The Age of Body Futurism | Ruby Justice Thelot
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What is “paracontent” and how does it shape our perception of wellness trends?
Once we've reached the limits of innovation in silicone, we turn the microscope towards ourselves and try to optimize and innovate on the body.
Eleven percent of US adults are on GLPs. Ninety percent of Americans have heard of GLPs.
You want to believe that you can be a mini marico and eat salmon and rice and vegetables every day, then you door dash food and You call it a day. We live in a time of cultural confusion. We are submerged by terra content, which is content about content. There was recently a study that did blind tests on people with oar rings and gave them the wrong number. They reported having a worse day in spite of the actual true number being correct.
It's not like we're going to be surrounded by like super conventionally hot people. Everyone is not going to look like clavicular. People are just going to do increasingly like strange biohacky things.
I've made my mission to cut through the nonsense and answer the question of what actually is happening in
the culture. Are peptides, protein maxing, wearables, and longevity clinics actually taking over? Or does the internet just make it feel that way? In this episode, Elena Berger sits down with academic and cyberethnographer Ruby Justice the Low to unpack the gap between what's happening online and what people are actually doing in the real world. They explore Ruby's idea of paracontent, where the conversation around a trend can become bigger than the trend itself, using today's wellness and optimization culture as a case study. From GLP1s and peptides to aura rings, microplastics, and protein, they trace how niche behaviors become cultural conversations, and sometimes eventually become mainstream behavior.
They also look at the history behind our obsession with optimizing the body and what might come next. As technology gives us more ways to measure and modify ourselves, Ruby argues we may be entering an era of body futurism. Where optimization becomes increasingly personal, fragmented, and extreme.
I'm here with Ruby Justice the Low, an academic and cyber ethnographer. And we're here to kind of continue a conversation that we've been having, I think, for a little bit, on how to actually kind of understand what's going on in the world, and especially on the internet, when there is increasingly no real delineation between the internet. internet and the real world. And Ruby, I think actually a good place to start is a piece you wrote last year on paracontent. And from there, I think we can kind of take a step back and get into a couple topics and things that we've both been paying attention to recently.
Yeah, we live in a time of cultural confusion.
I'm in a mistake of confusion.
Um, so many things are happening. It's so hard to, as you said, disentangle what is real to what is merely amplified by social media or the internet or merely our small little algorithmic bubbles. I wrote a piece. Well, two pieces are germane to this topic. The first one is called The Age of Paracontent, and the other one is called The Post is the product. In the age of paracontent, I sort of present to reduce this idea of paracontent, which is content about content. And what I noticed taking a look at video game releases, movie trailers, that oftentimes there's more content about content than content itself, meaning we are submerged by hera content and we have very, very small sort of pieces of thing that we can sort of glum onto, whether that be once again, music video or a
movie or even a trailer for a video game, I think in the essay I talk about the GTA six trailer came out last year. And what's interesting about para content is that it can actually take a life of its own without actually having any material impact on the real world. People can keep on talking about a thing and can grow it out of proportion and it could be out of measure and it could feel real in spite of it not actually being grounded in any sort of material reality. And so I've made my mission, my life's work, to kind of cut through the nonsense and kind of answer the question of what actually is happening in culture.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is “paracontent” and how does it shape our perception of wellness trends?
0:00–6:12
2
How many people are actually using GLP‑1 drugs versus just hearing about them?
6:12–12:24
3
Why do peptides, protein‑maxing and other bio‑hacks feel bigger online than they are in real life?
12:24–17:27
4
What historical forces have driven the shifting ideals of thinness and body optimization?
17:27–21:52
5
How have wearables and the quantified self changed the way we measure our bodies?
21:52–27:48
6
What does the rise of protein‑focused marketing tell us about consumer behavior?
27:48–33:46
7
How are microplastics and other hidden contaminants influencing food‑tech trends?
33:46–38:52
8
What is “body futurism” and how might it reshape personal health optimization in the coming years?
38:52–42:30
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The a16z Show
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