30 years ago it was a guy in a magazine on every drug known to man that would claim the reason for their size was Muscle Mega 3000 and then on the next page would be an advertisement for Muscle Mega 3000.
30 years ago Mike O'hearn was Mr Natural USA or some BS.
The same thing over and over.
If anything it was even worse 30 years ago when there was basically no information outside of bodybuilding magazines and even Mr Olympia would say they were natural. There was almost an unspoken code of silence and denial.
On the other hand, there are probably quite a few people today that everyone thinks are on steroids but they are 100% natural. People have such huge variance in natural testosterone levels.
This practice is very common and probably does more harm than good. I agree that looking up to, or aspiring towards an elite physique is good however people need to be realistic and realise that, for most people, it doesn't matter what you do, whether you take every steroid known to man, you will probably never look like Ronnie Coleman in his prime and that's okay.
the people that look really good in their 30s, 40s and beyond usually started in their teens and kept the results.
A while back at lunch with 6 coworkers I've had to Google Arnold Schwarzenegger admitting steroid use because they didn't think he used steroids.
Just let that sink in about general awareness of what's possible with natural BB.
People also fail this test for women who, for example, do barbell hip thrusts every day in the gym to get a nice butt that everyone takes for granted. “You’re so lucky to have a body like that. I wish I was.”
I think we see so many good looking people so often we lose sense of what it takes to get it.
I do think a lot of new lifters think work ethic + a few pills will get them influencer bodies / huge lifts. Strength training is a highly individual activity, largely done in commercial gyms where doing the activity somewhat diligently seems to bring big results relative to gen pop. But step into an athletic gym, or play a team sport at competitve level and it quickly becomes obvious that some individuals are just genetic phenomes, ultimately they're the ones that make it to top level, especially in something as genetically predisposed as growing lean mass or static strength, and no amount of hard work or drugs will even the playing field. But most novice to intermediate lifters and bodybuilders don't get this epiphany stuck lifting in commercial gyms. Like most people probably intuitively understand they can't simply train to sprint remotely on the same level as Bolt. But many gymbros think they can simply train to have the equivalent body or strength of influencers (many of whom are also just genetically blessed) when it was simply never in the cards.
TBF the bodybuilding community seems to be much better at nattyornot conversations in the last few years. Strength community also improving simply because numbers have gotten so big as popularity unearthed 0.01% talent that 5plate folks aspiring for previously 6plate world record recognize that, no, they'll never come close to pulling 7 plates. At this point even women's record are becoming untouchable to most men hovering in the middle of the genetic bell curve.