a16z Podcast
Elena Burger sits down with academic and cyber ethnographer Ruby Justice Thelot to explore the increasingly blurry line between internet culture and the real world, and how to tell the difference between a trend that’s actually changing behavior and one that simply feels enormous online.
They use today’s wellness and optimization culture as a case study, from peptides and GLP-1s to protein maxxing, wearables, microplastics, and the quantified self. Ruby explains her concept of “paracontent,” where the conversation around a phenomenon can become much larger than the phenomenon itself, and what social media data can tell us about how these trends move from niche communities into the mainstream.
They also trace the much longer history of body optimization, from changing ideals of thinness to the rise of the quantified self, and ask what comes next as technology gives people increasingly granular ways to measure and modify themselves. Ruby’s prediction: rather than everyone optimizing toward the same ideal, we may see increasingly individualized and sometimes extreme forms of “body futurism.”
Resources:
Follow Ruby Justice Thelot on X: https://x.com/being_on_line
Follow Elena Burger on X:https://x.com/VirtualElena
Read Ruby’s piece “Enshittification” Isn’t Real: https://www.a16z.news/p/enshittification-isnt-real
Stay Updated:
Find a16z on YouTube: YouTube
Find a16z on X
Find a16z on LinkedIn
Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify
Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts
Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg
Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
-
All About Synthetic Biology
Over the last 20 years, the idea of “designing biology” has gone from science fiction to just science, as the field of synthetic biology has exploded, with applications from therapeutics to manufacturing and more. In…
-
Mining the Data for Cobalt
In this episode from July 2019, Kurt House, CEO and co-founder of Kobold Metals, John Thompson, professor of earth and geosciences at Cornell; and Connie Chan, a16z general partner for consumer, talk with editorial partner…
-
Applying AI in B2B
In this episode from October 2019, People.AI founder and CEO Oleg Rogynskyy and a16z partner Peter Lauten discuss with Das Rush about what the rise of AI in B2B means for enterprises, workers, and startups.…
-
More from Less: The Environment, Capitalism, and Technology
In this episode from October 2019, a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen and former a16z podcast showrunner Sonal Choksi bring on MIT economist and bestselling author Andrew McAfee to discuss why the lessons of human growth in…
-
Blockchains, crypto, & web3: Connections, models, more
Blockchain, crypto, web3 – these terms get thrown around a lot and sometimes interchangeably, but what are the actual connections between them? And what are some mental models and analogies for thinking about this blossoming…
-
Crypto, an Oral Essay
In this special “innovation overview” episode from April 2021, the a16z crypto team and other experts take you from the ground up of crypto and web3 — from the basics, to more recent developments, and…
-
Stories of Startup Survival Mode
In this episode from February 2017, a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz and Jason Rosenthal, former Lytro CEO (now Vice President, Subscription Services, at Google) share stories and lessons learned from doing whatever they could to help…
-
Innovating While Scaling: Lessons from Amazon
In this episode from February 2021, early Amazon execs Colin Bryar and Bill Carr — in conversation with a16z’s Sonal Chokshi — go beyond the well-known artifacts of Amazon innovation, like the memo and the…
-
When Gross Margins Matter
Gross margins–which are essentially a company’s revenue from products and services minus the costs to deliver those products and services to customers–are one of the most important financial metrics for any startup and growing business.…
-
The Founder to Investor Journey
This week, we have a special crossover episode from June 2021: Joel Beasley, host of the Modern CTO podcast, interviews a16z general partner David Ulevitch about David’s journey from working at an ISP and Dot…