Bryan Johnson, billionaire immortality, and the fear of being average

Bryan Johnson wants to live forever. Or at least look like he just walked out of a skincare ad from 2002.

The billionaire founder, entrepeneur and venture capitalist has been on my radar for a few years now, ever since I started going down the rabbit hole of biohacking, smart drugs, and tech implants.

He kept popping up in podcasts and weirdly specific Reddit threads.

Bryan Johnson who?

At first, I thought he was just another rich guy playing with expensive toys. But the more I read, the more I realised he was dead serious.

Johnson, 47, is the guy behind Kernel and Blueprint, two projects built on the idea that ageing is optional if you have enough money, data, and discipline.

Think strict routines, a fridge full of supplements, and more medical scans than any one person needs.

He’s in the news cycle again now, thanks to Wired’s interview.

WATCH: ‘Bryan Johnson Wants to Live Forever’

And look, it’s easy to laugh. The man injects his son’s plasma, eats like a monk, and schedules erections. There’s something undeniably absurd about his laser-focused war on ageing.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: I’ve always wanted to live for centuries.

Not to stay young, per se. Not to chase eternal youth. I’m in my 40s. I’ve made peace with the fleetingness of time. Still. I want to stay here.

I want to be around long enough to see the world mutate, collapse, rebuild, and glitch its way through time. And I want to see how humanity changes over eons.

So, while I think Bryan Johnson is absolutely unhinged, I also kind of get it.

Let’s talk about that.

The cult of Blueprint™

Let’s start with the brand. You’d be mistaken for thinking Blueprint is just a system. It’s a performance.

He tracks over 200 metrics a day. Eats 70+ pills. Fasts. Scans. Breathes with intention. It’s the quantified self turned religion. There’s merch. A mantra.

There’s an online community that worships data as gospel. It’s all very “Silicon Valley meets SoulCycle with a side of clinical narcissism.”

Is this really about health? It feels a bit like cosplay for the algorithm to me….

Bryan Johnson isn’t afraid of death…

I think he’s just afraid of mediocrity.

That’s the real kicker. He’s not doing all this because he fears dying. He fears not being optimal. Not being relevant. He fears not being the best-performing human in the room. Not being remembered.

You can see it in how he talks.

There’s no joy, no softness; it’s all just output. It’s metrics and optimisation. It’s more a full-body rejection of being ordinary than it is a fight against death.

And I get that too

Mediocrity terrifies me.

I’ve played CT Fletcher’s “F*ck Average” track more times than I care to admit. When driving. In the gym. On a random Tuesday afternoon.

It’s one of my go-to mantras when I’m dragging myself through burnout or trying to build something that actually matters.

Disclaimer: my aversion of mediocrity is largely shaped by mediocre men who coast through life while women have to be exceptional just to be seen. Especially when those same men then punish women when we outshine them. But I digress. That’s a rant for another day.

So yeah, I understand the desperation to be more. I just don’t think I’d need 200 biomarkers and a camera in my colon to prove it.

The billionaire immortality complex

Johnson isn’t alone in this WhatsApp group.

Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel; they all fund anti-aging research, moonshot biotech, or upload-your-brain fantasies.

This is the billionaire version of a midlife crisis. Forget red Ferraris. These guys want eternal consciousness in a perfect body.

It’s less “How can I help the world?” and more “How can I stay on top of it forever?”

There’s something uniquely fragile about powerful men who can’t accept entropy.

What he actually gets right

This is not a “let’s bash Johnson” party. He’s not all wrong. If you strip away the theatrics, some of this actually works.

Consistent sleep? Smart. Circadian discipline? Legit. Light exposure, blood sugar control, daily movement, minimising stress aren’t just biohacker toys. It’s also good science.

But! I don’t think you need 111 supplements. You might just need to stop eating crap at 1am. Of get treatment if you can’t stop eating crap at 1am.^[*]

He’s doing 200 things. You probably only need five.

I don’t want to be young. I want to be around.

Bryan Johnson wants to rewind his age to 18. I don’t. You probabaly don’t want to either. I don’t want my teen body or my 20-something brain. I like where I am now.

What I do want is time. I want to live long enough to see cities rise and fall over eons. To see planets settled, how humanity and society evolves.

I want to get bored of humanity, then get curious again. I want tech implants. Cybernetics. I’m already using smart drugs and biohack in my own weird way.

I’m not chasing youth. I want permanence. Give me epochs, I want to see it unfold.

So yeah. Bryan Johnson is ridiculous.

But maybe we’re just different flavors of the same obsession. He wants to be optimised. I just want to outlive the ending.

^{[*] I say this as someone with an eating disorder, currently using GLP-1 medication to treat obesity, which is a medically recognised brain disorder.}