Warning: This is not a rant about training and you probably don't care.
The fitness industry, including and especially the part that labels itself as "evidence based", is a gigantic shithole in which most people are two-faced assholes that should be set on fire and punched in every genital they own. They say, I want to help other people achieve their goals, and only mean it as much as they need to for branding and to rope in suckers. Sometimes they have even convinced themselves at the surface level that what they're doing actually is about helping other people, even though it is absolutely not.
I had the opportunity to meet Greg Nuckols a couple of times around the time (I think) he was just getting started making a name for himself. One of the reasons I think Greg has become such a powerhouse is because he is one of the few truly genuine people in the industry, and it shows in pretty much everything he does. That was the impression I walked away with from the times I hung out with him - This is a dude who is legitimately good - and he has reinforced that in the intervening years. I mention this because Greg, being somebody genuine, who grew in popularity and respect because he is legitimately adding value to the lifting community in ways nobody else does, is the perfect contrast I know of to everything I hate about nearly everybody fucking else.
I was also just getting started as a mod on Reddit, which is obviously the far more prestigious position, at the same time I first met Greg. Over the years I have watched the number of people on various lifting subreddits that use him as a reference when giving advice skyrocket. And in all that time, you know what I never saw?
I never clicked on Greg's Reddit account and saw 50 posts to 50 different lifting, fitness, and health communities all linking to the same article he just wrote, or video he just put up. The reason for this is that Greg is not a fuckhead.
I grew up as the internet was growing up. As I've gotten older, things I used to think were amazing and incredible are things I have come to hate. One of those things is how easy it is for any idiot to throw up a blog, website, or YouTube channel and start vomiting useless information onto the digital carpet.
This rant is a conglomerate of things I have said to these people over the many years I have been forced to pull out a mop and bucket to clean up their shit.
Doug Stanhope makes this joke in one of his really old standup routines:
You ever get stuck reading somebody's poems? That girl brings her ratty ass notebook out from underneath the bed, I'm gonna let you read my poems! hehehehe! I never let anybody read my poems I'm so embarrassed but I'm gonna let you read all of my poems! ...O..h, oh thanks. Wow... you musta been dumped by a lotta guys...
And I think it's perfect for this, because every time one of you sad, lonely, boring motherfuckers starts up a fitness video diary (or "vlog" as people who should be choked would call it), this is what you are doing. You are pulling your ratty ass notebook out from underneath the bed and trying to make other people read your poems. But nobody wants to read your goddamn poems.
If you are one of these people and you don't understand this, try to think of the last time somebody wanted to tell you about the dream they had last night. They were probably really into it, it was probably a big deal to them. And you were probably polite and smiled and nodded and went, Oh whoa yeah that's sooooo crazy man. But inside you were begging for it to be over, and possibly death or a concussion, because that's how much nobody wants to hear about somebody else's dreams.
That is what a fitness vlog is. Wait so let me get this straight, so you went to the gym today and you did a workout and you went to make your shake but you spilled the milk and lol it was the last milk you had so you were like shit I have to go to the groceries but then you walked out the door and you were in your 7th grade Math class taking a test and all the numbers were jumbled and your pencil was a samurai? Who the fuck do you think wants to listen to that story?
A concept that a lot of parents need to be better at helping their children understand is that by default, other people mostly don't care that you exist. They don't care about your life, they don't care what you did today, they don't care about your feelings - none of it matters unless it affects them in some way. And most importantly, that isn't wrong and doesn't make them bad people. Here's an example: Try answering the question "How's it going?" with detailed honesty. Nobody wants it. They want you to follow the social script where you say "Oh you know, same shit different day, how about you?" so they can say "Yep, that is how it is" and move on. It's 100% bullshit but it's the grease that keeps the gears turning. You telling them about how you just spent 30 minutes cleaning up the shit in your pants because you drank too much preworkout before testing your squat max, meanwhile, is a wrench.
Sidebar - You might think this is extremely pessimistic, jaded, and negative, but I've found that it is actually a good thing. One benefit, for example, is that you're not constantly getting angry that your expectations of being cared about aren't met by people who were never going to care. It's a big load off to not constantly feel obligated to care about every other person you encounter and their shit that has nothing to do with you. That's just personal benefit. One benefit to the rest of the world, on the other hand, is that you aren't producing shitty content and then throwing it all over the place for other people to clean up.
This is a long walk but fuck you I do this stream of consciousness.
Let me guess, fitness vlogger - you're an 18-30 year old out of shape male with low self esteem and poor body image who has always wanted to be muscular like some third party you idolize. Is it Zyzz? I bet it's Zyzz. You've done a lot of research and you're gonna lift super hard so you can wow people at some event in a year or whatever, OR, you just got done with your T R A N S F O R M A T I O N and now you want to share everything you've learned with the world. You wanted to start your YouTubes to help people achieve their goals just like you did / are totally going to. You want to bust through the myths and scams and snake oil.
You made a video about the best chest exercises? And it's bench press, incline bench press, and flies? Your favorite biceps exercises are curls, preacher curls, chinups, and 21s? No fuckin way. You're gonna give us another explanation of creatine and how much protein you need to eat? Fitness truths that include such earth shattering revelations as cardio doesn't kill your gains, compound lifts are really useful, and man lol aren't squats the greatest roflcopters my oats hip drive amirite? Hit yourself in your head with your video camera until one or the other is broken, please.
Nobody cares. None of that is interesting because neither are you. You're a nobody. When you are trying to break into the YouTube fitness space, you are trying to stand next to world class athletes and the people who coach them, PhDs and researchers, people who have been training for decades, people who have overcome enormous obstacles. What do you have to offer that they aren't already doing better? The answer is nothing.
Inevitably the defense will be that you are just trying to help other people, man, why so hostile, who hurt you?
Because I know you don't actually give a shit about helping anybody even if you think you do.
And here's how I know - Because I see every day in the r/Fitness Daily Thread what actual helping looks like, and it's not an unaccomplished nobody firing off a bunch of self indulgent videos, sitting in front of a camera and talking for 40 minutes about their meal prep and workout, reminding people to Like and Subscribe for more amazingly banal content, and trying to get others to see themselves as the authority they should get their information from. You do that because what you want is fame, attention, recognition, and eventually money from ads and a sponsorship from some fly by night supplement company.
Just like the fact that Greg Nuckols is a good dude who really wants to help shows through in what he does and how he does it, the fact that you are in it solely for yourself shows through in everything you do.
And what you do is take a shit, tell yourself it's gold, then try to get everybody else to play Emperor's New Clothes right along with you. But it's still just shit, somebody has to clean it up, and that somebody is often me, because Reddit is run by a bunch of fucking morons who think a "user" that posts a hundred links to their YouTube channel a day is a "content creator" that they want to keep on their platform, and the fact that nobody on the website wants their shit is the problem they need to solve. Can you tell I resent Reddit's administration? It definitely doesn't have anything to do with spending six years trying to keep my communities spam free only to be - and I cannot make this shit up - eight paragraphs of chewed out by their head of community for saying "lol fuck off" to a cunt who threatened to sue and prosecute me for harassment and gender discrimination, crimes that are apparently committed when one bans a woman from a forum for spamming her shitty Yoga channel everywhere.
But I digress.
I am sincere in my convictions that at this point, anybody who tries to be a new strength training content creator is being an asshole. Looking at you, Greg Douchebaguette, you shifty charlatan fuck. I can grant, at least, that that shithead has done something, though. If the world doesn't need a former pro bodybuilder making more content - and let me tell you, when it's that content it really, really doesn't - it definitely doesn't need some skinnyfat mid-life crisis, only child asshat doing it.
And if for some reason you're really, seriously too stupid to figure out that you're boring, at least clean your fucking room and get some lights in there first. God damn.
-
The potential irony of using a blog to rant about how nobody cares about your blog is not lost on me. Does it make me more self aware, or less, to call that out?
