitors video game high scores, as it points out in its rules, though it still awards records for the first person to achieve a perfect score in a certain game and for other video gaming excellence. Got a lot of followers for your livestreams? Take on the record for “most subscribers to a female games broadcaster on YouTube,” currently held by Ihascupquake with more than 5 million subs. Or perhaps you want to challenge Dan White in Red Dead Redemption to see if you can beat his “time to ride a donkey” of 11 minutes 7 seconds.

Of course, records in the “Gaming” category haven’t been without controversy, as it’s pretty easy to cheat on classic arcade games with modern technology — that’s one of the reasons Guinness stopped recording high scores. CBR.com recounts that one former record holder actually had his records removed then reinstated after more than two years, after allegations that he’d cheated using an emulator. Gamer Billy Mitchell, known for his Donkey Kong and Pac-Man prowess, was stripped of his records after a company investigation, then had them reinstated after an audit by Guinness. However, the controversy was part of the reason the company chose to discontinue the high-score record category – it’s just not worth the arguments.