There's a guy at my gym I really wish you could see. He's not particularly remarkable looking, basically your standard-issue metal dude archetype. It's what he does while he's there that fascinates me: In the hours I've observed him over the years, he has never once stopped playing air drums. Bounding around the gym floor like he's performing for a sellout crowd, indefatigable with stick twirls, flourishes, all the tricks. I often think about taking a video of him and posting it to Twitter. "What is this guy's deal?" I want to ask.
But I never do it, because I shouldn't. Not because it's illegal, but because it's unethical and gross. Especially at the gym, where, at least in theory, a certain esprit de corps is supposed to govern our behavior. At best, I'd scrape off a few dozen likes at this unwitting guy's expense. Or worse, it would go viral, humiliating him in front of thousands of people. That's not something any of us should want to do. (And just in case you read this, my guy: For what it's worth, you're in great shape, and I like your tattoos.)
Unfortunately, something like the latter happened recently when Barstool Sports posted a surreptitious video of a young man taking a selfie while flexing at the gym. "Ever wonder who your girl is talking to behind your back?" they captioned it. The man in question is not necessarily in the best shape in the world, which is the entire joke: People who look like this should not have access to their selfie camera, or the gym.
It's no revelation that Barstool would post something crass--"Post something crass" is its version of Google's "Don't be evil." And although this type of thing has long been a staple on its site (and Twitter account, where you'll find dozens of examples), it is far from the only one doing it. Barstool is simply among the more notable practitioners of what has become a booming trend online. From garbage content farms to YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, Facebook and everywhere else there's a steady trade in indulging the temptation to shame strangers anonymously.
Sneaky photos of people taken in public--on the subway, at concerts or in line at Starbucks--are everywhere. But the gym has become particularly fertile ground for the genre. Many Facebook pages, such as Gym Memes with almost 4 million likes, churn out post after post dedicated to humiliating people who are unaware they are being recorded, like one of a woman knitting while using a leg machine which racked up almost 500,000 views in a couple of days. Gym Fail Nation, a page with 187,000 likes, is another exemplar.
On YouTube, videos taken in secret are fashioned into compilations viewed millions of times. On Instagram, videos are shared under the tags #gymfails or #gymfail tens of thousands of times.
Not that the gym isn't funny. And, to be fair, some posts are from people making light of their own mishaps. But most of them are like the Barstool video in which the intimidating and exclusionary nature of gym culture is reinforced. Smaller people at the gym are framed as weak, old people as decrepit, heavier people as hilariously fat, and there are the reliable jokes about guys who skipped leg day.
What was different about the video Barstool posted this time was the immediate negative reaction. Its tweet pulled in almost 6,000 retweets and 22,500 likes, but the ones calling it out went significantly more viral, some racking up tens of thousands of likes. Powerlifter Nick Squire summed up the prevailing sentiment: "This person is in the gym, putting the work in, feeling good enough about themselves to take a photo of their development and you're mocking them?" (He added some appropriate profanity.)
Will this be the beginning of the end of this shameful trend?
There are many valid reasons for filming someone in public. As the infamous meltdown by "racist lawyer" Aaron Schlossberg reminded us, our cameras can be a useful tool for levying social consequences for abhorrent acts. The same is true when white nationalists at political rallies throwing up Nazi salutes are exposed and end up losing their jobs, and especially so when it comes to filming police behaving unethically or violently, often one of the only means of recourse for marginalized communities.
But an average anonymous person behaving somewhat oddly or looking silly shouldn't be fair game. "Look at this weak nerd" wouldn't rise to the standards that journalists apply for whether something is news, and it shouldn't for others either.
There is little hope that Barstool will reconsider its behavior. Ever the savvy heels, the site quickly capitalized on the backlash to the post by highlighting some of the more popular criticism. "I guess the moral in 2018 is, anything you do in front of a room full of people is free game," a writer for the site who goes by Barstool Nate posted. "Maybe it sucks, but if you think someone will embarrass you, don't do it where a few dozen strangers are watching. And don't do it long enough that someone will be able to take out their phone and film you."
That may be a fine statement of purpose for a website with a fungible moral compass, but not for the rest of us. Never mind that it is most likely legal to do so (unlike when former Playboy model Dani Mathers posted a photo of an older woman naked in the locker room behind her in 2016).
Let's say we, very charitably, take gym-shamers at face value and allow that they're actually concerned about others' level of fitness as opposed to just making fun of them. That they simply want people to use the gym the right way and achieve the societally accepted level of fitness. Shaming people who aren't there yet is the exact wrong way to do it.
Consider some of the responses on Twitter to the Barstool post: "That Barstool video is why I didn't go to a gym until I was 26 years old," one critic said.0
"It's [stuff] like this that makes it so difficult for someone like me to step foot in a gym because you never know who is there just to laugh at you," added another. "You've taken this dude's moment of pride, happiness and confidence and turned it into a joke ..."
Barstool does often make fun of the physically fit, as do many other gym-shaming sites, where videos of big, strong people injuring themselves or knocking themselves out abound. That's bad enough, but there's a difference between punching up and punching down, and a widely uneven playing field when it comes to how we talk about different types of bodies in America. There is no widespread cultural stigma against confident in-shape people. Instead, the out-of-shape are marginalized, then further shunned when they attempt to do something about it.
Yes, you may be able to launder their shame into the form of a few thousand likes on social media, a currency we're all very much invested in at the moment. And although that may be worth it to some people, it comes, each time, at the price of a little piece of your soul.
After all, these videos may be posted by Gym Memes or Barstool, but they are taken by us, the ones patrolling the gym on the lookout for someone to make look bad for our own benefit. We don't need to perpetuate the supply. Regardless of what we look like when we're working out ourselves, taking videos like these makes us appear really ugly.
Editorial on 06/10/2018