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Notes from the SF peptide scene

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Re: Notes from the SF peptide scene

#111

Post by hackerfoo »

almost_usual wrote: post #99
Havoc wrote: post #57

Kinda wild to me that people are down with injecting mystery substances received from the other end of the world entirely outside any real medical chain or certainty of contents or recourse. Like black market steroids except with less track record

Some people always want the ‘hack’ or easy way out. It’s unsurprising to me.

This is pretty much what the startup culture is about. Why work hard on something over a lifetime? It’s better to take a shortcut, then waste the rest of your life goofing off.

But they never realize that the “shortcut” is gambling.

Re: Notes from the SF peptide scene

#112

Post by EvanAnderson »

mh2266 wrote: post #50

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

I'm in western Ohio and had heard about the peptide fervor on podcasts but never IRL. Today, at my daughter's soccer game, I overheard a long conversation between two guys in their mid-40s comparing their peptide regimens (along with just discussing their fitness activities).

I'd never actually heard anybody talk about it before. At first it was the generic CrossFit talk I'm used to hearing, then to diet and recovery / injury stuff, but then it too the peptide turn. It sounded like both of them are injecting themselves from stuff they're buying on the Internet. They both talked about it like it was just the most natural thing.

Re: Notes from the SF peptide scene

#113

Post by stickfigure »

Aurornis wrote: post #34
tptacek wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're on tilt with this argument now. This is a personal essay. You disagree with some of its implications. That's fine. People disagree with each other. You should just write "I disagree with this", rather than try to critique it as formally bad journalism.

I think you’re too stuck on the word “journalism” in my post, as if reclassifying something as not-journalism means it must not be critiqued. If it helps, s/journalism/writing/g If we’re not allowed to discuss posts in the comments, what are we even supposed to discuss here?

Your critical review of Hunter S Thompson must be a real banger.

Re: Notes from the SF peptide scene

#114

Post by fc417fc802 »

AstroBen wrote: post #43
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.…

Is malicious intent required? I don't think most people I would consider bad see themselves as such - everyone has their reasons after all. There can certainly be extenuating circumstances but in general I'd take the combination of stupid, arrogant, and unaware as making someone a bad person. More generally I tend to view those who repeatedly display an unwillingness to consider the impact of their actions on others as being bad people.

Re: Notes from the SF peptide scene

#115

Post by tptacek »

stickfigure wrote: post #113
Aurornis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re too stuck on the word “journalism” in my post, as if reclassifying something as not-journalism means it must not be critiqued. If it helps, s/journalism/writing/g If we’re not allowed to discuss posts in the comments, what are we even supposed to discuss here?

Your critical review of Hunter S Thompson must be a real banger.

Hunter S. Thompson was a journalist! It's just a category error to apply critiques of his work to someone's personal essay.

Re: Notes from the SF peptide scene

#116

Post by JuniperMesos »

Havoc wrote: post #57

Kinda wild to me that people are down with injecting mystery substances received from the other end of the world entirely outside any real medical chain or certainty of contents or recourse. Like black market steroids except with less track record

The health problems associated with obesity are very real (not to mention that it makes you look worse), GLP-1 agonists really do work for most people to cause significant weight loss, and it's currently difficult to get them prescribed by a legitimate doctor unless your obesity-related health problems are really severe. This will probably change over the next several years, but in the meantime buying them from a grey market Chinese pharmacy works now, and is reasonably safe and effective.

Re: Notes from the SF peptide scene

#117

Post by negura »

mh2266 wrote: post #50

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

this was formely the fanbase of the dark enlightenment movement. an avantgarde techno-capitalist alt-right underground culture. Musk, Thiel, a16z, Altman, Srinivasan, many in the Trump administration (including Vance) have acknowledged their involvement with it. the ideological underpinnings are mainly given by two philosophers/bloggers: nick land and curits yarvin. the rest of the people at those parties are like a fanbase to this movement, but it includes podcasters, influencers etc. mostly edgy upper middle-class american kids. the characterization is pretty accurate and nothing new.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/sunset-on-the-dark-enlighten... (brief article on another SF party attended by land, yarvin, altman and Sillicon Valley influencers)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/09/curtis-yarvin-... (last year profile on yarvin. exceptional reporting)

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-lede/silicon-valleys-f... (recent profile on land. only skimmed it)

but apparently after the catastrophic failure of the MAGA movement they're shifting gears:

> A year ago, when I last wrote about the Bay, I was surprised and dismayed to find that edgy right wing black pilled nonsense was considered ‘cool’. ...... Sometime in the last 6 months, everyone collectively decided that being super right wing is actually really cringe. ...... But regardless of the reason, everyone agreed: “wow, it’s kinda really embarrassing that we spent so much of last year partying with real life eugenicists.”

Edit: New York had pretty much the same thing, called the Dimes Square movement. it was linked to the controversial remilia/milady NFT collection

https://www.fastcompany.com/90756392/inside-remilia-corporat... (very long as it seems to tell the tale of the entire remilia drama. i've only skimmed the section “A LOT OF US ARE ART SCHOOL GRADUATES OR DROPOUTS” which seems the most relevant part)

Re: Notes from the SF peptide scene

#118

Post by cyanydeez »

CatMustard wrote: post #78
cyanydeez wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Maybe in a world as culturally-fractured as ours two comments on twitter is as close to a zeitgest as you can get. Maybe. Personally I'd say it'd take at least 5.

Just not true; while the journalists are doing this tweet thing, they're consistently ignore things like the epstein files.

Re: Notes from the SF peptide scene

#120

Post by dcrazy »

mbgerring wrote: post #38

I’ve lived in SF for over a a decade and I have no idea what any of this is. I hope I never meet any of these people.

While I have never personally been invited to a spring gay peptide party at a SoMa warehouse full of twinks, I have not been able to avoid exposure to these sorts of people. It feels like they are making up a larger and larger portion of incoming engineers, but that may have always been true.

Then again, I’m now seeing ads for “leukopaks” on tech websites. It really does feel like the culture has shifted for the worse.

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