A truly post-modern form of anti-authority: I refuse to inject things the government recommends but willingly inject things strangers on the internet write about and which originate from random Chinese laboratories.

There's a mind-boggling market of un[der]studied and un[der]regulated substances for people who desire peak health and performance, many of whom refuse to engage in regular physical activity or a regular diet.

They don't seem to be any happier for it. If anything, they live at a higher and more diffused state of anxiety. I think it is rather sad.

Is there any evidence supporting the claim there is a significant overlap between the group of people who "refuse injections the government recommends" and the group of people who take "peptides"? The article is carefully crafted to evoke this impression without clearly stating it, listing only anecdotal evidence.

It has a certain logic to it, and I think US tipping culture basically follows the same rules.

Even if you almost always end up paying the bill + 20% tip, Americans like the idea that they could not pay the tip if the service was bad.

The appearance of free action is appealing and preferable to being forced to pay the extra amount, even if you almost always pay the amount willingly anyway.

I have recently been through the rabbit hole of peptides and most of the people engaged or involved in peptides seem to be healthy individuals. There are some exceptions like lookmaxxers and anti vaxers. The vast majority of people are normal and majority are outside of USA where anti vax sentiment are not in vogue. Some explore peptides for their dogs and cats too.

To assert that people are sad and anxious while not putting the effort to understand the people involved is such an intellectually lazy position to hold.

The world is full of people that confuse contrarianism for intelligence.

HN, in particular, loves anything that allows them to discredit science (like the constant banging on about the replication crisis) and replace it with their own pet theory.

A lot of these peptides are designed to optimize bodies. And a lot of these people suffer from OCD - often a similar type to anorexia. No, it is not normal to intrusively think about your body every few minutes, most people that you see around you do not think about their bodies more than maybe once a day, when they look in the mirror after a shower. And maybe not even that.

Extra points for people partying hard on shady synthetic drugs, but being actively anti-vax because government. Case in point, Miguel Bosé, a very well known spanish artist that spent the first 50 years of his life abusing everything except heroin (his own words), but now he is a vaccine negationist, for him and for his two children.

"Antivaxxer*" here. I'm not injecting peptides for a similar reason - I'm not convinced the cost/benefit works out. That said, the issue for many is autonomy - if you want to put novel stuff in your body, go ahead. As long as you don't try to compel me to do it.

* Not if we're actually in literate company, but that seemed to be the common consensus after I skipped the jab, having recovered from covid right before the shots became available. Nevermind that my doctor was on board and I've had all the other ones (minus the flu shot). I was still a selfish grandma killing Republican who probably voted for trump to the commentariat.

i mean, to be fair everything everyone is injecting, including prescribed medicines, are largely coming from Chinese (or Indian) factories. We don't manufacture much in the western world ourselves.

The article frames these supplements as being purely appealing to "anti science" people but I think that's really unfair. You can believe in medication, believe in science, trust government systems, etc, and still feel like you're not being served by the medically approved options.

It can also depend on people's politics vs who is on power. In general British anti-vaxers are left wing (very lefty affluent hippie types - you can see this from the areas with low MMR rates), and even more so during covid when a right wing government was in power. There is evidence for this in a survey KCL did of anti-vaccine beliefs during covid. I personally know of British students who declared they would not have covid vaccines because they "did not trust the Tories"