It’s Bait
There’s a certain video of an alarmingly muscular man’s morning routine that brought me and millions of other people incalculable joy this weekend, and for good reason. It’s a stunning watch, from the 3:52 a.m. wakeup time to the cascade of emotional support Saratoga water bottles to the periodic ice baths into which he dunks his face. After what felt like a viral-meme recession, it’s easily the biggest and most delightful internet-culture moment of the year so far. But besides the jokes, of which there are many (and even a Minecraft version), the biggest discourse around the video seems to be how “real” it is. Does Ashton Hall, the Miami-based fitness influencer and online coach in the video, actually wake up at 3:52 a.m. every day and rub a banana peel on his face? Who is the headless woman whose disembodied hands serve him avocado toast? Is Ashton Hall trolling his followers in an attempt to go viral to then, in turn, get more eyeballs on his “online fitness coaching” business? The year is 2025, so you already know the answer to that last one is “yes.”
By watching Hall’s other recent content, you can pretty comfortably slot him into the category of hustle-bro influencers who use terms like “10X” unironically — that is, increase your profits or performance tenfold — and make intentionally divisive content, like one video called “10 Things Real Men Don’t Do” (watch “p*rn,” “hook up,” “live a life without Jesus”). And he’s among the many others who play off the absurdity of the sigma grindset morning routine, with the assumption that among the millions of people who make fun of it, there will be a few dozen who sign up for his newsletter or buy his workout supplements (because of course he’s selling workout supplements).
We also know this because Hall has basically said so. Though he didn’t respond to an interview request, I came across a video in which he told his followers that if they would like a free PDF of how he grew his personal brand, all they had to do was comment “ONLINE COACH.” I dutifully obliged, and like magic, a link to a Typeform appeared in my inbox, after which I received the document. Through these tips, and from more of Hall’s videos where he shares his wisdom, the viral morning-routine video can be reframed as more than just quirky slop that happened to achieve mainstream attention. But is Hall an internet genius, rubbing his banana-peeled hands together and cackling at the stupidity of the millions who fell for his rage bait?
Tip No. 1: Attract new audiences
Like many of his ilk, Hall is a big “sales funnel” guy. What this basically means is that a certain portion of his content is devoted to gaining awareness and followers with the hopes that eventually, they’ll come to trust him as an expert, and then, toward the end of the proverbial funnel, they’ll sign up for his mailing list or coaching program. On his free content PDF, Hall gives some content ideas to help with the “awareness” portion of the funnel, suggesting videos like “What I Eat in a Day As a Personal Trainer” or “The #1 Mistake New Gym-Goers Make.” We can safely assume his morning routines are top-of-the-funnel content, designed to reach the most people to get them familiar with his face and/or work. Mission accomplished!
Tip No. 2: “Study, don’t steal.”
Honestly, respect for saying the quiet part out loud. Many successful creators don’t admit that a major part of their content strategy is to just copy whatever happens to be trending at the moment. But not Hall! In one video, he extolls the virtues of “studying” other successful influencers’ videos and “do what they’re doing, and make it better.” Insane morning routines have always been a consistent source of viral rage bait, from Mark Wahlberg’s 2:30 a.m. wakeup time to hustle-bro final boss Ed Mylett’s claim that he could carve up 24 hours into three separate days and therefore achieve triple what a normal person could. The most eye-catching elements of Hall’s morning routine — the ice baths, the mouth tape, the banana-peel facial (some on Tiktok call this “nature’s Botox” despite any scientific evidence that it does that, or anything), and the disembodied female hands that imply some kind of personal assistant or particularly devoted partner — are already proven to be algorithmic gold. “Remake that same video, but make it you, bro,” he says. (Which parts of his morning routine are authentically Hall, then? It’s safe to say that no one else has ever done a four-minute dive into a pool.)
Tip No. 3: “Brag about the results”
Ashton Hall did not invent the concept of flexing Rolexes and Rolls-Royces on Instagram, but in one video, he explains how he went from a trainer at LA Fitness making $5,000 a month to an online coach making quadruple that in his first month and “bragging about the results” online. The takeaway here is, of course, flexing your fancy stuff is a really easy way to get attention online, which Hall does in the form of his designed belt bag, his apartment complex’s fancy gym and pool, and the sweeping views from his patio. And, not for nothing, it’s common for this type of hustle bro to film their wife-slash-girlfriend-slash-assistant (which is it? We’re almost never told) feeding them, cleaning for them, and even physically dressing them. In the midst of the male-loneliness crisis, having a woman do all your shit for you might be the most aspirational luxury of all.
Tip No. 4: Have a clear hook
Once again, Hall has “studied, not stolen” his own advice and used well-known visual hooks like mouth tape and ice baths to grab confused viewers and assume correctly they’ll stick around long enough to try and make sense of it. (In many of his other videos, he also uses the common hook of having a glass bottle smash on the ground in the first few seconds, which commenters love pointing out is “wasteful” and therefore drives engagement.) This seems to be a lesson he’s learned rather recently — prior to 2025, most of his Instagram content was more focused on straightforward workout tips, and it wasn’t until he started incorporating high-definition footage of himself pouring ice baths that his videos started out with a clear visual and audio hook. (You can guess which ones get thousands of views and which ones get millions.)
But these are not the actual hooks of Hall’s videos. Yes, part of it is viewers asking “why would anyone put a banana peel on their face or dunk their head in an ice bath multiple times a day?” The hook is the anger, defensiveness, and exhaustion that viewers feel when they see yet another video where some guy out to make a buck is trying to tell them how to live. The entire social internet right now is built upon rage bait, whether it’s intentionally bad makeup tutorials on Reels or it’s white nationalists on X comparing a Rothko painting unfavorably to one of Hitler’s. None of this content, however, acts more like catnip for the algorithm than the ones that prey upon people’s deepest anxieties about their gender performance. What tradwives who half-troll with their needlessly laborious caretaking tasks and “skinny influencers” who call their followers “fat pigs” do for women, hustle-bro influencers do for men. Videos like Hall’s push this to their extreme: In order to be a man, this genre of content purports, you must look, behave, and spend like him, and you must value what he values — which is to say, money, fitness, and God.
I maintain that it’s still possible to enjoy posts that are obviously bait without reifying their creators as secret geniuses who are all the way in on the joke. Most of the time, what they’re creating is not clever parody or satire but the logical endpoint of the attention economy: that any follower is a good follower even if they hate you. Yet there is an art to a good rage-bait video, or at the very least a shamelessness that approaches camp, that, as insidious as their unspoken aims might be, demonstrates an impressive grasp on the present cultural id. For this reason, it’s impossible to hate someone like Hall, a guy who, underneath it all, really does seem to love dunking his face in bottled water.
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