Lol you clearly don’t go to the gym if you’re saying this. Went to the YMCA as a kid and saw elliptical politics that made my middle school that literally split us into “teams” by economic class look tame in comparison. Because of the death of the third place in western society, any activity that isn’t where you sleep or work becomes a third place, where people are kind of inherently judging the people around them, to fulfill this. All the shitty people you went to high school gym with are mostly the same people now, and need a place to continue their bullshit. Some will grow past this, but by that point the next generation of gym shitheads is ready.

The only way I agree with your comment is if you said “people at the gym aren’t judging you any more than people outside the gym already do”. Maybe it’s just the area I live, but everything becomes a game of judgement. It’s one thing to say “yeah I’m being judged by other people and I don’t care”. But to determine that you aren’t being percieved at all off of this idea is more delusional than the idea that you are being percieved.