by Anders JP Eskilsson
What the heck is wrong with the social media that surrounds the fitness industry today? I’ll tell you what’s wrong; the wrong people are attracted to the fitness and bodybuilding world. What’s important to understand is that the historical core of bodybuilding culture is under a tremendous threat both by commercial powers as well as people who use the facilities to do half-ass works and to receive 15 seconds of fame on Instagram by getting a few likes.
All of these things struck me when I arrived to my local gym yesterday to train shoulders and arms. I saw a cute girl walking in the gym. She smiled and walked on to the locker room. After a while when I finished a set she was pretty close to me, sitting in a crunch machine taking pictures of herself… but she tried to make it look like she was checking some feed. In any event, I carried on with my exercise and then moved to the upper floor of the gym. When I got there, she was already dressed and ready to leave.
I mean what’s the deal with people who scan their phones while they workout and even during the working sets, like a 2 in one combo. Man, it actually was a lot better in many ways back in the day.Since I’ve been around over the decades I can’t keep away from comparing how the gym culture has changed over the years. It doesn’t really bother me in a big way; it’s just that these situations are getting more and more common.
It has gone so far that a few people wouldn’t even go to the gym if it wasn’t for social media and getting their 15 seconds of Instagram fame. Their highest motivator is some random dude they don’t know from Indonesia named Pandu Bayu who will put a “like” after a gym shot is posted on Instagram
I believe that situations like these will only continue to grow, and gyms will lose their quality regarding equipment. They will offer fewer weights and even more commercialized facilities. There might be another ´Nautilus system’ renaissance with no free weights at all, just machines with through gas regulated weight pressure which, in return basically does all the work for you. In other words the mainstream cuck gyms are also paving the way for this new fitness culture or whatever one should call it.
Anyhow, social media has good points as well, of course. The flow of information helps professional models with their careers and to market themselves for work proposes… but not primarily to chase “likes” and followers in order to build up a false presence of being seen and admired. A fake model correlates with a weak personality… one that is so narcissistic that you count all the “likes” from the time you eat dinner to when you take a selfie before bedtime.
It’s OK to take a selfie at times, but get the priorities straight. Fitness and bodybuilding is about you getting in shape and gaining a few pounds to feel better about yourself. It is not foremost about buying a gym membership to snap corny pictures of yourself with 12 different filters. If these are the reasons, don’t even think about training.
There are so many people out there who get caught up in getting likes and followers to their pages like their whole lives depend on it. There are actually those who spend hours and hours each day just to get the perfect picture of their ass, tits or abs. They might even open up Photoshop from their laptops and edit the shots even more when the Iphone doesn’t do the work. They get so caught up in the “likes” they get or don’t get that they develop a type of performance anxiety.
In the end, it is of course hard to regulate how much anyone should use their social media platforms, but one thing for certain is that a lot of users are abusing it… at times to the extent that it creates anxiety. People are very adaptable to various kinds of situations, but that can also mean adapting negative and anxious behaviours in their own lives.
Train because you love to challenge yourself and do the most you can do to achieve progress. But don’t train in order to get more followers on your Instagram. You can’t compensate sloppy workout results with filters on your phone.
Anyone who uses social media units, such as Facebook or Instagram for example, should keep in mind that they are only for extensions of their life or careers… not the other way around.
In about 10 years, many people will look back and laugh at this ego manic obsessed period and laugh about it, – “Oh god, that was me!”
Don’t be that person. Wake the hell up, take a break from technology and if you don’t like and challenge yourself through development of pain stay the f’ck home.
