There is a growing backlash against people who film themselves in public for social media content, whether dancing in an airport, posing in a crosswalk, or lip-synching in the middle of a retail store.
One place where influencers love to film themselves is the gym. Some people will briefly film themselves to ensure they have the proper form. But so many people are filming themselves for TikTok and Instagram videos that gyms are starting to ban filming equipment.
People who film themselves at the gym are a distraction and they make people uncomfortable because they don’t want to be filmed, especially without consent. A study out of the UK found that people who film themselves working out and post to social media are likely to be narcissists.
“Narcissists more frequently updated about their achievements, which was motivated by their need for attention and validation from the Facebook community,” the study said according to Elle.
The rising annoyance with gym influencers came to a head recently and a Reddit user named NoPomegranate4794 shared it on the Petty Revenge subforum.
“Now, I was at my local gym and it was pretty busy. I had managed to find an empty bench where the dumbbell racks were. Another woman had also set up shop on a bench, but rather than using the bench for its intended purposes, she was using it to hold her things,” she wrote.
The influencer set up her camera in front of the rack and the woman who posted the story was in her shot, which was “really annoying.”
“I was about to go to the front desk and tell an employee when I see a man walk in front of her camera to put his weights down,” she continued. “The woman got a disgruntled look on her face, stopped lifting, walked over to the camera, and I guess she stopped recording and restarted it. She started lifting again when the same man walked in front of the camera and that’s when I noticed he purposefully went out of his way to walk in front of her camera.”
The influencer then turned to the man who disrupted her and said, “Could you not? You can see I’m recording.” To which he responded, “Could you not? You can see people are trying to actually work out.”
Despite the man’s request, the influencer continued to film herself and then multiple people in the gym began to walk intentionally between her and her camera.
“I joined in too, adding an overly polite ‘Excuse me’ along with a smile when I did so,” the poster wrote.
The influencer finally gave up and stormed out of the gym.
“Another case of so-called entitled “influencers” inconveniencing others to get their content. If she wanted to get an uninterrupted recording she could do it at home. This has become so prevalent in public spaces it’s an epidemic,” Bigstachedad wrote. “It’s a fitness center, not a closed sound stage,” one_tarheelfan added.
The gym goers might have been a little petty for walking in between the woman and her camera, but the man asked her to stop filming and she didn’t. The influencer shouldn’t have expected the whole gym to put up with her filming without asking anyone around her or management. Sometimes, people have to take situations into their own hands and the folks in the gym did the right thing by doing it peacefully and with a grin.