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Notes from the SF peptide scene

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Re: Notes from the SF peptide scene

#41

Post by cyanydeez »

dkarl wrote: post #30
Aurornis wrote: post #6

This article is an anecdote extrapolated to something bigger: A type of lazy writing where the writer has a single social experience with a group of weird people and then writes about it like it’s the common experience in a place. The writer went to SF for a few days and went to one party where a group of friends were into peptides. From the article, they were also particularly terrible people. Just read this quote:…

I don't think that's the way you're supposed to read it? I think you're supposed to read it as, the trendy extremes tell you something about a place, even if the details are silly and ephemeral. People with no filter, no shame, no interest in correctness or consequences, and no pole star except trends are like a cartoon guide to the trends and the mentality driving them. I think the author would agree with most of wh…

the last decade of journalism has taken two comments on twitter to claim social zeitgeist.

Re: Notes from the SF peptide scene

#42

Post by [deleted] »

Aurornis wrote: post #6

This article is an anecdote extrapolated to something bigger: A type of lazy writing where the writer has a single social experience with a group of weird people and then writes about it like it’s the common experience in a place. The writer went to SF for a few days and went to one party where a group of friends were into peptides. From the article, they were also particularly terrible people. Just read this quote:…

[deleted]

Re: Notes from the SF peptide scene

#43

Post by AstroBen »

Aurornis wrote: post #6

This article is an anecdote extrapolated to something bigger: A type of lazy writing where the writer has a single social experience with a group of weird people and then writes about it like it’s the common experience in a place. The writer went to SF for a few days and went to one party where a group of friends were into peptides. From the article, they were also particularly terrible people. Just read this quote:…

> What’s not talked about is the long-term consequences of falling into these groups where excessive drug self-experimentation is normalized.

Lots of people from the 2010-ish era of "aesthetics" and steroids are having heart issues now in their 30s (or earlier). Pretty sad to see.

To me it's fairly clear where this comes from: ambitious people convinced they've figured out some secret cheat code that no-one else has. I'm yet to see that path end well for anyone.

> You should recognize that they are a bad person

Maybe I'm giving them too much credit but I don't really think they're bad people. Young, arrogant, stupid, unaware of the consequences of what they're doing sure... but I don't think it comes from a malicious place where they're intentionally trying to hurt others.

Re: Notes from the SF peptide scene

#44

Post by burnto »

I want to defend my hometown a bit: most people who live in and around SF have nothing to do with any of this crap. SF is a diverse city of many ages, nationalities, and values. It is not a “high school,” not a tech scene, not a glib bunch of online assholes.

Re: Notes from the SF peptide scene

#45

Post by chromacity »

Aurornis wrote: post #6

This article is an anecdote extrapolated to something bigger: A type of lazy writing where the writer has a single social experience with a group of weird people and then writes about it like it’s the common experience in a place. The writer went to SF for a few days and went to one party where a group of friends were into peptides. From the article, they were also particularly terrible people. Just read this quote:…

I know you edited your post, but I'm actually taken aback by people trying to argue it's a blog, not "journalism". I see no real difference between this and some of the most celebrated pieces of gonzo journalism.

However, this cuts both ways. This format is how we get some of the most interesting pieces of reporting about culture and counterculture. It's someone who went to some parties or worked for some companies. What you refer to as laziness is what makes it valuable: it recounts specific experiences instead of trying to speak in generalities. And it's descriptive rather than moralizing.

In the same vein, some of the most powerful exposes about neo-Nazi movements are just raw accounts of what's going on inside, without the author constantly repeating "and by the way, Nazism is bad, these people are all bad, and here are some statistics".

The SF Bay Area culture is probably not a thing, but there are some pretty awful subcultures within it, and many of them revolve around performance-enhancing drugs and rationalism-as-a-justification-for-bad-things (Zizians, longtermism, etc). I think we should own it.

Re: Notes from the SF peptide scene

#46

Post by cjbgkagh »

iwontberude wrote: post #40
cjbgkagh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did point out, with numbers, that the SF scene is a lot smaller than would ordinarily be expected. Additionally this is the party scene which is a subset of the general tech scene. These people have more time and money to spare than those who are busy working but they do form a bit of a nexus that channels information. The blog post seems to go to great lengths not to pretend that it is something that it isn’t.…

In what way did SF catch up? I don’t see how people taking all these peptides and transforming into accidental freaks is a step forward for anything but another reason for the state to get involved bc it’s going to be kids using next and it will create an uproar. People with legitimate medical needs will be left up a creek.

The state is already heavily involved, many gray market peptide suppliers were shut down this year, but demand just went to the black market. This would be harder to stop than the illicit drug market that the government has also consistently failed to stop. It’s so cheap that I’ve stockpiled many years supply so there is little worry about lack of availability for whoever needs it.

I turned to peptides because of how slow research has been, my medical condition (hEDS) has been known about since Hippocrates yet still no official treatments, so it’s not reasonable to expect one any time soon. Gray/black was my only option and will likely continue to be for the foreseeable future.

A lot of what we know about peptides comes from athletes cheating in sports and they’ve been doing it, some of them abusing it, for decades so the long term effects are not completely unknown. And this includes the GLP1As and the various combo stacks. Some people naturally have excesses of signaling peptides through genetic variation so they’re another good source of long term effects.

Of the things gay people inject into each other, ozempic is probably one of the safer options.

Re: Notes from the SF peptide scene

#47

Post by hungryhobbit »

Aurornis wrote: post #6

This article is an anecdote extrapolated to something bigger: A type of lazy writing where the writer has a single social experience with a group of weird people and then writes about it like it’s the common experience in a place. The writer went to SF for a few days and went to one party where a group of friends were into peptides. From the article, they were also particularly terrible people. Just read this quote:…

The whole thing read to me like:

"Let me tell you about the weird people in my social circle I've chosen to write about ... aren't they weird? Now I'm going to draw massive conclusions about everyone in the Bay Area based on the extremely weird group (that I self-selected)."

Re: Notes from the SF peptide scene

#48

Post by hungryhobbit »

pphysch wrote: post #37
adregan wrote: post #19

I’m not really understanding the notion that these people are so sincere. Perhaps we have different definitions of sincerity. To my eye, the entire fascination of unsafely injecting peptides in a desire to change your being is largely the opposite of sincerity.

Yeah, isn't the entire point of SF startup culture (for the last decade++) to build personal wealth through a successful exit rather than build a sustainable business that benefits society? It's a big speculative con game... Opposite of sincere. Of course we can warp the semantics and argue that these people are "sincere" in their desire to defraud retail investors or something, but that doesn't seem to be the author…

A successful exit means you've built something so useful that someone else will pay lots of money for it. Sure that gets twisted sometimes when borderline frauds (and actual frauds) sell companies through misrepresentation ... but there is similar fraud whenever and wherever money is involved!

Fundamentally, the vast vast majority of founders who exit successfully made society better somehow.

But ... it's also true that founders who exit successfully are like 0.001% of the Bay Area's population, but we talk about them like they're 10% ... so we should all stop talking about them so much ;)

Re: Notes from the SF peptide scene

#49

Post by apsurd »

On running an AI a startup in NYC vs SF:

> Every single person that I met in SF was dangerously opinionated about AI best practices. It is impossible not to be! When everyone is constantly jumping from idea to idea, trying to stay on top of the Twitter firehose, you need some kind of opinion just to stay relevant and sane.

SF-specific assumptions aside, this the most useful takeaway. Seems they're calibration and signaling costs to being in the center of everything.

I read the whole thing. Good, easy writing style.

Re: Notes from the SF peptide scene

#50

Post by mh2266 »

WTF is any of this, is there some ELI5/OOTL explanation?

I work in big tech and have never heard anyone talk about "peptides". Is this a startup scene thing or just an SF thing? (I live in New York)

all of my coworkers are pretty normal, sure there are the stereotypical fitness types that are marathon training, cycling, or have a climbing gym membership but no one is talking about buying weird Chinese drugs

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