I'm a fellow communist who has been lifting for 15 years. I've literally never experienced this IRL. People say that gym bros are like this online, but I've never seen it. I've seen nothing but hella nice dudes. I'm not saying the toxic right wing selfhelp joe rogan gym bro isn't out there, I just think that stereotype is way overblown.
this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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Maybe they just secretly decided to go to my specific gym
From my experience no, most gymbros are decent IMO. It's just the younger ones that are more into that, well at least on my country. > 25yo gymbros/gymsis mostly talk about their job, although i have been guilty of admiring my gymcrush. Like 95% of my talk with my partner is about being tired from job lol
Threads like this make it really obvious as to why the right wing has so much success pulling men in, when the left criticizes all of them for wanting to just be fit. It's pretty well known this mentality is due to right wing propaganda yet here is another thread of "all men that go to gyms are just dumb assholes." Again we devolve into attacking the people instead of the system that causes this. Let's not do anything to build up a healthy masculinity on the left. Let's just berate them and drive them further to the right. It's hilarious how easy we make the rights job for them.
Leftists: "Why gym bros driven to the right?"
Also leftists: "Hey let's have another entire thread calling men stupid, vanity driven, sexist assholes for stepping foot near a gym."
This is a ridiculously defensive response that doesn't reflect the discussion in this thread at all. Read The Will to Change by bell hooks
can you describe your view of what a "healthy masculinity" looks like
As a man I’d say that “healthy masculinity” makes as much sense as “non-racist white person”. Maybe there’s a few outliers here and there, but as a whole the identity is based on the subjugation of others.
Nobody is criticizing men for wanting to be fit. I actively encourage them to do so. However, an urge to be fit does not necessary means you have to become an misogynistic asshole. You build positive masculinity by revealing the fascist nature many gym bros currently have and offer an alternative.
That's not at all what's happening here lmao
when the left criticizes all of them for wanting to just be fit.
Who here is criticizing men specifically for wanting to be fit? Point to the comments in question, let's see it.
the western world, especially anglos, have a bizarre relationship with health and fitness. like others have said, the focus has been from increasing health to image, something these people are obsessed with. this is why i prefer to workout at home, this capitalist way of thinking if prevalent everywhere but at its worst at the gym.
Perhaps we can link the fascistic nature of purity culture in the west to the vapid, egocentric gym culture?
yes, this is true. you see in short form videos "you must consume x amount of this" or "you must do x workout this many times", it's why you see so many clones wearing the same gear parroting the same stuff may sometimes even have an adverse effect on health.
Defo, makes me glad I ditched protein shakes a while ago, a study found that far too many have a heavy metal concentration worth being concerned about... I remember hearing RFK Jr's team defunded the team that held a study confirming that... so yeah :/
Are most gym bros just terminally insecure man children?
Yes sadly, right wing media apparatus targeted men's fitness pretty hard around 2016, barely any progress has been made to decouple the two :(
I learned a long time ago that I need to wear headphones in the gym, on planes and on trains. Human beings in general are pretty fucking stupid, it's not limited to the gym or to men.
You sound very up your own ass
Why does my perspective upset you so much? Are you one of the morons having loud, senseless conversations in public?
You think you are far more important than you really are if you believe your comment on a forum on the internet upsets me. I do like to have conversations with my friends in public, yes. I even like to meet and converse with people I have not met before, something which one might find challenging if they have a lions' ego in a mouses body. You just sound like a removed who thinks they are smarter than the rest of the world. Get off your high horse, and learn to socialise. I commented because clearly you needed an intervention from someone before you go fully crazy
I don't go to the gym or fly to socialize. Me wearing headphones shouldn't perturb you as much as it appears to, no matter how much you protest that it doesn't. You wrote a lot of words for one who doesn't care.
I couldn't give a damn what you do with or without your headphones on, having an attitude that humans in general are stupid is where you lose me, using a lot of words does not change that. Why are you even on a forum connecting communists if you do not believe in the capability of a collective human race? You sound like a maladapted freak
Why are you being a jerk to some internet stranger? Your thread reads more like a you-problem that you're projecting on others.
I just cannot jive with someone who thinks that human beings as a species are stupid, point-blank. That is a useful (incorrect) excuse to sweep away the consequences of real systemic choices made by pro-capitalist governments of the past and present, which have brought us into this position we are in. On this same comment fork, I respond to the binary person on why there is a distinction between talking about gym goers in the western sphere of influence and humanity...
The intensity of your reaction seems overblown.
Sure, there are larger, systemic forces at work that have led the world to this point, but it can also be fairly argued that the average human is...average. Our leaps and bounds of progress are generally only found by aggregating the work of the entire species, over lifetimes of toil.
What about that bothers you so much? You respond like it was something deeply personal, and not a generalization, or reflection of our current society. Moreover, you just seem angry. Which is off-putting.
But it was okay for OP to dismiss male gym goers are being stupid based on one coversation. Interesting logic that.
Making sweeping declarations for the capacity about the majority of humanity is not the same as observing a trend within arguably the most propagandised subset of western society. One makes you, a self aggrandising loser, seem up your ass, and the other is an interesting phenomenon worth talking about.
Since 2016 definitely, but even before, the billionaire class has invested in pipelining young insecure boys/men who are interested in fitness into an adjacent form of purity culture. As a result, lots of those people are very rigid, from diet to their political beliefs, which tends to lean right wing. See Joe Rogan/Andrew Tate and their audiences.
Also, words and beliefs harbour the capacity to bring reality to them, if I drop to your level and believe most humans are too stupid (instead of intentionally undereducated, and fostered in a culture not designed for individual growth by its government) I will stop bothering to care and try to help bring change. You might not admit it, but everyone else sees you as a cancer. So fuck off you loser. Go fly or something
It isn't an interesting phenomenon, it's just wrong. Gym goers are no more stupid than the bulk of humanity.
Good luck with bringing about change.
I have a theory: Just do sports, don’t lift, at least not as your main form of exercise. I have always felt that women can somehow smell it on the guys, I dunno.
The funny thing is that while most male Americans (and increasingly Westerners in general) are fat (which isn’t attractive to most straight women) the maximum body for getting the ladyfolk is not that much muscle and you should be slightly underweight but not shredded.
The biggest thing about a great physique for attracting mates is confidence, and for men it ends up creating a really fucked up body dysmorphia. I worked at the university gym during college and let me tell you the bizarre things I heard like some guy refusing to go ask a woman out that was sending him all the signs of attraction because they were embarrassed that their calf muscles were too small or upset that their lats weren’t looking better.
I heard like some guy refusing to go ask a woman out that was sending him all the signs of attraction because they were embarrassed that their calf muscles were too small or upset that their lats weren’t looking better.
She dodged a nuke ngl
They also tend to uhh, put down people who are overweight for trying to excersize. Im not a very strong person, but I had to restrain myself from attempting to knock two people the fuck out for saying "look at that loser" to someone who was working out at the gym.
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