The peptide and GLP-1 boom wasn't invented in Silicon Valley
Peptide culture went mainstream in Texas and bodybuilding circles before Silicon Valley professionalized and accelerated it; what's actually worth worrying about is that there's more content about content than content itself, which makes people misjudge what is really happening.
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There is more content about content than content itself
Ruby introduces the concept of paracontent, meaning "content about content." She observes that for things like game trailers and movie trailers, the volume of discussion around them often exceeds the content itself. The GTA 6 trailer is one example: people can keep discussing a thing, magnifying it out of proportion, making it feel real even when it has no material reality underneath it. This bears directly on how to judge whether a trend is actually happening or is just being talked about a lot.
— Ruby Justice ThelotPeptide culture went mainstream in Texas and bodybuilding circles first
Many people assume peptides are a cultural trend exported by Silicon Valley; Ruby says that's wrong. She first heard about peptides in Austin, Texas, when a friend took her to a med spa to get peptides from China injected — a gray-market, semi-legal use. The culture actually originated in bodybuilding communities in the American heartland or Midwest, and only later got professionalized, accelerated and managed in San Francisco. Elena adds that creatine is now starting to show up among her non-tech friends, and the distribution chain is very rich: a TikTok influencer doing classic women's wellness might see a bodybuilding product on some other blog and just pick it up and use it, which makes it hard to say who invented it first.
— Ruby Justice ThelotTen times as many people know about GLP-1 as use it
A Gallup poll a few months ago showed 11% of American adults are using GLP-1, and 90% of Americans have heard of GLP-1. Ruby had Astra find similar polls for comparison: 95% of Americans have heard of cryptocurrency, 14% hold it; VR and meal kits show similar ratios. These are almost all tech categories, and the ratio between users and people who know about them is roughly one to ten. Elena says this is the effect of the marketing machine: every subway in New York has ads from GLP-1 companies, and ordinary people know the name Zempic but may not know which company makes it.
— Ruby Justice ThelotPromotional content and personal-experience content are merging
Ruby analyzed about 960 peptide-related videos posted on TikTok between 2024 and 2026. Most of the content is positive, about weight loss and feeling better, and much of it is still tied to bodybuilding, showing the connection to the originating subculture is still there. In 2025 and to some extent 2026, more skeptical content appeared, like "is this a scam" and "does it even work," and safety concerns became one of the most common themes in the later period. She also found a trend: promotional content and personal-experience content are merging. At first promotional content was more common; as more people used it, content like "a day in the life of someone on Ozempic" appeared, and then the two types of content started to flip and fuse.
— Ruby Justice ThelotThe history of male thinness starts with seventeenth-century sugar
Ruby lays out two parallel histories of thinness: male and female. Male thinness emerged in the seventeenth century, after England increased sugar production in its Barbados colony. At the time sugar was exclusive to the upper class, and in medieval imagery fat was a symbol of wealth. But as sugar entered English society and its price fell, sugar appeared in coffeehouses, people started drinking a sweet wine called sack, the English got fatter, and even the middle class got gout. In 1620 Dr. Vener coined the word obesus from Latin to describe the unhealthy fat man as he saw him, and designed one of the earliest weight-loss diets. From then on, unhealthiness, mental dullness and obesity were linked together.
— Ruby Justice ThelotThinness got encoded as a symbol of virtue and intelligence
Ruby says that as elites became more ascetic, they believed that restraining desires and passions through an orderly diet was a sign of control, of intelligence. From the pope to Descartes, people talked about controlling appetite as a way to display intelligence. So thinness got bound to the idea "I am good, I am smart." This idea was also encoded into fashion — the Victorian corset, for instance, was a garment that pushed you thinner, an outward expression of that believed-in virtue. Ruby points out that the elites were the first to adopt this idea while the masses were still eating sugar and staying poor, and this has the same shape as the current trickle-down effect where celebrities and elites use GLP-1 first after the price falls.
— Ruby Justice ThelotBody futurism: after silicon, the turn to the body
Ruby cites Toby Shorn's concept of body futurism: once we hit the limits of innovation on silicon, we turn the microscope on ourselves and try to optimize and innovate the body. She thinks the dashboards on these apps, going to longevity clinics, even things like Don't Die, are all body futurism. Elena adds that the quantified self is actually an example of something Silicon Valley genuinely exported to the whole world; Kevin Kelly proposed the concept back in 2007, when it was still just a matter of biohackers and a small group in the Bay Area, and now anyone can sign up for Function Health or Superpower, anyone can get a DEXA scan or use a CGM, and many people buy CGMs meant for diabetics to monitor their own blood sugar.
— Ruby Justice ThelotMicroplastic panic will spawn consumer-grade testing
Elena mentions a group funded by Nat Friedman and others that sampled different foods — Whole Foods packaged meals, boba, protein bars — and worked with Austin's Light Labs to run microplastic tests, open-sourcing all the results. They found microplastics in baby food too, so one mother started testing more baby food and formula. The medical establishment has no consensus on whether microplastics are harmful, but enough smart people in the Bay Area think they are. Elena judges this will bring more consumer-grade testing and advances in lab technology, and more microplastic-free products. Ruby thinks similar logic applies to demonized foods like seed oils: certification aggregators will appear, with members paying to confirm that what they eat is good.
— Elena BergerQuantifying the body and mysticism will grow at the same time
Ruby cites a study: people wearing Oura rings were blind-tested and told false sleep scores; when the numbers were low or negative, they reported their day went worse, even though the real numbers were correct. This shows these devices can have a harmful effect on how you feel about your health if their numbers are inaccurate. She sees many people starting to push back against quantification and turn to more holistic, more mystical ways of understanding the body, like reiki and acupuncture — and among the same people who previously did a lot of quantification. Ruby thinks we're in a pluralistic culture where quantifying the body and mysticism will grow at the same time, whereas people used to swing in the same direction.
— Ruby Justice ThelotIn their own words · checked verbatim
we are submerged by paracontent. And we have very, very small sort of pieces of thing that we can sort of glom onto.
Ruby Justice Thelot3:10
I actually first heard about peptides in Austin, Texas when I was like visiting friends there and everybody was like going to some like med spa that was giving them Chinese peptides.
Ruby Justice Thelot7:18
11% of U.S. adults are on GLPs. 90% of Americans have heard of GLPs.
Ruby Justice Thelot9:21
You want to believe that you can be Emily Marie Cope and eat salmon and rice and vegetables every day. But then you door dash food and you call it a day.
Ruby Justice Thelot17:43
once we've reached the limits of innovation in silicon, we turn the microscope towards ourself and try to optimize and innovate on the body.
Ruby Justice Thelot27:19
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.
Elena Berger39:57
Figures
| GLP-1 usage rate among American adults | 11% | 9:21 |
| Share of Americans who have heard of GLP-1 | 90% | 9:21 |
| Share of Americans who have heard of cryptocurrency | 95% | 9:21 |
| Share of Americans who hold cryptocurrency | 14% | 9:21 |
| Number of peptide-related TikTok videos analyzed | about 960 | 14:40 |
| Share of peptide-related TikToks that are skeptical or warning content | about 19% | 14:40 |
| Year Fitbit launched | 2007 | 27:19 |
| Year Apple Watch launched | 2015 | 27:19 |
Glossary
- paracontent
- The discussion, trailers and commentary generated around a piece of content, whose volume can exceed the content itself.
- body futurism
- Proposed by Toby Shorn: once innovation on silicon hits its limits, the turn to optimizing and innovating the body.
- quantified self
- The idea of continuously tracking your own body metrics with devices and data, proposed by Kevin Kelly in 2007.
- GLP-1
- A class of drugs used for weight loss and diabetes, such as Ozempic and Zempic.
- peptides
- Chains of amino acids, used on the gray market for muscle repair, anti-aging, cognition and more.
How to listen
Founders and investors interested in consumer culture, technology diffusion and health trends, especially anyone trying to judge whether a trend is real behavior or just internet noise.
The intro from 0:00-2:10 and the disclaimer after 41:00 can be skipped.