Inside the Longevity Gold Rush: Look Younger or Get Left Behind
Plus: the jobs AI is coming for, YouTube loosens profanity rules, and a pet startup bites the dust.
TL;DR: Vibes can no longer carry the wellness industry. It’s being taken over by longevity. If it doesn’t feel medical, futuristic, or clinically proven, people aren’t buying it. “YOLO” is being replaced by “Don’t Die.” Why Ever/Body died by way of private equity.
Health-focused companies aren’t selling wellness anymore. They’re selling you time.
“YOLO” is out and Bryan Johnson’s mantra, “Don’t Die,” has taken its place. The era of face masks and green juice is over. Today’s health-conscious consumers want body scans and precision supplements; tools that deliver results, not just talk about “good vibes” and “self-care.” With the amount of money people are spending, something has to happen.
It feels like society is starting to treat dying young as a threat to self-worth. We’re told the only thing worse would be to die ugly. Or fat.
As a 20-something inching closer to thirty, longevity and the pressure to freeze my looks in time is shoved down my throat. Marketing for GLP-1s and tips to keep my neck and the backs of my hands looking exactly as they do right now flood social media feeds. It’s exhausting.
Bryan Johnson mostly talks about reversing his biological age, making it so our bodies and insides perform like they did when we were younger, but even he has been called out for using colored shampoo to make his hair look fuller and darker, hiding any signs of grey. Although they might not say it, in this industry, how you look on the outside is weighed just as heavily.
This weekend, I sinned (forgot to wear sunscreen when the UV index was 9) and also read a story by Sarah Miller in The New Yorker, where she writes about how the goal is now “to make my outside look less like it had suffered the slings and arrows of my life, and more like it had been sitting in a ziplocked bag in the refrigerator.”
Sarah became reliant on Botox, and while visiting friends over Thanksgiving, she realized her last round had worn off and became obsessed with getting a touch-up. Her friends weren’t happy that she would risk her face with a last-minute appointment at a random clinic, but Sarah didn’t see it that way. She compared Botox to her standards for a gynecologist: if it gets the job done, that’s good enough. When the Botox kicked in, the results were satisfying, and she argued that it was worth it. Botox, for Sarah, is a coping mechanism she justifies because it helps her move through a world that demands women age invisibly and gracefully.
Although I haven’t gone under the needle for any cosmetic procedure, I did visit a medspa once.
Last year, I went to Ever/Body for a free consultation, hoping they could give me beautiful glass skin or at least something close to what I had before I started breaking out in middle school. It leaned into the spa part more than the medical part, feeling like a luxury experience. I ended up not using their laser services and went on Accutane instead. It worked. I went to a normal, sterile, bright white dermatologist’s office.
Despite offering solutions to the “problem” of looking our real ages, Ever/Body didn’t lean into the medical side, instead opting for a peaceful, spa-like ambiance. I think that’s honestly one of the reasons they went downhill. There wasn’t enough emphasis on scientific backing or medical-grade care, and too much focus on making people “feel good.” A luxe experience doesn’t always equal legitimacy. Looking more like a hospital might’ve helped them in the long run. If you go to the doctor, that’s seen as a responsible investment. If you go to a spa “to feel good,” that’s an extracurricular activity.
I heard about Ever/Body from people online, and their VC-backed presence made them hard to ignore. They raised over $100 million to build a tech-enabled medspa chain.
All that capital wasn’t enough to keep them afloat. Locations started closing, and only a few survived in New York and D.C. After aggressive expansion and underwhelming growth, they faltered. In June, their operations were quietly taken over by a private equity–backed roll-up of aesthetic clinics called Advanced Medaesthetic Partners, according to Forbes. There was no M&A announcement or disclosed valuation, which made people assume the handoff was less than ideal.
Sindhya Valloppillil said it best in Forbes: “The future of longevity won’t be branded wellness. The failure of so many wellness startups isn’t a referendum on aging or optimization. It’s a wake-up call for how these ideas are commercialized. Longevity is complex. It resists shortcuts and shiny branding. The startups that survive will have to blend medical rigor, operational resilience, and consumer empathy. They’ll need to prove not just that their protocols feel good, but that they work.”
She notes that the areas actually working in longevity are clinician-led aging practices, GLP-1 integration with primary care, and hospital-backed longevity centers.
Requiring all staff to wear scrubs at medspas like Ever/Body isn’t enough. It needs to feel like a medical must-do, not a wellness indulgence. If you’re not investing in staying young, you’re falling behind.
A startup that’s balancing the longevity game with experience is Neko Health, which offers full-body health scans. It still looks like a doctor’s office, but instead of leaning into calm, it leans into sci-fi and a futuristic feel, like you’re stepping into something your peers haven’t even heard of, let alone booked. It makes people feel like they’re not just staying healthy, they’re staying ahead of the curve.
“Wellness” is too broad. For a lot of people, the word leans into a space that isn’t scientific, clinically backed, or well-studied. Consumers are slowly shifting the narrative from chasing “wellness” and feeling good to actively aiming for “longevity” and aging backwards. “Aging with grace” is still admirable. But more and more people are aiming for something else, not aging at all, or at least not looking like they are.
Tech News
AI & Work
AI-driven layoffs are making workers nervous. Many say they feel pressure to accept lower pay or worse working conditions just to keep their jobs. (NBC)
Microsoft released a list of 40 jobs most exposed to AI, including translators, educators, and writers; roles that involve tasks AI can already do. Meanwhile, jobs like water treatment workers and electricians are among the least affected. (Fortune)
Only 37% of U.S. adults use AI for work tasks, but 60% use it to look things up. Among people under 30, that number jumps to 74%. (AP News)
ChatGPT now has a study mode. It walks users step-by-step through learning instead of just giving answers. Available to Free, Pro, and Team users. (OpenAI)
AI & Creativity
Showrunner, an Amazon-backed AI streaming platform, launches this week. It lets users create or remix animated shows using AI, with pricing from $10 to $40 per month. (eWeek)
Adobe is testing new AI tools in Photoshop. They include one-click object removal and a “Harmonize” tool that helps make edits look more natural. (CNET)
Yelp is using AI to automatically create video summaries of local businesses using real user photos and reviews. Users and businesses cannot opt out. (The Verge)
Luke Farritor, a 23-year-old Thiel Fellow, used AI to help decode ancient Herculaneum scrolls. He’s now working with a research group called DOGE at the intersection of tech and archaeology. (Bloomberg)
Social Media
TikTok Pro launched in Germany, Portugal, and Spain. It includes the “Sunshine Programme,” which lets users earn donation credits for engaging with charity content. TikTok matches the contributions. (TikTok)
Instagram now requires a public account with at least 1,000 followers to go live. Previously, anyone could livestream. This brings it in line with TikTok’s policy. (TechCrunch)
YouTube is relaxing its profanity rules. Videos with strong language in the first seven seconds can still earn full ad revenue, unless the language is in the title or thumbnail. (Creator Insider)
Startups
Wag, the pet care app once valued at $650 million after a $300 million SoftBank investment, filed for bankruptcy after early overexpansion and slow growth. (SF Gate)
Tea, a dating app designed to be safer for women, hit #2 on the U.S. App Store, even after a major data breach that exposed private chats, photo IDs, and more. (Fortune)
Neuralink is launching a UK clinical trial to test whether its brain chip can help people with severe paralysis control devices with their thoughts. (Reuters)
the wag update is such a bummer, I loved dogsitting on there in college for extra cash