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PaperclipPerfector
6mo ago
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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The latest craze on Youtube? A guy called Sam Sulek. Sam Sulek is a 21 year old bodybuilder and mech eng. student from Ohio who has, over the past six months, gone from about 50,000 to over 1.7 million subscribers. I've heard dudes at work that don't lift mention him, either. He is, for his age, ridiculously large, and has already attracted accusations of not being 'natty' (i.e. he's using PEDs). Regardless of how he gets his gains, his appeal, however, seems pretty genuine. Unlike the deluge of overedited, attention-grabbing garbage on Youtube, Sulek's videos are lightly edited and mostly show him driving to, working out in, and then driving back to the gym with occasional meals, while he provides a kind of stream-of-consciousness of his thoughts on training and diet. There's very little groundbreaking stuff here, his videos are nearly entirely unscripted (like his workouts themselves) and Sulek saves all his intensity for his lifting. In fact he comes off as a fairly charismatic, positive, intelligent student. More than that, though, his videos scratch a desire for society and friendship. Commenters describe them as relaxing, and Sulek as authentic, but really what they are is parasocial. Sulek isn't acting as a coach or source of information or salesman (though he does have a deal with Hosstile), but more as the lifting buddy that millions of people wish they had. And though it can hardly be any good for my very poor self-esteem and body image issues, it's difficult to stop watching.
It’s interesting to me that zoomer men primarily follow “influencers” who have extremely unrealistic bodies, in that they can’t be gained naturally. Even in the previous generation, the Zyzz physique obviously requires excellent genetics, perfect training etc. The 99.9th percentile, in other words.
Women don’t tend to do this as much. Female beauty, skincare, fitness, makeup etc influencers are usually attractive, that’s a given, but the most successful are rarely 99.9th percentile for looks - those people either tend to be followed mainly by men, or are actual high fashion / runway models with comparatively small followings. Women often follow people who are somewhat hotter versions of themselves in terms of face/body/hair/skin etc.
Men seem to prefer to follow the absolute physical ideal. They are less interested in the merely 80th or 90th percentile gym bro who lifts 3-4 days a week, cares about nutrition and has a naturally attainable body.
I guess in general lifting culture is interesting to me. It’s not broadly anti-doping, but at the same time so much of the culture is ostensibly based around techniques for training naturally, efficiently gaining, diet and other stuff that pales in terms of their effect on bulking when compared to many forms of doping. Are they tricking themselves, or are they being radically honest? Clearly coping is acceptable in the bodybuilding community and doesn’t count as cheating the same way, say, cheating in chess is cheating. But the advantage gained is so much that training as someone who dopes versus someone who doesn’t is like playing two completely separate games, or having two separate hobbies. They’re incomparable, and yet treated as the same by casual followers.
It could be overcompensation, in that most men have few to no archetypically masculine men in their own lives, let alone any balanced masculine role models in media or even literature that most consume.
Unfortunately I see a lot of the hyper masculine alt right type stuff as a consequence of the masculine archetypes being forcefully eradicated from our culture via an unholy mix of feminism and jealous lower status men sniping at positive masculine role models. The surge in hyper masculine media figures is a natural response as far as I can tell.
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