Sperm racing is all the rage among the tech bros. Why am I not surprised? | Arwa Mahdawi

REmember when Elon Musk challenged Vladimir Putin in physical combat and Mark Zuckerberg in a cage fight? None of these fights took place for various reasons. Not the least, I suppose, because Musk is just enough aware of oneself to know that he would not emerge with his dignity, or his vertebral column, intact. However, if the richest man in the world always throws for a way to publicly demonstrate his virility, I think I have struck the perfect path: the sperm race.

It is not an insult below the belt. Sperm races are now an emerging “thing” among the types of technology. A teenage entrepreneur called Eric Zhu had the idea and became viral with his first semen race in April. This initial race was rudimentary: the students gave sperm samples to analyze and the results were transformed into an animated race which views the fastest offers.

Since then, things have become more sophisticated: the company has developed a racing mechanism in real time. According to the San Francisco standard, investors have evaluated sperm races at $ 75 million and recently obtained $ 10 million seed funding. Good for Zhu, but imagine being a founding teenager who requires investments in the Ovulation Olympic Games; Would you have laughed at the room. It was if you were even left in the room: companies entirely led by women in the United States only obtained 1% of the funding of venture capital in 2024.

While sperm races have started as a joke, it is now presented as a health initiative. “Male fertility is declining. Like, many, ”says the manifesto of society. “Spermatozoa races are not only racing sperm (although, let’s be honest, it’s hilarious). It is about transforming health into competition. It is about making male fertility something that people really want to speak, follow and improve.” The company also peddles a supplement called Sperm Worms.

In many ways, the sperm race is ingenious. Fertility is often considered a problem of women; This helps to crop the motility of the sperm (not exactly a conversation for dinner) in a engaging way. Raising more deeply with their reproductive health is great. But “transform health into competition”? Large yikes. Does this mean that anyone is in good health is a loser? Because it is sure what it looks like.

However, what do you expect from more tech bros? Sperm races reflect three trends overlooking the Silicon Valley: a fixation on traditional masculinity; An obsession to treat your body as a machine that can be constantly optimized; And an increased interest in fertility that rides a disturbing resurgence of eugenics.

You can literally see the Silicon Valley comply with more rigid masculinity ideas over the years. Once, the stereotype of a technological brother was a sweet Dork with a sense of zero fashion and nonexistent biceps. Just google Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk in 2000, or Mark Zuckerberg in 2010. (And do it quickly, before cleaning all the evidence of the Internet.) While technological companies amassed wealth and power, however, there was a change of atmosphere. The founders started to swell and make mixed martial arts. Zuckerberg, who once paid the lips of diversity, began to deplore the absence of “male energy” in corporate culture. And, in parallel with a wider cultural interest in testosterone that manifested itself from people such as Tucker Carlson promoting the tanning of testicles and podcastors like Andrew Huberman giving advice on the best supplements linked to testosterone, a founder began to host “parties”, where men gathered to test and compare their levels of levels Testosterone.

At the same time, pronatalism in Silicon Valley increases and fertility technology is booming. It is not necessarily a bad thing – except that many large dollars being channeled in fertility do not seem to go to the macro resolution of problems such as the reduction in pollution of air or microplastics, which were both linked to infertility, but rather to flashy ideas such as sperm breeds or to find ways to help produce ultra -optimized children. A certain number of controversial startups with embryo test have offered to help parents select a future child with the best possible genes, based on “desirable features” and genetic predictions of intelligence.

Anyway, problematic or not, expect to see more: Zhu would have established a partnership with a company called Total Frat Move to carry out sperm races in the colleges. I hope that one of the teachers there can take a few minutes to explain that the idea of ​​sperm to get to a pending egg is a macho myth. Research shows that the egg has in fact the last word on which sperm fertilizes it. Which can be a hard nut for some of these boys to crack.

Arwa Mahdawi is a guardian columnist

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