The stupidly specific categories can be fine if they're highly entertaining gimmicks, but yeah most of the time it's just some jackoff inventing a category to avoid actual competition in the main categories.
Reminds me of a funny story pertaining to a particularly notable cow from the farms.
So a few years ago, infamous tranny
Brianna "John Walker Flynt" Wu decided to add speedrunner to the long list of things he LARPs as, spending large amounts of (his husband's) money on original hardware to show the plebs how it's done. His game of choice? Super Mario Bros. 2, because he could play as Princess Peach the whole game (he's a true and honest woman, did you know).
Was he good? Not at all. His best times would keep him out of the top 100, and it's not even close. However, SMB2 was also rereleased on the SNES as part of Super Mario All-Stars, which is run significantly less than the original, and it's not like the original is run that much to begin with compared to other Mario games. Even then, he still wouldn't crack top 50 with his time.
However, the leaderboards have specific categories set up for single-character runs, including splits between the original and All-Stars. How does John do? In this incredibly niche category,
John places 16th.
But that's not enough, he needs to prove he's the best Princess Peach in the world (have I mentioned he's a woman). Luckily for him, SMB2 was later rereleased again on the GBA, which is run significantly less than either the original or All-Stars releases. Unfortunately, there's no single-character leaderboards to let him shortcut his way to the top. He brings this up
on the forums, and he's initially shot down by the mod because he correctly points out that adding a bunch of categories nobody runs would just clog up the page. After John uploads a Peach-only run, he relents and adds the categories.
For a brief shining moment,
John is on top...
And then, less than a week later, the same exact mod posts a run that beats his time, by nearly a minute no less.
To be fair, John does still have a single world record, in the
Peach-only any% no save-and-quit category. Yep, he's the absolute best SMB2 Peach speedrunner in the world...in a version of the game nobody runs...in a hyper-specific category...that wouldn't exist if he didn't specifically beg for its inclusion. It's probably not even that good of a time, and someone competent could likely dethrone him, but nobody cares enough to try. Just like the mod said, all eight of these categories have only one or two runs submitted at most, years after they were added. I can only hope some other autist steps up to the plate and knocks him off that incredibly low pedestal.
As for John, he gave up on his speedrunning ambitions immediately after his other time was beat, not even attempting to put up a better time. I think he still bragged occasionally about being the best Peach speedrunner in the world for a while, despite the stupidity of such a statement, but I don't think he brings it up anymore.
Finally, to wrap up this long post, I leave you with a relevant and hilarious
speedrun leaderboard (which I just noticed had a new run posted two months ago):
SmegmaKing/EmptyHero did a stream where he beat John's shitty game (that he didn't actually do any work on, just managed poorly) without really trying and made the leaderboard as a shitpost, and a few years later someone else comes along and actually posts a decent time. They even called it a "noglitch nocock" run. You love to see it.