Why are men dunking their faces in Saratoga Water?

I think we all started off with this simple question: Why are men diving face-first into a dish of cold spring water during their morning routine? The answer was a bit more entertaining than I thought it would be.

The trend started off after Instagram influencer Ashton Hall posted his morning routine video. Not only were the minutes specific, but the ‘get ready with me’ video looked severely unnatural. Aside from waking up with tape on his mouth and jewelry on, an odd part of his routine was dipping his face into ice-cold Saratoga Water—not once, but repeatedly throughout his supposed day. Soon, many copycat lifestyle influencers posted their own stringent morning routines that mimicked Ashton Hall’s—all of them also bashed their faces into Saratoga Water.

Needless to say, other social media influencers made fun of the strange phenomenon.

The routine appeared to be so ridiculously scripted to the point that other influencers began making fun of it. Peak masculinity apparently looks like a man doing push-ups while plunging his face in ice water.

Surely, all of this just has to be a PR stunt from Saratoga Water itself. After all, it’s strange that the bottled spring water became an overnight hit on various social media platforms.

What’s Saratoga Water? Is it just a PR scheme?

The Saratoga Water brand was born in the Adirondacks, New York City. Although the mass posting of the Saratoga Water meme seemed to be a well-crafted PR stunt, Primo Brands (the parent company of Saratoga Water) denied the allegation. They did, however, reach out to Ashton Hall for a partnership.

Kheri Tillman, the chief marketing officer of Primo Brands, commented on Hall’s video. “The fact that Saratoga Water plays a role in that is amazing,” she told the Business Insider.

So the theory that the Saratoga Water meme was just a meticulous ad blast is dead in the water. The more interesting bit in this story is that we now have lifestyle influencers dipping their faces in chilly spring water first thing in the morning—and they’re not doing it for the company’s ad revenue. Maybe it’s for the memes, or maybe it’s so that they can “reach 10,000.” We’ll never know for sure.