Do you keep in mind the place you have been when Clavicular acquired brutally framemogged by an ASU fraternity chief?
Or possibly you noticed the clips of the 20-year-old creator — alongside Andrew Tate and white nationalist Nick Fuentes — dancing to Kanye West’s “Heil Hitler” at a Miami nightclub.
Or possibly you don’t have any thought what any of this implies.
The web subculture generally known as looksmaxxing, has just lately jumped from obscure message boards into the mainstream — thanks partly to a 20-year-old creator who goes by Clavicular.
Clavicular’s actual title is Braden Peters. And he’s not simply posting about skincare routines or cosmetic surgery. Peters just lately weighed in on the 2028 presidential election, arguing that if the race have been between California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Vice President JD Vance, Newsom would win for one easy purpose: He’s extra enticing.
To grasp how look, politics, and on-line extremism are brewing on this nook of the web, Right now, Defined co-host Noel King spoke with Atlantic employees author and host of the podcast Galaxy Mind, Charlie Warzel.
Under is an excerpt of their dialog, edited for size and readability. You may hear the complete episode wherever you get podcasts — together with Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Clavicular is a younger man — he’s in his 20s. He began posting on the web as a teen, round when he was about 15 years previous, on these looksmaxxing boards, that are boards which can be devoted to creating your self as aesthetically good as humanly potential by way of physique modification.
Clavicular principally toiled in obscurity for a very very long time till he allegedly hit somebody along with his Cybertruck whereas he was reside streaming on Christmas Eve of this previous yr.
Who’re the looksmaxxers?
The looksmaxxers are sophisticated as a result of they overlap with numerous different communities on-line. There’s the involuntarily celibate group, generally known as incels, which have hyperlinks to violent extremism. However actually there’s this core feeling in looksmaxxing that the one factor that issues in all of life is how good you look, that that’s tied to your self-worth in each means, and that what try to be doing is attempting by all means mandatory — whether or not that’s breaking bones in your physique, whether or not that’s chewing on a rubber ball for hours a day — to get your jawline to be straighter. To get a leg up, you’ll want to do this as a result of one of the best factor that you are able to do is exit on the planet and look higher than everybody else and doc the heck out of it.
What can we find out about what Clavicular has completed to himself?
He has mentioned on numerous podcasts, and many others., that he has smashed his face with a hammer. The speculation there may be that when your bones break, they develop again stronger.
And so he has smashed his face, his jawline, with a purpose to strengthen it to make it look higher. He began, based on him, taking testosterone when he was round 14 or 15 years previous with a purpose to velocity up his puberty and get his physique trying like an grownup. He’s mentioned he’s taken methamphetamines with a purpose to hole out his cheeks.
The looksmaxxers have their very own language, which I discover very compelling. Are you able to outline a few the phrases?
“These guys are extraordinarily efficient consideration hijackers, and that’s essential.”
Mogging is trying higher than somebody trying sizzling. And truly what I discovered is it’s a type of an acronym, but it surely stands for alpha male of the group, [shortened to] male of the group — MOG.
There’s all types of phrases that they’re simply making up on the spot too, like jestermaxxing, which is being jocular, jovial, having enjoyable.
What’s the goal of being sizzling? What’s the function of all this?
It’s social dominance actually, or simply dominance on the whole. This concept of mogging comes from this alpha male of group acronym: The “alpha” a part of that, and the “male” a part of which can be each extraordinarily essential. And so going out in public as an especially sizzling individual isn’t just to indicate how lovely you might be, but it surely’s to be dominant over different folks. You wish to make different folks look unhealthy. You need them to really feel unhealthy about themselves primarily based on how unbelievably enticing you might be, and also you additionally wish to principally conquer girls.
I’ve learn your items and I listened to your podcast and there’s a factor that I feel you each say immediately and type of dance round, which is…this appears silly, but it surely isn’t truly silly. Clarify what you imply.
I feel it’s silly on the content material degree. It’s missing in substance is how I might put it. There’s the clip of Clavicular, I imagine he’s in Miami. He’s with this streamer, Sneako, who’s highly regarded, and Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist Groyper chief, additionally a streamer. And they’re in a lounge someplace in an condo and having a dialog that’s extremely stilted, simply extremely vapid. There’s simply not so much being exchanged there.
Clavicular appears to react like he’s a type of wind-up dolls. You pull the string and there’s like 5 completely different reactions. So one in every of them’s like, “Hey dude, that’s so primarily based, sick.” And so forth the substance degree, there’s that.
Then there’s the factor of what he means, what that vapid content material means, what the recognition of somebody like Clavicular means. And I feel that that’s not silly. The truth that I’m writing an article about him in The Atlantic as a result of he’s hanging out with these folks. The truth that he was capable of leverage his recognition into this example the place he’s assembly with Andrew Tate, the manosphere influencer. Fuentes, who’s influential sufficient that he’s attempting to power the MAGA coalition additional in direction of white nationalism. That he’s ready to enter a membership with these guys and get them to play the Ye music, “Heil Hitler,” and switch that into this viral second that then will get the mayor of Miami to need to react to it, to sentence it, to principally apologize on behalf of the town for letting this occur. These guys are extraordinarily efficient consideration hijackers, and that’s essential.
