Notes from the SF peptide scene

Analemma_

Note that this post isn't just about peptides, it's more an overview of the SF social scene in general and what has changed in just the last year. So it includes things like "Tesla FSD actually works now" and "the right is uncool again and nobody talks about e.g. Curtis Yarvin anymore" (both true, IME).

ambicapter

I think this author has a very different conception of what “sincerity” is than I do, but I guess that’s the difference between the east coast and the west coast.

halper

Sometimes I have been in situations in life where I think I must be insane, because everyone else sees something I do not. I got a bit of that feeling reading this article.

Aurornis

This article is an anecdote extrapolated to something bigger: A type of lazy writing where the writer has a single social experience with a group of weird people and then writes about it like it’s the common experience in a place. The writer went to SF for a few days and went to one party where a group of friends were into peptides. From the article, they were also particularly terrible people. Just read this quote: > “They change your personality, it’s literally made me less shallow knowing that we can just looksmax you.” “Ugliness is just a choice now.” “I shot up a twink with ozempic who did not need to lose any weight.” I can’t believe I have to say this, but if someone is bragging to you about injecting weight loss drugs into another person who shouldn’t be taking weight loss drugs, your response shouldn’t be “lol how quirky”. You should recognize that they are a bad person . In my experience the drug enthusiasts who brag about getting other people started on their drugs are bad news, but the ones who brag about introducing to their drugs to people who clearly should not be taking those drugs are the worst variety. These people always exist. Go back a few years and they might be talking about nootropics or “research chemical” drugs that are analogs of methamphetamine or MDMA. Go back further and they might be bragging about doing steroids and importing testosterone from gray market sources. Go back before that and they’d be bragging about all the Modafinil they’re taking. The thing about drug user bubbles like this is that when you’re talking to them you’d be convinced that everyone is doing what they’re doing: Taking the latest on-trend drugs in large amounts and one-upping each other on dose, stories, or drug-fueled adventures. What’s not talked about is the long-term consequences of falling into these groups where excessive drug self-experimentation is normalized. The party doesn’t last forever and the mindset of being able to endlessly adjust your body and/or your mood with drugs starts to turn dark after the early years where hubris makes users feel like they’ve found the secret to better living through chemistry. If you’ve encountered groups like this you’ve also seen how the “everyone is doing it” mentality becomes embedded in their minds. That doesn’t mean everyone is importing various Chinese peptides and injecting them for “looksmaxxing” and whatever these people were on about about the “peptide party”. These are just garden variety young drug users riding the latest trend EDIT: I replaced one instance of the word ‘journalism’ with ‘writing’ because it was becoming a pedantic distraction in the comments.

uxp100

20% work in tech? I think that’s gone up quite a bit since I last spent a lot of time there in 2015. I would see these articles from time to time and think, people are getting the wrong idea if they haven’t been there, when I think of SF I think of middle aged Chinese people and alleycat bike races and music venues and book stores and drug dealing and gays, though tech bros are also present (and overlapping). But damn, 20%, that’s a lot bigger than finance bros, maybe tech really is ruining the city. Shoot.

righthand

The citrus party fervor just sounds like dead internet theory and social media ad targeting doing it’s job. If everything is peptides and ai then a citrus party sticks out. Wow it must be really ego-fulfilling to be rich and just party all the time in SF. And your momentum is that you experiment with drugs.

balamatom

One word: Omelas.

richard___

My issue with this article is the author writes about them in a frame that says “they are so quirky and this makes them cool / good” when really they are a bunch of degenerates.

xrd

Can I claim I invented the term "partydes" for these events? Is there anyone else out there that can make that claim?

roxolotl

> Someone once said that SF is a town of extremely high sincerity, and all of its modern and historical weirdness Not directly related to the piece but this explains so much. I’ve always seen it as high credulity. That is to say all lots of people are lying but lots of other people trust them. The missing part has been why would you take some of these people at face value. If there’s also a lot of sincere people it would then make sense that many would end up overly credulous.

keiferski

This pairs well with this recent article by NY Magazine: The AI Kids Take San Francisco: Brilliant, workaholic teenagers are flooding the city — and reshaping our future in their image https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/san-francisco-ai-boo...

adregan

I’m not really understanding the notion that these people are so sincere. Perhaps we have different definitions of sincerity. To my eye, the entire fascination of unsafely injecting peptides in a desire to change your being is largely the opposite of sincerity.

Invictus0

https://x.com/Kaz_Khadem/status/2045600370617995600?s=20

lucaslazarus

Strong parallels with Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1967): https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/06/didion/

xrd

See also this recent article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/why-are-people...

mbgerring

I’ve lived in SF for over a a decade and I have no idea what any of this is. I hope I never meet any of these people.

burnto

I want to defend my hometown a bit: most people who live in and around SF have nothing to do with any of this crap. SF is a diverse city of many ages, nationalities, and values. It is not a “high school,” not a tech scene, not a glib bunch of online assholes.

apsurd

On running an AI a startup in NYC vs SF: > Every single person that I met in SF was dangerously opinionated about AI best practices. It is impossible not to be! When everyone is constantly jumping from idea to idea, trying to stay on top of the Twitter firehose, you need some kind of opinion just to stay relevant and sane. SF-specific assumptions aside, this the most useful takeaway. Seems they're calibration and signaling costs to being in the center of everything. I read the whole thing. Good, easy writing style.

mh2266

WTF is any of this, is there some ELI5/OOTL explanation? I work in big tech and have never heard anyone talk about "peptides". Is this a startup scene thing or just an SF thing? (I live in New York) all of my coworkers are pretty normal, sure there are the stereotypical fitness types that are marathon training, cycling, or have a climbing gym membership but no one is talking about buying weird Chinese drugs

disposablehn

Good to see the vibe hasn't changed. At least since I lived there in the 1990s, parties with heavy drugs and crazy sex have always been linked with a faction of the tech scene. I moved to the Bay Area in 1990 after graduation to work a corporate job in the valley but quit shortly after meeting a group of eccentrics that ran a small business setting up networks for commercial clients and joined their gig. I was making startup money before the word "startup" had any significant meaning. The skillset wasn't AI any kind of coding, but pure network admin. Companies paid obscene amounts of money for us to jumpstart their IT. I moved into an 8 bedroom mcmansion (location omitted) with a rotating occupancy of about 10-20 people at any one time. We didn't do peptides, we did X and crystal, but it was near constant. The jargon was similar. And there were several houses like this from Oakland to Novato (to LA). It was just constant drugs, sex, partying and a little bit of work to cash a huge check. People moved through houses like they owned them, showing up and crashing, then going to another house, then flying down to LA and doing the same. I burned out after 5 years of the lifestyle but kept in touch with the rolling scene that still had the same vibe through the startup madness of the late 90's (which unfortunately I missed out on due to years-long medical issues), but I've visited every few decades and it seems nothing has changed except we're greyer and fatter, and the houses are still monstrous, but cleaner and people wear clothing more often. So when I hear stories like this, I'm glad to hear the culture hasn't changed and the torch has been passed.