How social media’s negative influence on gym culture has turned it virulent
The social media-fication of gym culture has pulled the worst elements of human nature and marketing, applied it to a healthy pursuit and turned it toxic. It has supercharged negativity and put that on steroids.
And it’s discouraging disabled people like me, and others, from going to the gym to better themselves.
After what I keep seeing on social media, I don’t want to go to the gym. It’s been a couple of decades since I’ve been and I don’t remember it being fun back then — but it seems worse now. Icky even.
I poked my head into a gym yesterday (a Planet Fitness), which didn’t assuage my inklings. People everywhere, some vying for machines, others yelling, many recording themselves (and others), and people flexing in front of the mirrors.
My reality however, is that a gym could help me. I need to get out of my work-at-home and stay-at-home rut and I need help with the muscle deconditioning I’ve experienced from my chronic health condition (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome).
But with my condition, I’d have to go so low and slow that I’m embarrassed to do it in front of people. Even worse than people watching me, would be being caught on video, and ridiculed online.
I could work out at home, but with my condition, I could injure myself. I’d need some professional guidance to learn safe techniques. But…I don’t want to go. To me, today’s gym culture looks toxic.
The Toxic Gym(fluencers)
If you peek around online at today’s gym culture on social media you’ll see open mocking of people on video, physiques that look closer to clouds than humans, and rampant ableism.
Physiques have gotten out of control. I know beauty standards in gym culture never were super attainable — but they’ve gone bananas in gym culture. There are ‘gym bros’ with their massive muscles (and boobs bigger than mine), often facilitated by steroids — which are passed around like Skittles by locker-room pharmacists. Steroids are practically normalized in today’s gym culture, with people asking (and lying about) ‘natty or nah?’ — a trendy question asking if you’re natural or steroid-laden.
Steroids and their unachievable results set impossible standards for the rest of us. So do some of the gym outfits worn by female gym-goers these days, which look like they’re painted on.
Where do us normies fit into the gym cult(ure)? And where do chronically sickies like me fit in?
The reason I know about trends like ‘natty or nah’, #fitspiration, and the painted-on gym outfits is because many in the culture love sharing it online. Especially on apps like TikTok and Instagram, where they’re known as ‘gymfluencers’.
Gymfluencers are people who go to the gym to do dumb things with smart phones.
Examples of their poor behavior include recording people in the changing room, making fun of new members, making fun of people who aren’t workout-savvy, and yelling at people for walking through their video shot.
I am…terrified of all of those things happening to me. Especially since going to a new gym already feels like the first day at a new school, where you have to learn the culture while navigating a minefield of mean girls.
At the very least there’s one online trend that I won’t be wrongly accused of, and that’s of ‘leering’. Where female gymfluencers go to the gym just to record men near them —and then falsely accuse them of ogling them and call them out publically as perverts. Even if these men only glanced past them in a microsecond as these women performed cirque-du-soleil-grade stretching moves in a sports bra and short shorts.
Some of those videos reach audiences of millions.
Those poor men. Quite frankly, if it was me in the video I probably would’ve stared, and many of those men barely even glanced or batted an eye.
That’s not to say that some men don’t stare at the gym, like they’ve always done. Something that was a deterrent for me even two decades ago when gym culture seemed calmer.
It doesn’t stop there though. Then there’s dealing with the rise-and-grind agro gym bro crowd who scream and fight over machines. Oh, and there’s gymcels — an offshoot of the incel movement. Incels who found the gym and are ‘looksmaxxing’ in hopes of picking up chicks.
There are of course nice, welcoming people at gyms — but as per usual, the worst offenders are the loudest. And now they have social media as a megaphone.
Is there a place in gym culture for people like me, who just want a calm workout surrounded by either happy people…or at least people who ignore me completely?
How is it that we endlessly preach inclusivity in every other aspect of life — except when it comes to exercising?
Enter — The Swoll Effect
There’s a gym-justice vigilante patrolling the mean mats of gymfluencing gotham. His name is Joey Swoll. This wonderful, kind, gigantic man is almost single-handedly addressing the toxic epidemic of ridiculing gym goers online.
Joey Swoll, the ‘CEO of Gym Positivity’, is combating this perverse gym culture by calling out gymfluencers who ridicule others with his “do better” and “mind your own business!” videos. But the need for a social-media justice gym bro only highlights how rampant the issue is.
He has videos covering all the poor behavior, from recording people in the changing room like in the video above to making fun of people who are struggling.
After he calls an influencer out for their poor behavior, they experience ‘the Swoll effect’ and generally issue a public apology, or delete their account.
I hope if any of us are ever caught in one of those videos, Joey comes to the rescue. But, he’s not in every gym.