Influencer Joey Swoll Wants New Year's Resolutions Fulfilled at Gyms

Fitness influencer Joey Swoll takes the responsibility of his platform seriously.

Swoll—real name is Joseph Sergo—also hates the term "influencer."

"I think it's the dumbest word in human history," Sergo told Newsweek in a phone interview Wednesday. "I call myself the anti-influencer influencer."

Sergo deals with those types of contradictions on a daily basis. He is by definition an influencer, despite his disdain for the word. He wishes his wildly popular videos weren't necessary because he wants people to show each other "common sense and decency."

And maybe most of all, Sergo—who often gets stopped in the gym by people who love his posts—believes social media is "the underlying problem of everything."

"This should be what everybody is talking about: Social media is a f****** pandemic in itself," Sergo said. "People will do anything for likes, views, attention."

Sergo knows firsthand how far social media can reach. A 20-year veteran of the gym who started competing as a bodybuilder in 2009, Sergo's popularity online exploded 2 1/2 years ago when he saw a woman mocking a young man doing an exercise on TikTok. Sergo called for the woman to leave the young man alone and "mind her own business," which has become one of his mantras (along with "do better").

It turned out that opportunities for Sergo to skewer what he calls "toxic gym culture" were abundant. After his first venture into gym etiquette went viral (another term Sergo doesn't love), users started tagging him in similar videos in which people were mocked discretely at the gym.

Some videos Sergo saw were gym-goers sharing negative experiences.

Others were similar to his first viral video: Men or women filming without permission and mocking the subject of the video (sometimes even in the locker room).

Sergo shared his thoughts each time, and a little over two years later, he has more than 7.3 million followers on TikTok, 3.4 million followers on Instagram and more than 700,000 followers on Twitter.

A Chicago native who now resides in Newport Beach, California, Sergo played collegiate football before getting into bodybuilding. He credits the gym—both exercise itself, and the community within the gym—for saving his life. Earlier this year, Sergo announced he is three years clean from opioid addiction, a time in his life when he said he felt "suicidal." Sergo struggled during the pandemic when gyms were closed as his personal struggles piled up. Fortunately, a gym owner (whom Sergo declined to name in order to not get him in trouble) opened his doors for Sergo, who went two to three times per day for his version of therapy.

"The gym is a place where those people who are going through it can put their music on, they can go in there and just beat it out of themselves for a couple hours," Sergo said.

Sergo wants that opportunity to be accessible and comfortable for everyone, even at the start of the year when many regular gym-goers start to complain about what he calls "New Year's Resolutioners."

Sergo gets the frustration. Regulars want to get in and get their workout done, which is complicated when newcomers take a lot of time to learn how to use machines and other equipment. A little impatience is natural when your shift starts in an hour and someone who just started coming to the gym is trying to figure out how to use the squat rack.

But Sergo would encourage every regular to remember that beginners have to start somewhere.

"I think people need to realize that, 'Hey man, whether it was January 1 or not, you were new to the gym once as well,'" Sergo said. "And think about this: You love the gym so much, you go there every day, four to five days a week, however many times you get in, you find peace there, you find improvement, you find all these great things you need in your life. Why not be happy that somebody else is going to share that and have that too instead of being upset and frustrated?"

Sergo says he has seen an improvement in gym etiquette since he started making his content. He is tagged in significantly fewer videos depicting toxic gym culture these days, which is encouraging since his follower count is now in the tens of millions. He has seen gyms put up the "Joey Swoll" policy about filming other people in the gym, and he has even noticed users making videos and saying things like, "I can't do that, I don't want to end up on Joey Swoll's page." His page highlights plenty of positive moments as well, in addition to calling out the negatives.

To any newcomer at the gym in need of advice, Sergo has a counterintuitive solution: Find the scariest-looking person around.

"When you see those big men and women who seem strong—big, scary intimidating people—you have to understand we love the gym so much, we made it into a second home for ourselves," Sergo said. "It's our passion, something we're obsessed with. If you go up to a meathead at the gym who looks like they want to bite your head off and you say, 'Hey, can you tell me a good exercise for this?' I guarantee they take their headphones off, their f****** face lights up, and they are like, 'Oh I've got something for you.' [...]

"Just know that you deserve to be in the gym, and if you have any issues, like I said, find those big, strong scary intimidating men and women in the gym like myself, and come ask us for help. Find some peace knowing we have your backs."

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text "988" to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.