Chances are, you or people you know are now in a run club or regularly participate in some form of fitness pursuit. Group exercise — including running clubs, CrossFit classes and new events like Hyrox — has boomed in popularity in recent years.
Driven by the constant sharing of exploits on social media, you’d be forgiven for thinking that young people have all enlisted in a kind of self-imposed boot camp, tirelessly preparing for battle. Between morning runs, ice baths and forgoing after-work drinks, young women and men are taking their fitness very seriously.
And for many people, that is exactly what’s happening. But on closer inspection, there are a number of questionable aspects to this rapidly growing wave of fitness-obsessed social media content.
Bill Rodgers running the Boston Marathon on 21 April 1980 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo by Heinz Kluetmeier /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
In past decades, running — often referred to as “jogging” at the amateur level — had an almost nerdy appearance. Picture a 1980s runner lining up for the Boston or London Marathon: decked out in skimpy attire for aerodynamic efficiency, all sinew and angles. Running didn’t have broad appeal, neither did most forms of exercise. Participants were on the fringe. Completing a marathon was considered a feat of extraordinary athleticism — something unachievable for the vast majority.
Fortunately, these elitist perceptions of exercise are vanishing, if they haven’t vanished already. Running marathons are now within reach for many people — which means if you really want to impress followers and gain likes, you need to push the envelope.
This shift in perception can be credited, in large part, to social media platforms. Thanks to the mechanics of their algorithms, extreme content is pushed to the top of users’ feeds. Sharing your five-kilometre run won’t get you very far, but running fifty marathons in fifty days? Now we’re talking. As a result, young men, in particular, are posting increasingly extreme fitness content across their platforms.
Motivational speaker Tony Robbins speaks during the DreamForce Conference in San Francisco, California, on Tuesday, 4 October 2016. (Photograph by David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Coinciding with this rise in fitness content is the parallel surge in so-called “motivational” material. Motivational speakers have existed in different forms in the past. Figures like Tony Robbins used to fill out conference centres in the United States, preaching the pathway to health and prosperity. Now on social media, a distinctly modern phenomenon has emerged — the fitness-motivator hybrid.
Much of this content is curiously framed in militaristic terms. Influencers shout into their phone cameras, using warlike similes and metaphors. They urge their followers to “stay hard”, to “go to battle” in the gym or on the track, and to be “tough” in the fight against life itself. It’s all very gladiatorial. And this bellicose rhetoric captivates many social media users, who feel compelled to hawkishly sign up for the next available half-marathon — which, frequently enough, will have sold out in record time.
Fitness vlogger with friends recording a video for an outdoor exercise workout. (Atstock Productions / iStock / Getty Images)
But with all this rampant fighting talk being espoused on social media, you might expect armed forces recruitment offices to be snowed under with applications. After all, if someone is so intent on “going to battle”, why not try the real thing?
Fortunately, Australia isn’t actively engaged in warfighting at present. But there are plenty of conflicts raging globally and any new recruit might not have to wait long for a taste of the action. At the very least, they’d get to train for the real thing. And therein lies the paradox: across much of the Anglosphere, military recruitment numbers are at all-time lows. Which begs the question — What exactly are these young men on social media fighting for?
The popularity of male fitness-motivator influencers, like David Goggins, has pushed the “stay hard” military ethos into the everyday consciousness of many men. Social media has amplified this version of “fitness” — fitness as self-flagellation — and normalised the battle cries of young men eager to outperform and one-up their friends and followers. This kind of content frames life as a constant struggle, even though the overwhelming majority of those producing it live in some of the world’s most affluent countries and face little real need to struggle in order to survive.
Man working out with battle ropes in a gym. (Jordi Salas / Moment / Getty Images)
Perhaps it is this very reality — that these influencers, and the young men who emulate them, can largely do as they please, eat what and when they like, and choose careers they enjoy — that affords them the luxury of choosing to “struggle” in artificial ways. Struggle is framed as virtuous, and working hard, in the gym or on the run, is seen as morally righteous. It’s the Protestant work ethic meets reality TV culture.
In the modern Western world, there is arguably a lack of formal, traditional male rites of passage. Of course, most boys go to school and face a battery of exams and assessments they can pass or fail; they’ll likely sit a driving test; perhaps they’ll earn their Bronze Medallion. But there are few male-specific cultural thresholds or critical junctures that clearly signify: this boy is now a man.
Yet, throughout recorded history, going to war has always been the clearest and most socially sanctioned expression of masculinity — the test in which boys were made into men. In the absence of structured rites, it makes sense that many men today are gravitating toward war-like behaviours. War, or something resembling it, is the only male passage that still holds cultural weight.
It appears, however, that boys and men still crave a specifically male formative experience. In lieu of traditional initiations, perhaps they are turning instead to compensatory forms of masculinity — expressed through fitness, extreme discipline and self-control.
Sean O’Malley throws a punch against Aljamain Sterling during their Bantamweight title fight at UFC 292 at TD Garden on 19 August 2023 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo by Paul Rutherford / Getty Images)
Parallel to the rise of the fitness-motivator and young men pushing their bodily limits on social media, there has been a marked increase in the popularity of combat sports. Once a niche interest, sports like the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) have been propelled into the mainstream — boosted by social media and cultural commentators like Joe Rogan.
The aesthetic appeal of the UFC is unmistakably Roman. Much like the widespread male fascination with the Roman Empire, the rise of the UFC serves as both political and cultural metaphor. The imagery of UFC fighters — overt and bloody aggression, brute strength, domination of one’s opponent and total control over self and adversary — reflects a broader male desire for order and control in a world where many men feel they’ve lost their place.
Mirroring this combative stance, technology giants and social media platforms actively promote content that showcases extreme and domineering behaviour. Spectacle is rewarded; reflective, philosophical and introspective content is not. Even the platform owners themselves challenge each other to fights — and then renege on the offer to each other.
During his launch of a working prototype of Meta’s augmented reality glasses on 25 September 2024, founder Mark Zuckerberg wears a shirt bearing the phrase “aut Zuck aut nihil” (“all Zuck or all nothing”). This is a play on “aut Caesar aut nihil”, which means “either a Caesar or nothing”. (Photograph by David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Men also look to role models and mentors, and for the many men who’ve lacked such masculine models in their lives, social media influencers — like the offal-eating Liver King or the extreme endurance athlete and motivation guru David Goggins — may fill a void. They champion an ultra-masculine lifestyle, with “tenets” to follow and principled acts to engage in, and which promotes suffering as righteous and necessary. They pepper their polemics with calls to action in a man’s life and move towards struggle.
So, what then, of these armed forces recruitment rates? Arguably the military is the closest thing we have to the Spartan agōgē now. Young males are happy to play warrior on Instagram. To frame their exploits as warlike feats. Could it be that suffering — performative suffering — is appealing, but sacrifice is not?
Joining the armed forces means being a part of a group and having to think about others, often before yourself. It can mean boredom, rules, hurry-up-and-wait. There’s no posting about a patrol beyond the wire and therefore no dopamine hit from “likes” that come flooding in. The kind of struggle young men pursue in this social media world is ultra-visible, constantly online, self-directed and narratively polished. It’s a shiny participation medal and a race photo. What the algorithm rewards is not discipline in service of something greater — it’s the spectacle of completely volitional, self-inflicted struggle.
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And maybe that’s the point. In a world stripped of male-specific rites and communal tests, fitness content gives the illusion of challenge and growth. It mimics initiation. But it’s all done solo, online and on your own terms. Pain is simulated. Adversity is curated. Control is never fully ceded. Which is why, for all the shouting, sweating and straining, so few of these men ever do the thing they claim to be doing on their long runs — go to war.
Perhaps there needs to be acknowledgement of young men’s needs and the dearth of spaces in modern society to cater to them. Rather than men aspiring to go to war with themselves in the cosy safety of Western gyms or streets in lieu of any battle in faraway lands, perhaps we need to concede to the idea that men need a new way to be formally accepted as such by society at large. Being able to buy a beer at age 18 doesn’t seem to be cutting it.
Maybe the answer isn’t to glorify men’s warlike struggles, but to acknowledge that they do still require demarcations in their lives, signalling the critical juncture of entering manhood. If society fails to offer this, and in the absence of any form of National Service, men will invent their own rites of passage — and in the age of social media it will be performed online, for the likes and views.
Samuel Cornell is a PhD candidate in public health at the University of New South Wales. Prior to his academic studies and career, he briefly served in the Royal Navy.