'Looksmaxxing' is the latest social media trend, but doctors say it's dangerous

[0:02] i don't actually understand how people can't see the reality that is the better you look the better [0:08] you're treated and the more power you have but it was just like obvious to me so my name is dylan [0:16] latham i am a looks maxing slash life maxing creator i help people improve by giving them tips [0:23] and my main focus is to improve everyone's life my day starts around like 2 p.m as soon as i get [0:35] up in the morning i go to the mirror and i do whatever it takes to look better i use makeup [0:43] i use vaseline i use various oils people always say don't care what other people think i think the [0:49] only way to operate is discovering what people think and then capitalizing off of that it's a term [0:55] you may have never heard before looks maxing the trend can range from superficial practices like [1:01] hairstyle and skin health to serious measures like breaking bones in your face looks maxing is [1:10] an online subculture dedicated to ascending which means basically just getting hotter mostly very [1:17] young men teenage boys who go to extreme lengths to improve their appearance i started taking the [1:24] steroids and i'd say it changed my life elements of this have become really mainstream we're talking [1:29] about it on the news they're making fun of it on snl i'm absolutely frame logging you into oblivion [1:36] right now dirt but it's not exactly all positive looks maxing emerged out of incel forums guys who [1:46] feel sexually frustrated for those forums were extremely misogynistic nihilistic hardcore bone [1:52] smashing steroids i think everyone should be on testosterone influencers giving medical advice [1:59] to teenage boys it's a complete and total disaster understanding looks maxing's rise within the broader [2:10] economic and political context i think requires us to look at a few different things one is the nihilism [2:19] of the young boys who participate in this who say that they don't have a clear path to a [2:26] quote-unquote normal middle-class life gen z and especially teenagers they went through the [2:32] pandemic they maybe sort of missed a year of school they are not used to having social relationships in [2:39] the way that older people are tech talk instagram reels produced a certain number of looks maxing [2:47] influencers celebrities but by far the most popular or most notorious is clavicular clavicular [2:56] is a 20 year old guy's real name is braden peters he's from new jersey and he uh sort of came to [3:05] online fame because he was at top of the leaderboard of looksmaxing.com when he was 14 years old he kind [3:12] of felt like an outcast and he took to the internet and found the looks maxing community i spent a lot of [3:16] time on bodybuilding forums growing up i started with 300 milligrams of testosterone and i did that for a [3:21] while uh up until i was 16 and then i experimented with a couple of orals he does live streaming on [3:29] the app kick he's really blown up and clips of his video streams have proliferated on tick tock and all [3:36] sorts of other social media platforms streamers just have crazy names you can think of mr beast [3:42] i show speed but a name like clavicular makes you do a double take clavicular comes from the idea of how [3:48] wide should your clavicle bones be which is something that most of us have probably never [3:51] thought about i'm trying to optimize every single metric of my life i'm not only interested in fitness [3:56] right i am trying to iq max i'm trying to money max like all these different things um obviously you [4:03] know for the the normies watching this i say max at the end of everything maximize um just for that [4:09] clarification here's some of the key terms to know for looks maxing 101 soft maxing and hard maxing [4:17] would be sort of your two broadest categories soft maxing could be as simple as plucking your eyebrows [4:25] trying to lower your body fat percentage doing your hair differently hard maxing is what they [4:32] are referring to for things like actually getting plastic surgery limb lengthening bone smashing this [4:39] is how bone smashing got me this which is repeatedly hitting sensitive parts of your face with a hammer [4:46] to try to grow the the underlying bone and change the look of your face it doesn't work all right bone [4:52] smashing is a fallacy it's fraud mogging means that when you're in a group of men the most looks maxed [5:02] the best looking person in the group will mog everyone else there they will have the status they [5:08] will have the attention if i am six foot eight and someone's five foot ten i height mog them if someone [5:15] is less attractive and i'm more attractive i facially mog them mewing comes back to a dentist named dr mew [5:27] and the technique is you hold your tongue in a certain position in the mouth creating stress like [5:34] this in the uh jaw muscles i almost think it's like a flexing of the face let me see was that a mew [5:45] it doesn't work so it's just a dumb idea it's dumb maxing is what it is the problem with looks maxing is [5:55] it's designed to make kids teenagers young boys look as good as possible one of the main things they [6:03] do is they use steroids so although you might get muscular hypertrophy you can get high blood pressure [6:10] an increase in your ldl a decrease in your hdl so it can have a paradoxical effect on their health [6:17] and wellness and they're very dangerous he's 16 trying to respond 20 year old male overdose now a [6:27] social media influencer known for looks maxing is back in the spotlight clavicular hit an apparent [6:32] overdose here in south florida during a recent stream he was slurring his words oh my god [6:38] he's sitting next to another streamer androgenic who sits next to him and he asks him just how [6:46] messed up are you dude i'm shot so after the stream cuts you see this video of clav being carried out [6:52] by a group of people and he looks completely limp the next thing you hear is he's been hospitalized [6:58] wow it's sort of tragic the more that you learn about this kid you do feel empathy for him he's sad [7:09] clavicular's od may be an inflection point a tipping point in the looks maxing movement hopefully [7:17] people realize mixing and matching these things is particularly dangerous clav tweeted out that the [7:25] experience was brutal but that next night tonight i'm on i'm on nothing i don't plan on being on anything [7:32] for their foreseeable future he was back at the club live streaming yeah on looks maxi oh yeah [7:49] we're trying trying like i'm looking like getting into like right now locked in bro bro [7:57] you're ascending you're ascending bro let's go yeah w moggers thank you bro peace peace peace [8:02] people dm me all the time saying that i changed their life that i saved their life that if they [8:08] didn't find my content they wouldn't know what to do with their life beauty will not keep you safe from [8:16] life and for some reason because of the highlight reel and the obsession with comparison online and [8:22] we only see people's good days i think that boys think that if they are attractive enough [8:28] they never ever have to feel a bad feeling again it's not true