Imagine ruining your health to make Donald Trump and Peter Thiel richer…

I am very strong. I have never used drugs to enhance my performance. I don’t compete. I don’t need to. I also don’t want to die an early death. I will need a knee replacement because I ran too far on a knee already wrecked from jumping out of planes and poor decisions in college. The only steroids I’ve taken are shots into my knee joint, on the advice of an Orthopaedic surgeon who wouldn’t just cut the thing off and fit a prosthetic so I could run again and also make a TSA agent upset because they had to check my metallic leg for bomb dust. Unsurprisingly, the steroids did nothing and I hate needles. Certainly didn’t give me freakish strength. Oddly it might qualify to compete here and walk home poorer in wealth and morals than I already am.

So with that context, I care to say a few things. Dearest readers, this is just another (de)evolution of the freak show. There, I said it. Entertainment value, that pays the performers for that performance, and ultimately exploits them under the guise of care and the spotlight. The real benefactors are, as so many alluded to, Donald Trump and Peter Thiel. In a PT Barnum-esque horror show of performance that builds upon the “ideal male physique” applied, in this case, to all genders through a cocktail of juices. The irony of promoting drug and surgery induced changes in sports here is not lost on me, but money washes away morality. Traditional and body norms don’t apply to this crowd when it comes to printing money on the backs of non-billionaires, but I digress.

Banking on the understood dilemma that capitalism has no need for athletics that can’t sell ads, they pay to promote artificial physique instead of merely encouraging it in the dank rooms of a Florida home, I mean club. A wheaties box does not pay all day every day, they understand, so swimming or running or, perhaps, curling (oddly not represented, despite the rogue-like mental gymnastics required to cheat, which should be prized in such a theater as this), can come, show off, and trudge home with bags of cash. Everyone wins.

Sickening? Yes. Immoral? Of course. A freakshow, to cite the founder of Mr. Universe and other bodybuilding competitions? Of course, it’s why, as one audience member during the Arnold years declared when such bodybuilding competitions banned drugs, they watch. Not for the physique, for the freaks. Freaks aplenty. So here we have not just the muscular types, or the speedy types, or the jumping high types, but the self-declared champions of Christ and Golden Calves, and their wealthy benefactor Peter Thiel. Oh, also along with the anti-muscular fast food loving grifter. Can’t forget him.

If only table flipping was a sport, would we see buff Jesus partake? In this crowd, that would be too woke. Thankfully I’m a Buddhist, and we’re supposed to fat and happy. I’m neither. Maybe I would be happy, at least, if I ate shark cartilage and shot HGH into my eyeballs so I could bench a Type 82 Kübelwagen or swim faster than a U-Boat. I’m not willing to find out though.

Comment section has no idea how safe modern steroids and PEDs are and how far the science has come. Just wait until the enhanced games are over and note how many Olympic records they break. I bet it’ll be close to, if not zero. Almost everyone at the Olympic level is already using PEDs, it’s just a game of who gets caught.

so that xkcd comic

you’re gonna ruin your body that way though. there’s a reason why steroids are disallowed on large scales and it’s for your protection, not for fairness’ sake.

So, The Olympics organized sports with slightly different branding, then.

I wouldn’t even say it’s all that controversial? It’s just… really dumb?

Like ok, yah, if it was a no holds bar “everything is on the table, get your meth ready” then maybe it would be controversial.

But like, they’re not allowing anything illegal, for obvious reasons, and they’re not allowing anything that the insurance for the event won’t allow. So… the actual list of things allowed here that’s not allowed at other events is pretty short, and most of it isn’t all that potent.

Oh, and they’re run by a DTC supplement company… that this is basically a giant ad for…

Like the whole thing is a grift, they’re playing up how “controversial” it is for the marketing, but like, no one’s trying to stop them? It’s a low rent knock off sports event trying to market its self on edginess.

I don’t know how safe these performance enhancers are, but I`m willing to accept that they might have come a long way. However I have doubts regarding a full hands off scenario, where everyone is basically encouraged not just to juice, but also to push the limits on how much their body can take of these substances.

Maybe I’m naive, but at the very least in the current system of sports athletes need to microdose to not get caught, that must certainly help with restraint, right? Though they can still completely juice up kids before their first ever big test / competition.