the liver king is my shiny internet boy
he juiced up for you
A few weeks ago, I pitched my editor at The Daily Beast on a story about the Liver King, and he (my editor) decided no, it’s too niche. He said not enough people know about the Liver King. But folks, I know about the Liver King and I’ve got to get that knowledge out of my head. The Liver King, you see, is my shiny internet boy.1
For those of you who don’t know, the Liver King is a fellow named Brian Johnson but his Christian name is irrelevant. Brian is too normie anyway. Your accountant is named Brian. This Brian’s nom de poster is the Liver King and all he does is post. And, obviously, eat a lot raw liver. That’s why he’s the Liver King.
The Liver King posts videos of himself staggering around farmland in boots and a sleeveless flannel, carrying a squat rack on his back. He posts videos of himself milking cows and chugging raw milk on the spot. He eats testicles in raw milk and calls it cereal. (Of course, the whole time, he talks about himself in the third person. He’s the fucking Liver King).
But why? Why do I love the Liver King? Why is he my shiny internet boy? Why not Dan Bilzerian or Dave Goggins or any of those other jackasses getting rich off the same look-at-me self-help schemes? I guess because the Liver King doesn’t do anything. Dave Goggins at least was a SEAL. Like yeah, he’s pimping the trident, but he’s still got the trident to pimp.
The Liver King is proof that you don’t have to do anything to be a shiny internet boy. He’s not a SEAL or a successful gambler or has-been NFL punter. He’s simply jacked and social media savvy. The Liver King is short and pushing fifty; he’s not particularly blessed. In real life, I imagine he resembles a large garden gnome. The Liver King is human.
And he’s human in his failures. Of course the Liver King got called out for taking steroids (turns out, liver alone can’t make you look like a balloon animal) and of course, the Liver King had to apologize because, as he said, “Liver King the public figure was an experiment to spread awareness … our young men are hurting the most, feeling lost, weak and submissive so I made it my job to model, teach and preach.” 2
Jesus may have died for our sins, but the Liver King juiced up for our insecurities. And we ought to thank him for that.3
You don’t actually need to watch the apology video because it’s standard for the genre. It’s just as scripted as you’d imagine and yet you begin to wonder if any of this is an act anymore or if the Liver King the public figure has consumed Brian Johnson. Kind of the same way you wonder, whenever you watch those Kevin Spacey Christmas videos whether the actor actually believes he’s Frank Underwood.
I don’t know who the Liver King is talking to. I wonder how many of his fans take his schtick seriously. Like, are there a quantifiable number of dupable young men out there gagging on raw bull testicles because the Liver King does it? I have no idea. But it’s a question I ask myself at least once a week. 4
And I suppose the Liver King is my shiny internet boy because he’s living, always-posting proof that this whole thing is absurd. He’s trying to corner manliness but it strikes me that there’s nothing less manly, no quicker way to plant a flag of insecurity in your masculinity than to broadcast your whole life on the internet.
He keeps me humble, the Liver King. I’m not on Instagram or TikTok or Facebook or YouTube but every once in a while, I think about it. I think well, hell, I’ve got eight abs like cobblestones, I can still count them and in a few years I won’t be able to do that anymore. Maybe I’d better get online and pop my shirt off before it’s too late.
But then I remember the Liver King. Because when is enough really enough? You can’t just get online and take your shirt off, not with the Liver King out there. You’ve got to go all in. You’ve got to burn all your shirts and forever stagger around with a squat rack on your shoulders like a roid-head Sisyphus, or else what’s the point? And so I put the phone down, go back to the mind-numbing flow of a workout uninterrupted by selfies. And it’s much more pleasant. I guess maybe the Liver King really did juice up for me.
He’s also not unknown. The Liver King has over 6 million followers on TikTok. Nearly three million on Instagram and 1.2 million on YouTube. Like, he’s talking to people.
Also, the Liver King is always injured, obviously. Steroids fry your body. For a while he was wearing an eyepatch and it seemed like he might go blind. In all of his recent videos, his left arm is in a sling. But that only makes him more human!
Nobody seems to actually care that he’s juicing, by the way. Obviously he’s not natural. And, like, does it matter? He’s a freak, let his freak flag fly.
It’s also worth nothing that the Liver King is not really dangerous in the same way Andrew Tate is. The Liver King isn’t telling his followers (who I assume, like Tate’s are mostly young, lost males) that they’ve got to hate women.