PJ Vogt

They stay there more than a decade.

But in the late 2010s, biohackers, Bay Area tech geeks who wanted to experiment on their bodies, they'd started getting into this too.

At this point, peptides have left message boards.

They're now being discussed also on self-optimization podcasts, podcasts famously a gateway drug.

But peptides remained essentially niche until just a few years ago.

2023 is when Ozempic changes everything.

After Ozempic, lots of people go online looking for off-brand, gray-market Ozempic from compound pharmacies and Chinese labs.

Some of these places, in addition to selling generic GLP-1s, also sell other peptides.

And these other peptides are now being advertised by a rising class of influencers who will spread them to new communities.

I talked to a second writer about this phase of the peptide spread, reporter Ezra Marcus.

Ezra spends a lot of time on the internet's margins.

What he helped me see was how an unregulated algorithmic marketing machine was spun up for these peptides, made up of a patchwork of influencers on TikTok and Reels.

So help me see, like, what does that internet look like?

Like, as a person whose algorithm is not tuned towards persuading me that I could be...

thinner, handsomer, younger, whatever.

Like, what are people who are seeing that seeing?

Peptides might sound like the future of health, but they are already here.

Here's how they work to heal your body.

Peptides are sequences of amino acids.

And why is that important?