Social Media Hedonism and the Case of “Fitspiration”: A Nietzschean Critique

Aurélien Daudi
Department of Sport Sciences, Malmö University

Although smartphone technology and social media provide countless advantages and possibilities, both within and without the domain of sports, they have also been shown to have potentially serious effects on well-being (Haidt & Twenge, 2021; Twenge, 2018). Such is the case for the photo-based social media culture surrounding fitness. “Fitspiration” (amalgamating the words “fitness” and “inspiration”), is one of the most prominent digital subcultures on Instagram, the world’s largest photo-sharing app (Tankovska, 2021). In 2022, searching the hashtags #fitspiration, and its derivative #fitspo, yields approximately 20 and 75 million posts respectively. Clearly, this culture enjoys great popularity, and as such, has the potential of being a force for good, inspiring people towards healthier and happier lives.

However, while fitspiration promotes health and fitness, it tends to primarily emphasize bodily appearance. Users post photos of their lightly dressed bodies or view those of other people’s bodies, the majority of which are young women (Carrotte et al., 2017; Tiggemann & Zaccardo, 2018). Posts often conspicuously link to fitness through caption conventions, hashtags, and representative attire, but tend to feature suggestively posed bodies, accentuating various physical features rather than actually “performing” fitness. Numerous studies report on the ubiquity of self-sexualization and self-objectification (e.g., Murashka et al., 2020; Santarossa et al., 2019), legitimized by the body-centeredness inherent to fitness. In an unfortunate subversion of its positive potential, fitspiration thus invites individuals to indulge their narcissistic desires – often to the detriment of themselves and consumers of their narcissistic displays (Daudi, 2022).

However, what is less understood are the subtler, yet potentially equally deleterious ways it impacts and molds moral psychology – that is, the ways fitspiration affects notions of value, and how to flourish in life.

The ill-effects of fitspiration on psychological well-being are well documented (e.g., Anixiadis et al., 2019; DiBisceglie & Arigo, 2021; Donovan et al., 2020). However, what is less understood are the subtler, yet potentially equally deleterious ways it impacts and molds moral psychology – that is, the ways fitspiration affects notions of value, and how to flourish in life. One philosopher who has contributed greatly to our understanding of moral psychology is Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s ethical outlook offers two key concepts for understanding the moral nature of fitspiration. First is his conception of the “Last Man”. It represents a social condition: the inevitable outcome of a humanity bereft of higher meaning, crippled by conformity and the succumbence to desire. For the Last Man, “the most contemptible man” (Nietzsche, 1974, P, §5), pleasure and comfort are elevated to the central criteria against which all action is to be evaluated, while discomfort becomes the ultimate determinant of all that ought to be avoided. Thus, fundamental to the constitution of the Last Man is an ethos of hedonism. Nietzsche’s thoughts on the Last Man are closely connected to his doctrine of the highest self, which he expounds most compellingly in Schopenhauer as Educator (2015). The highest self is the antithesis to the Last man: the self-overcomer who realizes their greatest obstacles to maximizing personal strength and flourishing are their own desires, thus choosing to master and sublimate them into their greatest expression of empowerment (Kaufman, 2013); the individual who, in the exacting realization of life’s inescapable woes, bravely affirms it all (2015, 1, p. 6).

Nietzsche was principally concerned with the preservation and cultivation of the conditions necessary for cultural and individual flourishing. As reports relating to social media generally, and fitspiration especially, indicate that they are currently contributing to the opposite, Nietzsche’s philosophical perspective may be essential for understanding why. The cultural ascendance of fitspiration arguably involves a form of hedonism. With the help of the aforementioned Nietzschean concepts, it becomes clear that this hedonism has a potentially harmful effect on the pursuit and achievement of human flourishing, and in two particular ways:

1. 1. The exhibitionistic element: On photo-based social media, behavioral manifestations of hedonistic desires are specifically directed externally towards others, whose favor become their targets. The result is the ephemeral narcissistic pleasure derived from exhibiting oneself and acquiring the perceived affirmation of others. If one desires this affirming attention, then within the unbridled exhibitionism of oneself as the sexualized object, legitimized and normalized by fitspiration, one has found an appealing outlet for that desire. Repeatedly seeking this pleasurable sensation therefore becomes an expression of hedonism.
   2. The voyeuristic element: Like most mammals, we are naturally predisposed towards seeking novelty (Kakade & Dayan, 2002). Novel stimuli activates our dopamine system (Schultz, 1998), and research shows that even mere exposure to images achieves this (Bunzeck & Düzel, 2006). With photo-based social media, unlimited supplies of the pleasures of such stimuli are readily accessible. Meanwhile, few things are as inherently interesting to us, and neurochemically rewarding, as “experiencing” other people, especially when presented in a sexual fashion, as through the behavior normalized by fitspiration. Viewing such pictures literally induces subtle sensations of pleasure, which the brain eventually becomes adapted to expect, leading to a sustained desire for it. Thus, continually appeasing the resulting desires for this pleasure also becomes an expression of hedonism. With the omnipresence of smartphones and social media, this quest for instant pleasure now exerts an increasingly large influence on the behavior of young people (Bányai et al., 2017) – on a level rarely seen before.

One way of understanding why these two elements of fitspiration are so problematic is to tie their characteristics back to Nietzsche’s notion of the Last Man. While the emergence of this social condition has long been in process, according to Nietzsche, few societal developments seem as proficient in facilitating it as the unseen rise and normalization of social media hedonism. It promulgates a moral framework and conception of man which is seductive, but ultimately debilitates and disempowers the individual, inverting the higher values viewed as essential by Nietzsche. To resist the calls to cultural conformity and participation in the uncritical yielding to hedonistic desires, Nietzsche exhorts us to the higher ideal of disciplined restraint in pursuit of self-overcoming. Fostering a cultural ethics in line with Nietzsche’s conception of the higher self would render the very prospect of social media hedonism and its manifestation through fitspiration undesirable, through a “revaluation” of the currently dominant values.

Although Nietzsche is rarely associated with the philosophy of sport (Rosenberg, 2008; Tuncel, 2016), sports and the cultures surrounding them hold a great deal of potential to be explored by greater engagement with Nietzsche’s philosophy. While Nietzsche’s ideas are of a general philosophical character with no immediate bearing on fitspiration, they provide the means necessary to understand and potentially overcome its more harmful temptations. As sports cultures and associated practices continue to be shaped by social media, the elements discussed here may come to exert an increasingly large influence, gradually conditioning them to the hedonistic engagement so conducive of the medium, and thus strengthening its sway on society at large. While sports potentially promote virtues encouraged by Nietzsche’s moral philosophy, those values may suffer detractions if the emergent cultures surrounding them – constituted by the masses, not the elite few practitioners – become steeped in the ethos of The Last Man. Studying the deeper implications of this, and considering ways of mitigating its detrimental effects, should be an ongoing task of sports philosophers going forward.

Copyright © Aurélien Daudi 2022

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