[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

[sroussey]

Wegovy/Ozempic (semaglutide), Zepbound/Monjourno (trizepitide), etc are the GPL-1 drugs sold today for diabetes and weight loss. Technically they are peptides. So if people you know have "finally" lost a lot of weight, they are likely on peptides.

Peptide manufacture is not as difficult as other drugs because they are injected.

Because the brand names cost a lot, and their manufacture is not too difficult, obviously lots of people got in on the action. Compounding pharmacies, gray market providers, and lots of cheap chinese copies. For one month cost of the name brand you could get many years worth of chinese copies. That is a pretty good hook.

Now that you are injecting one chinese peptide, and it works amazingly well, it is pretty common to check out some of the others. And it is hard to avoid since by the time you find the gray market / chinese suppliers, it is only one of the things they sell.

[hx8]

There is also the classic network effect of someone saying "Wow you look great, did you lose any weight?" "I lost a lot of weight using this gray market drug that is way cheaper and more effective than the FDA approved stuff."

[EvanAnderson]

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.

[mh2266]

> It sounded like both of them are injecting themselves from stuff they're buying on the Internet.

lol, wtf. I mean, I am a moderately serious cyclist, I guess (~250 miles/week) and also climb, hike, other outdoors sports etc. So I do care about performance and diet and such. But there is zero chance I am sticking a needle full of something I bought on the internet into myself—what on earth?

[secabeen]

GLP-1s are the gateway drug to this whole world. It's not hard to rationalize that they are safe, and approved, but too expensive. If your insurance stops paying, or will never authorize it in the first place, going gray market may be the only choice to stay on a drug that works for you.

Of course, once you are placing an order, it's only one more add-to-cart click to add something completely untested to your order.

[bodiekane]

Cycling has a pretty rich history of people injecting themselves with things they bought on the internet- EPO, testosterone, etc.

The bodybuilding subculture has been injecting testosterone, about 50 different testosterone-like drugs (Tren, Clen, Deca, etc) for the past 50 years, HGH for the past 30 years and IGF for the past 15 years.

The psychonaut subculture has been buying research chemical derivatives of serotonin and dopamine for decades for their psychedelic effects, and the nootropic community doing similar things for compounds that increased attention, memory or mood.

In prior decades, the transgender community often relied on buying & injecting drugs on the internet for gender affirming care they were unable to get from their healthcare systems.

There are risks, but also, if tens, hundreds or thousands of other customers have purchased and used something from the vendor, that's probably as reliable of a signal as most regulatory regimes are.

[JeremyNT]

It's got to be Dunning-Kruger, and I'm convinced chatbots have made it way worse.

A lot of tech bros seem to be of the opinion that, given their superior intellect (as evidenced by their successful careers), they can master any domain. As great as semaglutide is, surely more is possible for people willing to move fast and break things, right?

All they need to do is apply their superior methodology to "biohacking!"

Of course they run it all by SuperGrok to be sure, and when it tells them yes, they are indeed absolutely right, it's off to the races - to discover that fountain of youth by injecting some sketchy grey market snake oil.

[trashface]

Derek Lowe had a good blog post about it, mostly about the problems: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/ah-peptides-where-...

[cryzinger]

This recent NYer article is a pretty good overview, written by a practicing physician:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/why-are-people...

[foobiekr]

I work in big tech and several of my older colleagues are ALL IN on peptides. Fountain of youth stuff.

Frankly as I am aging myself and noticing a lot of changes to recovery time and overall physically feeling good, I can totally understand getting on testosterone, for example, but random peptides that show up in white bags from random Chinese labs? no.

[sharts]

Big tech always lags behind the times

[jrflowers]

There are tech bros that think that the WADA banned list is a powerful grimoire and a chunk of them are really into section S2 right now. That’s it.

https://www.wada-ama.org/en/prohibited-list

[negura]

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)

[mh2266]

> this was formely the fanbase of the dark enlightenment movement. an avantgarde techno-capitalist alt-right underground culture.

https://giphy.com/gifs/no-ji6zzUZwNIuLS

> 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://giphy.com/gifs/no-ji6zzUZwNIuLS

thanks for the articles...