Alrite. Sweat together, stay together — the original social platform needs no WiFi.
I teach fitness classes. Body Sculpt, mostly. A room full of people, some in their twenties, some in their sixties, all holding dumbbells and wondering why they signed up for this at 6:45 PM on a Friday. And every single week, something happens that no app, no algorithm, no social media platform has ever managed to replicate: complete strangers become a team. Not because they friended each other. Because they suffered together.
Think about it. You have 20 people in a room. They do not know each other’s names. They have different jobs, different backgrounds, different reasons for being there. But for a minimum of 45 minutes, they are synchronised — same movements, same rhythm, same collective groan when the instructor says “just eight more reps.” By the end of the class, they are not strangers anymore. They have shared something physical, something real, something that cannot be reduced to a like button. This is the last functioning social network. And nobody talks about it.
The algorithm cannot make you do burpees
Social media promises connection and delivers isolation. You scroll through hundreds of “friends” and feel lonelier than before you opened the app. The algorithm optimises for engagement, not for belonging. It shows you what makes you react, not what makes you feel seen. A group fitness class does the opposite. There is no algorithm. There is just a room, a mat, and the person next to you who is struggling through the same set of lunges you are struggling through. You do not need to perform. You just need to show up. And showing up, in 2026, is the most radical thing you can do.
There is also the accountability factor. You can ghost a Zoom call. You can leave a group chat on read. You cannot ghost a fitness class where the instructor knows your name and the regulars will absolutely notice your empty mat. “Where were you last week?” is a more powerful retention tool than any push notification ever designed. The social contract of physical presence — I am here, you are here, we are doing this thing together — is ancient technology. It predates the internet by roughly 200,000 years. And it still works better than everything Silicon Valley has shipped since.
The Gen-X factor
Here is something I have noticed from the front of the room. The older participants — the ones in their fifties and sixties — are often the most consistent. Not because they are fitter. Because they understand something that the younger crowd is still learning: the value of showing up for other people. They grew up in a world where community was not optional. Where you knew your neighbours. Where you showed up because someone was expecting you. Group fitness is one of the last places where that Gen-X and Boomer ethos still operates at full power. The younger ones come and go. The aunty with the pink headband has not missed a Friday in three years. Be like the aunty with the pink headband.
So here is my pitch, and it costs exactly whatever your local gym charges for a class. Put down the phone. Walk into a room full of strangers. Pick up something heavy. Put it down. Do it again. Feel terrible. Feel amazing. Look at the person next to you — the one who is also sweating, also struggling, also wondering why they signed up for this — and give them a nod. You have just joined the last social network that actually works. No password required. No algorithm. Just shared suffering. And shared suffering, it turns out, is the strongest bond humans have ever invented. XAXAXA!