On a stage in Los Angeles, surrounded by a few hundred onlookers, two students in Formula 1 outfits exchange killer looks around a microscope topped with giant screens, for a crazy challenge: a sperm race.
This unusual idea came from the mind of Eric Zhu, a young tech entrepreneur who raised over a million dollars to organize the event to raise awareness about declining male fertility, all in an atmosphere bordering on masculinism.
The 17-year-old high school student was inspired by "a very popular meme that shows that over the last 50 years, sperm counts have halved" among men, he told AFP.
According to him, "there could be a dystopian future where no one can have children anymore." Hence his desire to organize an event where "health becomes a competition" — and which does not address the effects of pollution.
Fueled by testosterone, this evening, broadcast online, took place on Friday, halfway between the kitsch of wrestling and the exuberance of mixed martial arts (MMA).
The two headliners, Asher Proeger and Tristan Milker, are members of rival universities. They insult each other copiously at weigh-ins and jostle each other, while dishing out their workout tips for improving sperm quality—sleep eight hours a night, avoid alcohol and cannabis.
"I didn't learn anything I didn't already know," says Alberto Avila-Baca, a 22-year-old student, who is a bit skeptical.
– Schoolboy jokes –
When the fateful moment finally arrived, a young man in a white coat introduced the semen of the two competitors – collected shortly before the event – into a microchannel.
The barely 2-millimeter path is magnified 100 times by a microscope, then filmed by a camera whose images are supposedly processed by a computer that designs a 3D animation, so that the audience can see which sperm crosses the line first.
Beneath this scientific veneer, the evening is above all an opportunity to make schoolboy jokes.
The presenters talk about "Sperm 1," ask the young women present if they are still virgins, and question the contestants about the size of their penises.
In the end, Asher, the loser, is sprayed with a viscous white liquid, as if he were being ejaculated on.
Simple adolescent humor, or subliminal masculinist staging?
Online, many influencers discuss male fertility to promote a pro-natalist ideology. Elon Musk, Tesla CEO and close ally of Donald Trump, is notoriously convinced that population decline threatens civilization.
– Chemicals, forgotten –
"I have nothing to do with this, I'm not an Elon Musk type," assures Eric Zhu, the organizer, who swears he's simply talking about health.
"It's your choice to go to bed earlier. It's your choice to stop taking drugs. It's your choice to eat healthier, and all of these things have a significant impact on your motility," the ability of sperm to move, he insists.
A speech very focused on personal factors that can influence fertility, which completely forgets the harmful influence of many chemicals.
On stage, no one mentions the adverse effects of pesticides or plasticizers such as bisphenols, present in many cans of food, or phthalates, contained in many shampoos.
"Their proliferation is a likely explanation for much of the decline in male sperm quality," Shanna Swan, a reproductive epidemiologist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, told AFP.
The scientist is part of the team that showed that the average sperm concentration of Western men has fallen by more than 50% since the 1970s, in a landmark study published in 2017.
She believes governments must adopt stricter environmental regulations.
"If the increasing burden of active chemicals on the hormonal system remains unchecked, fertility and reproductive health will continue to decline to the point that an increasing number of couples will have to resort to assisted reproductive technologies to conceive," she warns.
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