Screen captures from social media show Braden Peters, an influencer in the looksmaxxing community who goes by the name Clavicular online.Supplied
It’s time we talked about Clavicular. In the last month, the 20-year-old American influencer escaped the confines of the manosphere and broke into the wider public consciousness, prompting many of us to wonder “what does mogging mean?” and “what’s bone-smashing” and “do I really have to care about this?”
Clavicular, whose real name is Braden Peters, is a pre-eminent looksmaxxer, a type of (usually male) influencer who is obsessed with optimizing his physical appearance, often through extreme measures.
Although Clavicular’s recent virality has put a spotlight on looksmaxxing, the community, its beliefs and practice long predate the influencer.
What is looksmaxxing?
To understand Clavicular, we first need to understand looksmaxxing. Predominantly practised by heterosexual men, it’s the process of trying to maximize your physical appearance to be more attractive to women. With origins in the incel community, looksmaxxers believe that your worth is tied to your level of attractiveness with the underlying belief that society is “lookist,” meaning good looking people are likely to have better outcomes in dating, employment and schooling.
Looksmaxxing is a spectrum. It can be done through benign means – diet, exercise, trimming an unruly beard or clearing up acne – which is called “softmaxxing.” On the other end is “hardmaxxing,” which includes more intense measures such as limb-lengthening surgeries, abusing drugs in an attempt to increase your height, lose weight or gain muscle, and undergoing extreme cosmetic surgeries.
Opinion: Looksmaxxing: A Gen Z boy’s reply to anti-male bias
Unlike some other online communities, looksmaxxers aren’t united politically. Instead, the through line is their belief system around women. “The men in these communities are able to bond over ideas that women are promiscuous, only look for men who are extremely attractive,” says Michael Halpin, an associate professor of sociology at Dalhousie University who studies looksmaxxing. “That idea of male domination, female subordination and that beauty above all things is the thing that coheres the group.”
So, who is Clavicular?
Clavicular, or Peters to use his real name, is an influencer who has talked about his experience taking testosterone since he was a teen and taking methamphetamine to suppress his appetite, and endorses “bone-smashing,” which is using a hammer or another blunt object to cause micro-factures that will heal into a more chiseled jawline or more striking cheekbones. It’s an extreme evolution of mewing, which is trying to improve your jaw with exercises. Medical experts say these are bad ideas.
In the last year, Peters has built a following on the livestream platform Kick, an edgier version of Twitch with looser moderation policies. Videos of him rating and critiquing other men’s looks, a common ritual in the online community, regularly go viral on TikTok, X and Instagram.
Yet in recent weeks, he’s gone viral beyond the looksmaxxing cohort after he filmed himself at a Miami nightclub with manosphere influencer Andrew Tate and white nationalist commentator Nick Fuentes singing along to Kanye West’s song Heil Hitler. The owner of the Miami nightclub was forced to issue an apology after.
What does ‘mogging’ mean?
Like most online communities, looksmaxxing has developed its own confounding vernacular. For example, “mogging,” which is derived from the acronym “Alpha Male of the Group,” refers to being significantly more attractive than someone else. (To see it used in a sentence, Clavicular has that said California Governor Gavin Newsom mogs JD Vance.) “Framemogging” describes when someone has a broader or more muscular frame. “Jestermaxxing” is using humour as a way to attract female attention.
As looksmaxxing enters the mainstream, the language is being adopted outside of the very online communities. This month, the X account for the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering posted an image of a grinning soldier with the caption, “Low cortisol. Locked in. Lethalitymaxxing.”
How is looksmaxxing connected to incels and red-pilled groups?
The concept has its origins in the misogynist incel community, which stands for involuntarily celibate, and anti-feminist red-pilled online spaces, dating back to 15 years ago.
In the past four years, however, Anda Solea, a lecturer the cybercrime at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K., has found incel ideology has migrated from these more niche forums and discussion boards to mainstream social media platforms, such as TikTok. In a recent paper, she found that incel social media accounts have since rebranded to focus on looksmaxxing, to avoid crackdowns on incel-related language, while still promoting the same harmful ideology.
Consuming looksmaxxing content on TikTok or YouTube can then function as an on-ramp to more extreme content.
Do I really need to care about this?
This is a good question. You may want to brush it off as simply a social media trend and chalk “mogging” up to as the new “6 7″ in slang terms. But there is reason to be concerned.
Halpin says the rise of looksmaxxing has shown that body dysmorphia disorder, a mental health condition which causes an individual to intensely focus on perceived appearance flaws, and unhealthy body image, which has been linked to eating disorders and depression, are problems facing young men and boys that are often missed or disregarded.
On looksmaxxing forums, users will post photos and ask for advice on how to reach an ideal type of masculine beauty, and “if they can’t meet that, they’re encouraged to self-harm, complete suicide and told their life will be over,” Halpin says.
Solea is also concerned that looksmaxxing can add pressure to young men who are already suffering from self-esteem or mental health issues that could lead to violence, similar to Elliot Rodger’s incel-motivated 2014 attack in California that killed six people.
“My fear would be that you have these young men who try everything, they spend a lot of money on these procedures and they still don’t get a girlfriend,” Solea says. “I wonder if all of this is going to build a lot of more resentment towards women again to bring a wave of violence against women because it – looksmaxxing – didn’t work.”
