Earlier this year, the Guardian reported on a recent study of low-T influencers by Emma Grundtvig Gram, a public health researcher at the University of Copenhagen. Gram and her colleagues analyzed 46 TikTok and Instagram posts with a combined following of more than 6.8 million. In the study abstract, the researchers noted that common themes in the posts included “the rebranding of low testosterone from an ‘old man’s problem’ to an issue affecting younger men and their fitness” and “low testosterone as a crisis of masculinity and male sexual performance.”

link to open access paper https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953625012341?via=ihub

The threat of low testosterone was linked with empowering calls for action. One example is a functional practitioner on Instagram and CEO of a “holistic health empire” encouraging men to get tested: “Do your homework, be your own advocate, and do not let someone tell you that you are fine if you do not feel well. Get your labs done regularly, understand what it is you are looking at, and take measures to mitigate or even reverse the consequences of andropause.” Here the discursive use of “andropause” enacts normal aging and legitimises testing and treatment. Another example is a clinic on Instagram and in the post, their CEO listed symptoms and recommended people to get in contact: “(…) If you are suffering from any of the above, schedule a virtual appointment with [name of clinic]!”. These notions especially pertained to heterosexual desire ”(…) what if I wanna fuck my girlfriend?” (Podcast host, 100k followers, TikTok).

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The sense of crisis materialises through interactions between a lived experience of struggle, medical marketing practices, the discursive use of andropause, and normative standards delineating normal and deficient male bodies. Hoberman has argued that this tension between marketing and medicine makes testosterone deficiency vulnerable to the chicken-and-egg dilemma, where it remains unclear if the solution shaped the problem or vice versa (Hoberman, 2005). However, in the social media posts normal male sexuality was enacted through portrayals of struggle and crisis becoming a productive force in how testosterone matters as a commercial entity.