Now we turn to the online supply chains that have played a role in allowing a host of less culturally embedded actors to enter the UK muscle trade. Signalling the prominence of this market, Rob concluded our interview by stating that “The marketplace for steroids is probably more so internet-based and social media-based than anything. That’s the way it’s gone”. While the operation of online pharmacies, sales forums, and dark net sites has been expertly navigated within the current literature (Hall and Antonopoulos, 2016; Antonopoulos and Hall, 2016; Moore and Rid, 2016; Turnock, 2021a), during my time in the field it became increasingly obvious that the surface web online IPED market is mainly concentrated on SNS (see Cox et al, 2023). As such, although I acknowledge the heterogeneity of online supply and its numerous messy intersections with different platforms, the following analysis will principally focus on ‘retail’ selling on Facebook and Instagram as a burgeoning part of the online IPED ecosystem.

Mapping the SNS market

Customer base

Before outlining the structure of Facebook and Instagram as sites of IPED supply, it is worth noting the widespread derision and mistrust of both platforms’ sellers by my offline sample. Understood within the context of their reliance upon community-embedded closed market supply, most of my gym-based participants were highly sceptical of utilizing these platforms as spaces of illicit commerce. This was summed up by Johnny as we discussed what he saw as the inevitability that he would begin using IPEDs as his lifting journey progressed: