This Is Your Mind on Peloton

While yoga emerges from a philosophical and spiritual tradition, spinning is about your relationship with the machine. You become one with the equipment; You literally pocket yourself. If a traditional bike ride offers some thrill from frolicking outside, Peloton is an absolute mastery of the natural surroundings. The peloton user submits to the uncharted territory of Cody’s World. He decides when to go down a flat road and when to puff up a hill.

Even though we are isolated in our homes, we are connected to the product through a common tactile experience: thousands of legs rotate at the same pace, thousands of fingers rotate the button just like that. Part of the hypnotic appeal of the peloton instructor monologue is how seamlessly the commentary blends into jargon about cadence and resistance. By their physical abilities, the instructors claim broader social and even moral authority, and their classes suggest that using the peloton itself can release positive energy into the world.

On the right side of the screen, a restless ranking list orders us by physical exertion, and each user’s self-selected awareness hashtag rises and falls depending on how hard they drive their body: #PeloForWine, #WilliamsSyndrome, #WearADamnMask. Since I don’t own the fancy company bike, my own hashtag – #FreeBritney – can no longer be seen. Each class also acts as an infomercial for the Peloton line of equipment. I felt like buying a peloton bike that’s just an inch closer to the imaginary topic the instructors are talking about.

Does that all sound a bit scary? Safe in most contexts. For example, I don’t want to sit next to a peloton instructor on an airplane. The first thing Peloton CEO John Foley does when he wakes up in the morning is to drink water from his hands “until I feel like vomiting,” and my rational brain is skeptical of that person. But exercise promotes a special kind of mental gymnastics. When I work out, I suddenly welcome a parasocial relationship with a cute annoying person who can continue the conversation for 45 minutes non-stop, and my flowing endorphins keep me paired with him after the session is over.

Social media companies work to layer our personalities, isolating various impulses and pumping in stimuli to satisfy them: Twitter me is extremely critical, Instagram me is a basic mother, and Peloton me is a capitalist shill in power. (Twitter, I would hate Peloton myself.) Recently, the frothyest moments of Peloton training videos were removed from the app and transferred to other social networks where they are read differently. Instructors are released as memes on TikTok. They are recorded on Twitter and politically questioned.

I first noticed Rigsby when he went a bit viral by giving a sermon on Britney Spears’ longtime conservatory when her song “Lucky” came up in the background. Shortly after that joke was celebrated on TikTok, another clip hit Twitter, setting off an alarm about Rigsby’s rise: he appeared to be using black slang, as washed up by white gay culture, while jokingly threatening a cartoon toddler who have favourited Angelica Pickles’ Rugrats Heel. This is the kind of absurd cultural performance that arouses suspicion on Twitter, but, moved just a tab, enables appealing, mindless training. Even if Rigsby is easily pulled over the internet, lots of people follow close behind requesting a link to the ride.

Comments are closed.