[Image: LinkedIn]
Silicon Valley mogul and Peter Pan wannabe Brian Johnson recently held a ‘Don’t Die Summit’ in New York, and as you might guess, the $349-a-ticket event was as weird as it gets.
Johnson is of course well known for his unique lifestyle, which he claims to be doing “on behalf of all of humanity”. His ‘life fetish’ sees him spending $2m a year to stop himself from ageing and involves everything from injecting his son’s plasma into his bloodstream to taking nearly 100 supplements a day.
Now Johnson is selling the dream of eternal youth to wannabe immortals, who showed up in their hundreds at the Javits Center in New York on Saturday.
View this post on Instagram
The bizarre experience started as soon as attendees entered the venue, where they were handed an agenda that commanded them to “rage, rage against the dying of the light” and join the “war with death and its causes”.
While the ‘war’ was waged in a small corner of the venue’s basement, suckers/attendees first had to navigate Longevity Park, also dubbed “longevity Disneyland”, which to most dying people resembled a science fair. Dozens of booths peddled age-defying technologies, from caps that beam red light into your scalp to stimulate hair growth to a hyperbaric oxygen therapy capsule meant to promote plasma production.
Adding some drama to the scene was a man dressed in a Grim Reaper costume who taunted people into buying merch, although organisers were tight-lipped on whether he was paid for his services or just trolling.
It may seem a bit kooky, but most of the people there seemed genuinely in awe of Brian’s age-defying quest, with one visitor expressing “Bryan Johnson, what he does and the way he does it, it’s so beautiful, sincere, a little cultish. It has all those ingredients. It has a great narrative.”
View this post on Instagram
Merch sales seemed to be doing well too with folks investing $1,500 in red light therapy devices to promote skin growth, while others chose to stimulate their vagus nerves and reduce stress with other pricey devices. Others spent their money on a cocktail of supplements, including the malaria drug methylene blue, which, according to some studies, might slow ageing.
All the products on sale made some of the die-hard longevity junkies uncomfortable though, with one lady lamenting “I’m very interested in longevity and wellness, but there was a lot of ‘buy buy buy,’ rather than trying out products.” Living forever doesn’t come cheap.
Once everyone spent their retirement funds on pills, Johnson jumped into his sermons entitled “Life System and Habits to Build Your Future Self” and “Roast My [Longevity] Protocol.”
While there is merit to pursuing a longer, healthier lifestyle, not everyone is buying into Johnson’s cult. To many he seems to be more into aesthetics than true health.
“Longevity at its core right now is narcissism central, unfortunately. That’s just where we are as longevity experts,” says Kunal Sood, a philanthropist who hosts summits about wellness at the UN.
“Right now, we are going after the lowest hanging fruit, which is that you will look beautiful and you will live forever.”
A catered lunch included food from Johnson’s ultra-clean diet, like adobo steak with kale, quinoa, and roasted veggies, as well as Johnson’s Blueprint line of diet supplements which were, naturally, available for purchase at Longevity Park.
Other food items included an ironically named branded extra virgin olive oil called ‘Snake Oil’, which is espoused as a “anti-inflammatory, as well as a mushroom powder for energy, and blood tests that claim to tell you how your lung, heart, brain, liver, and other organs are ageing. All this could be bought for another for $325.
While Johnson dished out wisdom, he made no mention of his recent musings on the pursuit of “erections of an 18-year-old”, which includes applying electric shocks to his penis as well as injecting his member with Botox to “add a centimetre and improve firmness”.
Johnson claims to have the heart of a 37-year-old, the skin of a 28-year-old, and the lung capacity of an 18-year-old. And, of course, the erection age of a 20-year-old.
According to the NYPost, the event included a bizarre sing-along to hits such as Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” and Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”. Following this, a shirtless Johnson pulled the Grim Reaper guy on stage for a 30-minute “dance party.”
We suppose any movement that promotes a healthier lifestyle is a good thing, but it’s all just too creepy and weird.
One wishes that Hunter S. Thompson were still alive, as he would have been the only person who could have properly reported on the “Don’t Die Summit.”
To loosely paraphrase Dr Gonzo, “This is what the world would be like if the Nazis had won the war.”
[Source: NYPost]
