The Morning Routine to End All Morning Routines

Some highlights of Ashton Hall’s absurd viral morning-routine video.

This question has been asked about 1 million times over the past few years, but I really do have to inquire: Are men okay? I’m asking again because of Ashton Hall, an online entrepreneur who helps fitness coaches to “build their brand,” and whose haunting morning routine recently went massively viral. Hall’s video, originally posted to his millions of Instagram followers in early February and reposted to an X account called Tips for Men last week, has racked up an astonishing 680 million views in five days, due mostly to people asking, “What’s going on here?” and rewatching it several times. Let’s take a look, shall we?

It’s hard to pick a favorite part, really. There’s the point where the time stamps jump from 7:36 a.m. to 7:40 a.m. while he’s doing that really poor dive into the pool. But there’s also Hall eating a banana, then patting the peel onto his face (???). Maybe you like the two different times he dunks his face into a bowl filled with ice and Saratoga bottled water. Saratoga is featured prominently throughout the whole video, actually, and it’s unclear if he has a sponsorship or is just pretending to.

The faceless woman who makes Hall breakfast and presents him with his second ice bath is in the running for best supporting character, as is the guy who cleans the pool deck while Hall chills in the hot tub. But for me, the best part is when he’s doing his “business,” which is just him saying into a podcast microphone, “So, looking at it, bro, we gotta go ahead and get in at least 10,000.” It’s like watching a toddler fry up a plastic egg in their play kitchen.

The real question here is how serious this whole thing is. Does Hall know that these videos are ridiculous? Is he engagement farming? The answer to those, I think, are maybe and yes. While his job is ostensibly to be a coach for fitness coaches, he knows that if he rubs a banana peel on his face more people will comment, which will push the video into more feeds, which will result in more money for him. The coaching thing is, at best, a front for the real operation.

But circling back to the original question: Are men okay? Yes, this is a cartoonish presentation of masculinity that Hall might be a little bit in on, but the answer is still no. This used to be a country where men could have a real job for 40 years, then retire with a pension. Now if you want to make money, you have to get a shot of the elevator doors closing on you, ride the elevator one floor down, go back up, and retrieve your tripod. How embarrassing for everyone!

At least the Empire State Building is having fun with this.