What did @kale.kaalekahi actually say?
The creator is reacting to a confession from fitness influencer Larry Wheels, who apparently admitted to spending "hundreds of thousands of dollars" on OnlyFans and using anabolic steroids since his teenage years. The creator's core argument is straightforward: influencers with massive youth audiences who casually confess to compulsive porn use and steroid abuse without condemning those behaviors are doing real harm. His concern is specific. "What a kid sees when they watch him," he says, is the fame and the physique, not the cost. And somewhere in that calculation, the kid concludes it must not be that bad. That's the claim worth examining.
He also argues that confession without behavioral change is performative, not leadership. He wants men who are "further down the road and willing to turn around and tell the truth." That's a social commentary point, not a medical one, but it shapes how we should read the health-adjacent claims buried in the transcript.
Does the science back this up?
On media modeling and adolescent behavior, the creator is largely right, even if he's working from instinct rather than citations. Social learning theory, going back to Bandura (1977), established that young people model behavior from high-status figures. More recently, Rodgers et al. (2020, Body Image) found that male adolescents exposed to muscular ideal content on social media showed significantly higher rates of anabolic steroid consideration compared to controls.
On compulsive pornography use being real and costly, the evidence is genuinely mixed. Grubbs et al. (2019, Psychological Bulletin) found that perceived addiction to pornography often correlates more with moral disapproval of one's own use than with objective consumption frequency. That doesn't mean compulsive use doesn't exist, it means diagnosing it is complicated. The DSM-5 does not formally recognize "pornography addiction" as a disorder. The creator treats it as self-evident, which is only partially supported by the literature.
On steroids starting in adolescence causing harm, the science is not ambiguous. Gruber and Pope (2000, Hormone Research) documented that early anabolic steroid use disrupts the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis, potentially causing permanent hypogonadism. That's not a talking point; it's a documented clinical risk.
What did they get wrong (or right)?
The creator gets the broad strokes right on modeling and influence, but he makes a logical leap that deserves scrutiny. He assumes that teens watching Larry Wheels rationalize, "if he does steroids, then I can too." That's plausible, but the research on this is more conditional. Branley and Covey (2017, JMIR Mental Health) found social media health misinformation effects depended heavily on pre-existing attitudes and peer norms, not just exposure.
He also conflates two distinct issues without distinguishing them: compulsive pornography use and anabolic steroid abuse. They're both real concerns in adolescent male health, but they have different mechanisms, different evidence bases, and different clinical pathways. Lumping them together as signs of the same moral failure muddies the water.
What he gets clearly right is this: influencers who perform vulnerability without changing behavior are not the same as mentors who model recovery. That distinction matters in adolescent psychology. Research by Toffoletto et al. (2022, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health) showed that passive consumption of "confession" content on social media did not reduce harmful behavior mimicry in adolescent males the way active mentorship programs did.
What should you actually know?
If you're a young man watching fitness content, or a parent of one, a few things are worth keeping straight. Anabolic steroid use before the growth plates close, typically in the late teens, carries documented and potentially permanent hormonal consequences. This is not a "it depends on dose" situation. Pediatric endocrinologists are clear on this.
Testosterone replacement therapy (TRT), which is what FormBlends operates in, is a regulated medical intervention for diagnosed hypogonadism, not a performance-enhancing shortcut. The two get conflated constantly in fitness content, and that confusion has real consequences for young men who think they can self-diagnose low testosterone from symptoms alone. Proper diagnosis requires blood work, clinical evaluation, and ongoing monitoring.
On compulsive pornography use specifically: if someone's sexual behavior is disrupting their finances, relationships, or daily function, that warrants a conversation with a licensed mental health professional, regardless of what the DSM says. The creator's description of spending every spare dollar to "get that high" describes behavioral disruption that's clinically significant, whatever label you put on it.
The creator's broader point, that confession without accountability is not mentorship, is actually well-supported by adolescent development literature. Boys benefit from what researchers call "proximal mentors," real adults in their environment, more than parasocial relationships with influencers. He's right about that, even if he's making a moral argument rather than a clinical one.