If you’re someone who goes to the gym, eats healthy, and spends way too much time on X, odds are you’ve stumbled across the fascinating world of Health Twitter™ — a community, thousands strong, of everyday poasters (some with medical expertise, some most definitely without) touting the benefits of everything from parasite cleanses and Red Light therapy to sunning one’s testicles before a cold plunge. Over the years, I myself have become a frequenter of this community, and have been memed into turning myself into a science experiment on more than one occasion, putting some of these unconventional health practices to the test. Some have had little noticeable effect; others completely changed my life, helping me perform at my cognitive and physical best; still others sound so ridiculous I’ll probably never try them in my life (sorry, Peaters — I won’t be chugging Coke every day, no matter what “thermodynamic effect” it has on my metabolism).

But within the strange, beautiful confines of Health Twitter, consensus is far from a guarantee. In fact, stark divides have recently emerged in the community, turning a group that was once united in their shared desire to do weird things to their bodies and post about it online into distinct tribes that are increasingly hostile towards one another.

A common dividing line? Whether the path to human health is best found through a Lindy, “RETVRN” sort of approach, utilizing ancient, esoteric practices like spending plentiful time in the sun and rejecting the unhealthy characteristics of the modern world; or whether this path should instead be forward-thinking, scientific, and lean into modernity rather than reject it, utilizing 21st century innovations like pharmacological enhancements and biometric data wherever possible.

With two individuals who perhaps represent each of these respective camps giving talks at Hereticon this year — the egg slonking poster Raw Egg Nationalist, as well as the walking science experiment who measures everything from his posture to the duration of his nighttime erections, Bryan Johnson — I decided to put on my Dr. Phil cap and use this as an opportunity to help unite the community that had done more for my health than the DARE program and 8 years of Michelle Obama school lunches combined. Fractured though it may be, it was time to find out once and for all: could the community find enough common ground to put their differences aside… or was it too late for Health Twitter to heal itself?

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Earlier this year, Pirate Wires profiled Bryan, exploring his unique routines and philosophies, and touched on the divide that currently exists in the X health sphere. Namely, how Bryan’s various tests, pills, rigorous protocols, and vision of living forever serve as the sort of antithesis to the “Crunchy Red Pill” side of Health Twitter, where science and data are largely eschewed for a return to tradition. After all, if there’s an inverse to a forward-thinking guy with his sights set on biological immortality, it makes sense that it would be a group that borrows its traditions from the past, so much so that practices like eating steaks completely raw are now en vogue.

This month, when I finally had the chance to sit for one of Bryan’s lectures at Hereticon, it was clear he’d only double-downed on his future-focused approach. The tech-founder-turned-longevity-expert hit all the familiar notes: he spends millions of dollars every month on his health, he’s the most measured man in the world with nighttime boners that last longer than the movie Titanic (*Celine Dion voice* ‘my hard will go onn and onnn’), he believes humanity must reorient its values around the mission of not dying as the AI singularity awaits us and life completely changes as we know it.

All of this stands as a direct contrast to someone like Raw Egg Nationalist, the well-known poster on X with over 250,000 followers who aligns much more closely with the “Lindy” side of Health Twitter. REN is a formerly anonymous account (this year, he was the victim of a doxxing campaign by the activist group Hope Not Hate) (friendly reminder that “activists” suck and to remind any in your life about this fact as often as you can) who initially didn’t think much of his anonymity, until eventually he realized all too well how important it was.

“I think I just fell into posting anonymously, really,” he said to me over email. “To begin with, I didn’t have anything like a plan for a career as a poster, but then later, as my account became popular, I became more aware of the risks of speaking freely, even about topics like health, especially in the UK, but also in the US. There’s a reason internet anonymity has been a target for governments across the Western world, and that’s because platforms like Twitter and 4Chan are places where people really can still speak truth to power.”

“During the pandemic, many Twitter anons heroically sacrificed their followings to speak out about horse paste, the vaccines, and the lab origin of the virus itself, and now three or four years later we know they were right and the entire government-medical-media establishment was wrong and probably deliberately so.”

As for his approach to health, where Bryan Johnson views the topic as rigorously scientific, with a stated goal of indefinite longevity, REN approaches the topic as a self-admitted “broscientist,” with more of a focus on physical strength and combating modern phenomena like the decline in men’s testosterone levels and sperm counts. In fact, during his talk at Hereticon, REN even went so far as to explicitly frame his view of health as a counter to modernity, at one point saying bluntly: “Being fit today is a rejection of the modern world.”

That’s certainly a departure from Bryan, who views the modern world and its innovations that enable things like detailed biometric boner data as an asset, rather than a liability when it comes to getting fit. But this is far from the only area where the two differ: for REN, rather than meticulously poring over every piece of data emanating from his body, he instead takes the heed of bodybuilders from decades past — legends like Vince Gironda, who himself advocated for unorthodox training and diet methods, and whom REN has used as a stand-in for his profile picture on X. And of course, as his name might suggest, REN is a strong advocate for literally slonking raw eggs as a pathway to achieving health and strength — compare that to the longevity-focused, Bryan Johnson Diet of *checks notes* veggies and olive oil, and you can see how these two very different Health Twitter personalities would attract very different crowds.

What’s been surprising, however, is the degree to which those two crowds have recently come to wage online warfare against each other, splintering the beautiful Health Twitter community that I’d come to love and dividing it into a sort of health tribalism. A popular meme that pits ‘Sol Brah vs. Moon Brah’ has even emerged, in which Bryan Johnson (aka Moon Brah) serves as a foil to REN’s fellow “Lindy” health poster, Sol Brah. While at times the meme is harmless — used to make general observations about the two approaches or as merely a funny shitpost — other times it can be more sinister, rejecting the other side’s worldview, devolving to name-calling, or even accusing the other side of being grifters.

From the sidelines, watching it all unfold has been a bit like an Oasis fan watching the Gallagher brothers wield guitars against each other as weapons. Guys, you’re supposed to be on the same team! So what if the approaches of your preferred guru are different — these are both heterodox figures bringing a unique perspective to the world of health and challenging the status quo. Why is Health Twitter spending its time attacking each other instead of attacking the existing paradigm that mandates vaccines with questionable efficacy and does nothing to properly tackle the epidemic of obesity and chronic disease in this country?

With a healing heart, I reached out to REN to get his opinion about this divide: is it a trend he had noticed as well? And if so, did he see a way to stop the infighting and unify the disparate Health Twitter camps around their shared goal of a healthier population?

“The division between esoteric health guys like myself and ‘trust the science’ longevity guys like Bryan Johnson is a real one,” he admitted. “Fundamentally, it comes down to our attitude towards the basic data for human health and flourishing. [Bryan] believes the best way to optimize the human body is to go to a scientific data and trawl through all the millions of studies and do a meta-analysis to find the best things to eat and the best ways to exercise, whereas my starting point would be to look at how people have lived and do live and which populations embody the kind of existence I want to live.”

However, despite the differences in approach that REN notes, he did also acknowledge that the world is in a “tremendous place” right now on the topic of health — and that alone may open the door for unity.

“We have the genuine possibility of fundamental, root-and-branch reform of all departments of government responsible for health, food and the environment, from the FDA to the EPA, and of the American food system from fork all the way back to farm. I see this as a non-partisan cause that everybody who believes in improving the nation’s health can and should unite behind, even if it’s still ‘right-wing coded’ at the moment because it’s associated with Trump. (Note that the Harris-Walz campaign had absolutely nothing to say in response to the Make America Healthy Again platform: they just got Bobby Kennedy’s family to be rude about him in public).”

[Lmao.]

“Having Bobby Kennedy in control of the MAHA agenda, so long as he actually is in control and has the necessary powers to get things done, is an invitation to unity. He’s a lifelong Democrat, a scion of America’s greatest political dynasty, but he’s crossed historical party lines to improve the health of the nation for the benefit of all — red, blue, whatever — at cost to himself. It’s unprecedented.”

Perhaps that unprecedented action on RFK’s part can be the catalyst for Health Twitter more broadly to put aside their differences and focus on the common goal of Making America Healthy Again. In one possible reassuring sign, Bryan, too, has celebrated RFK’s selection to lead Trump’s HHS. Maybe, just maybe, this will be the move that leads to health poasters on X burying the hatchet and finding common ground. In #MAHA we trust.

Because at the end of the day, for all of their differences, the people of Health Twitter would surely agree on this point — whether we go back to eating raw meat and eggs, or whether we shoot for never succumbing to death, what’s most important is that the paradigm that’s left us with diabetic kindergartners and slop-filled supermarkets seems to be under more scrutiny now than it’s ever been before. Health Twitter topics are now part of our mainstream political discourse, a jacked member of one of America’s most prominent political dynasties is about to be given free rein to tackle this problem at the highest levels of our government, and topics that were once confined to shadowy online communities are now being discussed on the national stage.

That, in this Health Twitter lurker’s view, is something to be celebrated — no matter what side of this shadowy online community you fall on.

-Riley Nork