Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Search Engine. I'm PJ Vogt. Each week on the show, we answer a question we have about the world. No question too big, no question too small. This week, we are trying to understand the sudden surge in Americans self-experimenting with peptides, gray market Chinese peptides, injectable compounds that promise to change your body in all sorts of possibly desirable ways.
That story, plus some help deciding how to feel about it, after these ads. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by MUBI, the global film company that champions great cinema. From iconic directors to emerging auteurs, there's always something new to discover.
Chapter 2: What is the surge in popularity of peptides among Americans?
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This is not about whether you, dear listener, should take peptides. Who do you think I am, Andrew Huberman? We're covering it as anthropology, meaning we want to know how so many disparate groups of Americans in such a short time went from not having heard of these drugs to buying them online from Chinese factories and injecting them into their bodies.
This is a story about the internet and how it connected some unlikely communities. And I heard it from two different reporters. The first one you'll meet, she writes a substack I've been reading more and more these days as I continuously try to make sense of our evolving internet. First things first, can you just introduce yourself?
Yeah. My name is Jasmine Sun. I am an independent writer covering AI and Silicon Valley culture from San Francisco.
AI and Silicon Valley culture. That's how you describe your beat?
Yeah, I mean, I also describe it with other words. I say anthropology of disruption, I like, because I'm very interested in sort of the very personal texture of like what frontier tech and change feels like.
I'm really interested in like San Francisco as a cultural phenomenon, both like, yes, the tech industry and the technologies and the companies, but also like the weird trends and ideologies and subcultures running through this place as a result of tech and its influence.
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Chapter 3: How did the internet shape the community around peptides?
They're upcharging you like crazy. All they do is buy their peptides from China, slap a label on them, and charge you 10 times the amount. And do you know, like, there's like this funny strain of U.S.-China relations in this, both that Chinese laboratories are the supplier in many cases, and also that the idea that this is like China-branded is enticing to people.
In like China's tech scene, are people taking peptides as far as you know?
I don't think so. I mean, to be clear, like I didn't like go to China for the reporting, but I asked some family friends who are in China. I have some other friends in China who have been poking around and they seem to think the Americans are freaking crazy. You guys are insane.
I don't know why you're doing this, but you know, China manufactures a lot of fentanyl and they're not doing that either.
So Chinese peptides are not mostly being taken by Chinese people. They're being taken by Americans. And what I wanted Jasmine to map for me was the path of cultural contagion that peptides followed. The bodybuilders to the Silicon Valley execs, how the Maha movement picked peptides up, how teenage looks maxers had gotten in on this.
I wanted to understand what had motivated these different tribes to experiment with peptides. So it turns out you can find posts about people seeking peptides on the internet as far back as 2005. That's when the denizens of the message board AnabolicMinds.com, users with names like Morpheus and Beowulf, were trading tips on how to source peptides.
So if we really go back to the early, early adopters, the earliest adopters are actually like the bodybuilding and fitness community.
Oh yeah, it's a good day today, gentlemen, because today we are discussing my top three peptides for muscle growth. You want to gain some muscle? Well, this is the video for you.
And so this is like pretty separate from tech world. It's like guys doing steroids and bodybuilding gyms together.
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Chapter 4: What defines a peptide and how are they used?
But yeah, I mean, I think it's all just part of this kind of like... Patrick Bateman persona he has adopted for himself, where he just is doing sort of like shock jock kind of stuff in this very flat, affectless way. He's always saying the N-word. He hangs out with Nick Fuentes. He says all this sort of completely over-the-top misogynistic stuff. You know, he's using sort of looks-maxer jargon.
What are we talking about by hot? Like, good looking? Like, some people think that, like, Sidney Sweeney is extremely attractive.
I would say, I don't want to scandalize anybody, married man, I would say Sidney Sweeney is very attractive. I would say that she's... Pretty malformed. Her upper maxilla is extremely recessed, right? She's got the eyes of doom with no infraorbital support. She's really not that much of a looker in her face.
Talking about how this disgusting woman has recessed canthal tilt and, you know, her maxilla are suboptimal.
So it's like weird phrenology speak to describe some woman as not being hot enough.
Yeah, but it comes out of this like sort of 4chan, choc-choc, racist, incel mode. But then Clavicular has sort of taken that as the sort of baseline posture, but then added this entire other layer of like, to be fair, really deeply researched, like looks maxing ideas on top of it, where he knows like, He can talk about what peptides do what. He can talk about steroids.
He can talk about what surgeries can make your jaw more appealing. How do you look like that?
With peptides and steroids. Wait, so what peptides do you take? I take Red Xutine, GH, something called Milano 10-2, which helps you get a little bit more tan without having to go in the sun too crazy. I might need that. Yeah, that's a really good one. It also makes you get crazy boners. Like, it's fun as fuck.
But so like we're in this phase of internet where most of the internet seems to be run by provocateurs. It's hard to actually suss out their attentions. Like do they actually believe all the edgelord things they're saying? Are they playing up their edgelordiness for attention? Do they actually know the difference? Whatever.
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