For many of us that are into fitness, our physical interests tend to have a way of bleeding over into our digital leisure time. We “like” pages on Facebook, follow athletes on Twitter, and share our own fitness journey on social media through pictures, statuses, or, if you’re like me… complaining incessantly about how much I hate dead lifts.

Just like any other online community, the fitness world has a social hierarchy all its own. At the top, elite level athletes and celebrities with precious little body fat regale the rest of us exercise mortals with their “Guardians of the Galaxy workouts” and their “Spartan core regimes.” At the bottom, you’ll find fitness newbs (people who are new to the fitness game) and hair gel wearing bros with skinny legs and pumped biceps. The rest of us fall somewhere in between, where we’re sorted socially by a long list of increasingly specific sects: crossfit groupies, power lifters, Instagram models, aesthetic lifters, marathon runners and, of course, that couple you know that posts pictures of them completing the Tough Mudder as though they just finished Marine Corps recruit training. We all have a place within the fitness community – offering us a chance to share our experiences, our challenges, and our victories with other people that can truly appreciate what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and how hard we worked to get there.

But of course, there’s a dark side to our ability to share our journeys with one another: that same human need to gather in social groups and belong inherently requires a level of self-importance, as we naturally assess who is one of us and who isn’t. That distinction leads to condescension toward other sects of the fitness world and, in some cases, blatant animosity. Walk into a power lifter gym and ask them about Crossfit – they’ll tell you it’s a cult that emphasizes bad form and might get you injured. Ask the woman cycling next to you in spin class what her max is on the bench and she’ll give you the same dirty look and dismissive scoff – at best. At worst, she’ll tell you that she doesn’t touch the weights because they’ll make her “look like a man.”

We shame one another for posting workout selfies, saying things like, “I guess a workout doesn’t count unless you post pics!” or “men don’t take selfies!” as though our own masculinity is somehow tied to making sure our friends maintain the same self-imposed standards of manhood we’ve decided on for ourselves. Women who would otherwise claim to support the idea of empowering their own gender are happy to quip about the way free weights will make “that girl over there” bulky and masculine – certainly not pretty like she should be trying to be. We share videos and pictures of people using gym equipment incorrectly, laughing at the way the uninitiated struggle to comprehend our culture and equipment.

Basically, we do all of the things to others that we all were once terrified someone might do to us. Humor is supposed to be the driving force behind all of it, of course, but I have to wonder – is it really that funny to shit on your boy that proudly posted a mirror shot of himself covered in sweat because he’s lost that first ten pounds? Is it actually funny to post a video of a confused newcomer trying to figure out a machine that you probably once had to google yourself?