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Comment by sidlls | Hacker News Reader

What?

There are plenty of "tech" things that are male-centered. Specifically young, single, tech-industry male centered.

They're not the same thing by a long shot. Slimfast is essentially a weight loss oriented protein shake, it's got almost no fats or sugars. Slimfast themselves don't even recommend using it for every meal, or using it long term.

Soylent is an actual meal replacement. You can consume nothing but Soylent for as long as you want to. It's not geared towards weight loss, just as an alternative to food. It provides complete nutrition.

Also I can't find anything on the site today, nor can I remember any advertising in the past that would lead me to believe it's a gendered product. SlimFast aggressively advertises towards women, sure, but I fail to see how Soylent is geared towards men.

The concept of Soylent being used at every meals makes me think of enteral nutrition (Isosource or Osmolyte) given in hospital to sick individuals as a primary source of nutrition, usually through an NG or a PEG tube.

Soylent took this concept, took the NG/PEG tubes out of the equation and sold it to those who are alive and well.

The only innovation with Soylent is its triumph of marketing babble.

They have have taken what is possibly one of the least attractive products imaginable -- a product that is expensive, tastes awful and initially afflicts many people with diarrhea... and successfully marketed it.

As a partial counter-point, you should be aware that diarrhea is a very common symptom for the first several weeks when one changes their diet substantially. Drinking more water, eating foods that are easier to digest, ingesting more vegetables -- all these things trigger your body to flush itself.

For most people what looks to be a diarrhea in reality is a mildly violent reaction to the changes of your feeding habits and thus the changes in your metabolism. In rarer cases, I've known people consuming Herbalife who, even though they admit they feel MUCH better, occasionally puke -- that's the rarer form of the body flushing itself.

So this seeming diarrhea is very normal in the first phases of weight loss -- or even simply starting eating healthier and ingesting more water without aiming for a weight loss.

So? What does that have to do with Soylent? Their success could be a product of a better logo, better marketing team, pure dumb luck, or a million other things. To insinuate that they're only seen as revolutionary because a man invented it and prior products were made by or marketed toward women is ridiculous.

It's easy to see how someone might conclude Soylent is targeted toward ambitious males (especially in tech, especially single ones), at least from its initial marketing efforts as a meal replacement for career minded folks neck deep in tech. That's how I remember them anyway. It may have changed; I only follow the thing when stuff like this or their "move fast and ~make people sick~ try new recipes" schtick that turns out to be disastrous makes the news.

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