After nearly 20 minutes of intense yoga in a 105-degree room, the influencer had grown thirsty.

She dropped her pose, leaned down to pick up her Fiji water bottle and took a sip.

She didn’t think it would be a problem. She certainly didn’t think that within days, hundreds of thousands of people would have seen a video about her impromptu water break.

But that small decision, to take a drink of water partway through a 90-minute hot yoga session at Bode NYC, touched off a series of events — and one widely seen TikTok video — that resulted in an instructor losing her job.

And as with so many other moments of consumer outrage, broadcast by indignant shoppers or travelers (or yogis) to the riled-up masses on social media, this one also found a large and often sympathetic audience.

How could drinking water be a problem? In a yoga class?

The video in question contained several potent accelerants known to stoke outrage: sweaty vulnerability; the indignity, in an age of obsessive hydration, of being told you can’t drink; relatively low stakes. (“Denying hydration in ANY workout class is a huge red flag,” one TikTok user thundered in a comment.)

Those chiming in from the sidelines missed some nuance, as they often do. But surprisingly, this modern moral tale finds its ostensible antagonist in a surprising place at the end: back on a yoga mat, at the same studio where all the unpleasantness began.