I do not wish to hear anything more about the creepy eternal youth guy
We need to Van Helsing this story right here & right now.
One of my oldest, dearest friends has no social media footprint. She used to be on Facebook, but only checked it maybe once or twice a week at most. After her account was compromised and all attempts to retrieve it failed, rather than start a new one she simply said “Eh, fuck it” and didn’t bother. She’s never bothered with Twitter, has an Instagram account with only one picture on it, and the only time she looks at TikTok is when someone (me) sends her a funny clip.
What this means, first and foremost, is that if I want her to see anything I’ve written I have to send a link to her via text or email like a barbarian. But it also means that she’s only dimly aware (if at all) of internet discourse. That’s not to say that she’s politically uninformed, just that she has little knowledge (or interest) in the smaller discussions and debates that power social media, that foul milk that us hopeless addicts suck down on a daily basis.
I say that not with pity, but with envy, and even a little awe. She knows who Elon Musk is, but “not sure” if she’s heard of Jordan Peterson, and I was too embarrassed to ask if she knows who Catturd2 is, because no one should know who Catturd2 is. This is my point: because I spend so much time on social media, I am constantly being made aware of people against my will. Before the internet I only heard about new people maybe every other week or so, and it was fairly easy to avoid more information about them. Now it’s every day, sometimes several new people pop up at once like weeds, and it’s nearly impossible not to be at least aware of their existence.
I don’t believe that the human brain’s capacity for retaining information is infinite. Quite the opposite: I often worry about what valuable bit of information in my brain has been replaced with knowing Pewdiepie’s real name, even though I’ve never watched a single second of any of his videos. When I am very old, and my memory fades into the ether, will I forget the birth of my only child, but still somehow remember that time professional internet scammer Caroline Calloway tried to charge $165 a head for a “creativity workshop”? These aren’t the thoughts that keep me up at night, exactly, but it does make me concerned.
Now, a wise person might say “Gena, you don’t have to know who these people are.” You’re right, I don’t, and I certainly don’t want to. But as should be abundantly clear from reading this newsletter, I spend a lot of time on the internet, and one of the most popular games to play on the internet is “Look at This Asshole.” This is the virtual equivalent of shoving spoiled food in someone’s face and demanding that they smell it. I do it too, none of us is innocent. There should be commiseration in “You’re right, that sure does stink,” but for me at least there’s a distinct residual displeasure, a sour aftertaste that comes with knowing that I was at least slightly happier before hearing about these people.
The latest exhibit in the Museum of Modern Assholes is Bryan Johnson. You might not know him by such a normal name, but you’ve probably seen the creepy picture I posted at the top, or some variation of it. Johnson is a middle-aged billionaire tech bro (like all the best assholes are), to whom both print and social media has given an inordinate amount of attention recently because he believes he’s discovered the secret to eternal youth, if not immortality itself.
No, it’s not the plastic surgery he’s obviously gotten done on his face, or the thick makeup he’s smeared under his eyes, presumably to cover the dark circles middle-aged people tend to get1. No, Johnson claims to take 111 non-specified pills a day, while living on a liquid diet free of meat, sugar, carbs, and very nearly everything else that provides nourishment2, and putting himself through a strict regimen of exercise, infrared light exposure (because evidently just going out in the sun is for the little people), daily lab work, body fat (of which he has none) measurement, bone and muscle density tests, and a monitor strapped to his penis while he sleeps at night.
Initially (and this is how most regular people who aren’t interested in billionaire tech bros heard about him), Johnson experimented with injecting himself with the blood of his teenage son, pictured above. Johnson later dropped the transfusions, claiming that they were having no beneficial effect on his health, but it’s more likely that his son was embarrassed about the whole world knowing that his father is a weird creep who was literally draining him for his own vanity.
After all this effort and reportedly more than $2 million a month spent on such an endeavor, according to Johnson’s personal physician (presumably one Dr. Nicholas Riviera, M.D.) he has the physique of a much younger man. It’s hard to tell at first glance whether or not Johnson looks younger, because there’s something so unnatural about his appearance. Whether it’s the bad plastic surgery3, makeup, or lack of actual food, his ghostly white skin looks like latex stretched over a skeleton. Yes, I suppose he’s muscular, but also he looks like he hasn’t had a proper drink of water in months. If his goal in all this is to look like a minor character in an Anne Rice novel, well, mission accomplished.
Even though Johnson is clearly full of shit and yet another grifter trying to build a phony “brand” (we know this because he sells tiny bottles of “organic” olive oil for $75 a pop through his website4), he’s what’s considered a human interest story these days. We used to hear about people who did stuff like unicycle across the country for charity, or live in a house made entirely out of recycled beer cans. Now it’s “meet the billionaire biohacker who thinks he can defeat death itself,” or “here’s ten paragraphs on the venture capitalist who wants to turn public libraries into an app-based subscription service.” They’re invariably rich, white weirdos, and none of their supposedly innovative ideas do anything to improve the world at large.
If anything, they’re seeking to actively make it worse. Most of what Johnson puts his body through to achieve his freakish concept of eternal youth, even beyond the plastic surgery and makeup5, is based in technology, expensive supplements, and having a personal physician and access to a laboratory on hand at all times. The message is clear: the concept of immortality that Johnson is trying to spearhead is for those select few who can afford it. Dying is for the poors.
Now obviously the reason these people get attention is because hate reading is the only currency either print or online media has anymore. It’s not just the fact that they exist that’s angering, but the softball approach journalists take to them, treating people like Bryan Johnson as wacky eccentrics who are a little odd but maybe they’re on to something? No one is willing to explore the deeper, sinister motivations in these things. Scratch someone who’s obsessed with the idea of living forever, and you’ll find some alarming opinions on eugenics underneath.
Some other assholes I had to hear about earlier this year are Simone and Malcolm Collins, a wealthy (of course) white (of course) couple who believe it is their sacred duty to repopulate the earth by having as many children as possible, and then encouraging their children to have as many children as possible. As a number of “they’re a little odd but maybe they’re on to something” stories pointed out, the Collinses genetically tested their embryos, and created a chart comparing their “scores.” Like Elon Musk, the biggest asshole I have to hear about on a near-daily basis nowadays, they don’t want just any old gas station worker or minimum wage secretary to repopulate the world, it must be the sole task of the “elite.”
Considering that Britain’s Telegraph gave them a cover story with the headline “Meet the ‘elite’ couple breeding to save mankind,” it seems that not many news outlets are interested in pointing out that making a personal crusade out of increasing the population of white people in order to “save mankind” is some real Nazi shit.
I don’t know why this is. There was a brief, inspiring time shortly after the 2016 election when it seemed like whatever was left of the media would band together in the face of “fake news” accusations and work to expose these kind of people for who they are, and the danger they pose to the world at large. But those takedowns never came. The outlets that were able to hang on wilted, and opted to write near-puff pieces instead, giving them cool little nicknames like “disruptors” and “entrepreneurs,” and illustrating how their weird diets, bizarre, untenable work habits, sketchy-at-best politics, and useless inventions that do nothing to improve anyone’s lives except their own might just change the world.
Many of these “disruptors,” like Fyre Festival asshole Billy McFarland6, pharmaceuticals asshole Martin Shkreli, and crypto asshole Sam Bankman-Fried, were quickly exposed to be con men and thieves, but even then we still have to hear about them, their shenanigans spoken about in the same breathless, gossipy tone as Taylor Swift’s dating history. Do you know the names of anyone working to cure cancer, or eliminate the need for human donors in organ transplant surgery? Neither do I, that’s my whole point. We have to seek out information on the people who really are doing something that might just change the world, while being unwilling participants in Time-Life’s Asshole of the Month Club.
I’m no better. Here I am, demanding that you take a big, long sniff of this bowl of shit in my hands and confirm You’re absolutely correct, Gena, that smells really bad. And we’re just going to keep playing the Look at This Asshole game, over and over, without so much as a single case of Rice-a-Roni (the San Francisco treat) to make it worth our while. It won’t stop until we either become overrun with assholes and just can’t tell one from another apart anymore, or we just collectively decide to stop looking.
It’s easy to see this because, like another rich asshole who shall not be named and also thinks he’s fooling people with how young he supposedly looks, the makeup doesn’t match the rest of his skin tone.
According to this bemused Time article, the murky green concoction Johnson relies on as his primary source of nutrition seems to do little but cause one to shit almost immediately after drinking it.
I’m no expert, but judging by this 2018 photo of Johnson (in which he looks both much more normal and attractive), I’m guessing at minimum cheek implants, a brow lift, and skin bleaching.
Naturally they’re currently sold out, because we are nothing if not a nation of rubes and easy marks, particularly when it comes to believing that wealth automatically equals knowledge.
It’s also interesting to note that the same “hey, maybe this person has the right idea” grace isn’t given to Madonna, who also seems to be going to some extreme measures to hold onto what’s left of her youth, but also has done more to improve the world than Bryan Johnson ever will just based on the video for “Justify My Love” alone.
Hard at work at Fyre Festival II, if you’re wondering if jail time did any good.