What is 'looksmaxxing'? A peek inside one of today's biggest trends

[0:06] I don't actually understand how people can't see the reality that is. [0:11] The better you look, the better you're treated, and the more power you have. [0:15] But it was just, like, obvious to me. [0:19] So my name is Dylan Latham. [0:20] I am a looks-maxing slash life-maxing creator. [0:24] I help people improve by giving them tips. [0:27] And my main focus is to improve everyone's life. [0:34] My day starts around, like, 2 p.m. [0:36] As soon as I get up in the morning, I go to the mirror and I do whatever it takes to look better. [0:45] I use makeup, I use Vaseline, I use various oils. [0:49] People always say, don't care what other people think. [0:52] I think the only way to operate is discovering what people think and then capitalizing off of that. [0:59] It's a term you may have never heard before, looks-maxing. [1:02] The trend can range from superficial practices like hairstyle and skin health [1:06] to serious measures like breaking bones in your face. [1:13] Looks-maxing is an online subculture dedicated to ascending, which means basically just getting hotter. [1:19] Mostly very young men, teenage boys, who go to extreme lengths to improve their appearance. [1:27] I started taking the steroids and I'd say it changed my life. [1:30] Elements of this have become really mainstream. [1:33] We're talking about it on the news. [1:34] They're making fun of it on SNL. [1:36] I'm absolutely frame-mogging you into oblivion right now, dirt. [1:41] But it's not exactly all positive. [1:45] Looks-maxing emerged out of incel forums. [1:50] Guys who feel sexually frustrated. [1:52] Those forums were extremely misogynistic, nihilistic, hardcore. [1:56] Bone smashing, steroids. [1:58] I think everyone should be on testosterone. [2:00] Influencers giving medical advice to teenage boys. [2:04] It's a complete and total disaster. [2:09] Understanding looks-maxing's rise within the broader economic and political context, [2:17] I think requires us to look at a few different things. [2:20] One is the nihilism of the young boys who participate in this, [2:26] who say that they don't have a clear path to a quote-unquote normal middle class life. [2:32] Gen Z, and especially teenagers, they went through the pandemic. [2:37] They maybe sort of missed a year of school. [2:39] They are not used to having social relationships in the way that older people are. [2:46] TikTok, Instagram Reels produced a certain number of looks-maxing influencers, celebrities. [2:53] But by far the most popular or most notorious is Clavicular. [2:58] Clavicular is a 20-year-old guy's real name is Brayden Peters. [3:03] He's from New Jersey, and he sort of came to online fame [3:09] because he was at top of the leaderboard of looks-maxing.com. [3:14] When he was 14 years old, he kind of felt like an outcast, [3:17] and he took to the internet and found the looks-maxing community. [3:19] I spent a lot of time on bodybuilding forums growing up. [3:22] I started with 300 milligrams of testosterone, and I did that for a while, up until I was 16. [3:28] And then I experimented with a couple of orals. [3:31] He does live streaming on the app Kik. [3:34] He's really blown up, and clips of his video streams have proliferated on TikTok [3:39] and all sorts of other social media platforms. [3:42] Streamers just have crazy names. [3:44] You can think of MrBeast, iShowSpeed. [3:47] But a name like Clavicular makes you do a double-take. [3:50] Clavicular comes from the idea of how wide should your clavicle bones be, [3:53] which is something that most of us have probably never thought about. [3:56] I'm trying to optimize every single metric of my life. [3:59] I'm not only interested in fitness, right? [4:01] I am trying to IQ max. [4:03] I'm trying to money max. [4:04] Like, all these different things. [4:06] Obviously, you know, for the normies watching this, [4:09] I say max at the end of everything. [4:11] Maximize, just for that clarification. [4:14] Here's some of the key terms to know for looks maxing 101. [4:19] Soft maxing and hard maxing would be sort of your two broadest categories. [4:25] Soft maxing could be as simple as plucking your eyebrows, [4:29] trying to lower your body fat percentage, doing your hair differently. [4:33] Hard maxing is what they are referring to for things like [4:37] actually getting plastic surgery, limb lengthening, bone smashing. [4:42] This is how bone smashing got me this. [4:45] Which is repeatedly hitting sensitive parts of your face with a hammer [4:49] to try to grow the underlying bone and change the look of your face. [4:54] It doesn't work, all right? [4:55] Bone smashing is a fallacy. [4:58] It's fraud. [5:01] Mogging means that when you're in a group of men, [5:04] the most looks maxed, the best looking person in the group [5:08] will mog everyone else there. [5:10] They will have the status. [5:11] They will have the attention. [5:12] If I am 6'8 and someone's 5'10, I height mog them. [5:18] If someone is less attractive and I'm more attractive, [5:21] I facially mog them. [5:27] Mewing comes back to a dentist named Dr. Mew. [5:31] And the technique is you hold your tongue [5:34] in a certain position in the mouth, [5:36] creating stress like this in the jaw muscles. [5:41] I almost think it's like a flexing of the face. [5:43] Let me see. [5:43] Was that a Mew? [5:50] It doesn't work. [5:52] So it's just a dumb idea. [5:54] It's dumb maxing is what it is. [5:58] The problem with looks maxing is it's designed to make kids, [6:01] teenagers, young boys look as good as possible. [6:05] One of the main things they do is they use steroids. [6:08] So although you might get muscular hypertrophy, [6:11] you can get high blood pressure, [6:14] an increase in your LDL, a decrease in your HDL. [6:17] So it can have a paradoxical effect on their health and wellness, [6:21] and they're very dangerous. [6:27] P-16, kind of response, 20-year-old male overdose. [6:30] Now a social media influencer known for looks maxing [6:33] is back in the spotlight. [6:34] Clavicular had an apparent overdose here in South Florida. [6:38] During a recent stream, he was slurring his words. [6:41] Oh my God, I was slurring. [6:44] He's sitting next to another streamer, androgenic, [6:47] who sits next to him and he asks him, [6:49] just how messed up are you? [6:51] Dude, I was shot. [6:52] So after the stream cuts, [6:54] you see this video of Clav being carried out [6:56] by a group of people, and he looks completely limp. [6:59] The next thing you hear is he's been hospitalized. [7:02] Wow. [7:05] It's sort of tragic. [7:08] The more that you learn about this kid, [7:10] you do feel empathy for him. [7:12] He's sad. [7:13] Clavicular's OD may be an inflection point, [7:17] a tipping point in the looks maxing movement. [7:21] Hopefully people realize mixing and matching [7:24] these things is particularly dangerous. [7:27] Clav tweeted out that the experience was brutal, [7:30] but that next night... [7:32] Today I'm on nothing. [7:34] I don't plan on being on anything [7:35] for the foreseeable future. [7:38] He was back at the club live streaming. [7:41] On looks maxing. [7:53] Oh, yeah, we look max. [7:54] I'm trying, I'm looking like getting into it right now. [7:56] Locked in, bro, bro. [7:57] Before I'm watching Clavicular. [7:59] I was looking like subhuman. [8:00] You're ascending, you're ascending, bro. [8:02] Let's go. [8:02] W.E. Muggers, W.E. Muggers. [8:04] Let's go, let's go. [8:04] Have a good night. [8:05] Thank you, bro. [8:05] Peace, peace, peace. [8:06] People DM me all the time saying [8:08] that I changed their life, [8:09] that I saved their life, [8:11] that if they didn't find my content, [8:13] they wouldn't know what to do with their life. [8:15] Beauty will not keep you safe from life. [8:20] And for some reason, because of the highlight reel [8:24] and the obsession with comparison online, [8:26] and we only see people's good days, [8:28] I think that boys think that if they are attractive enough, [8:31] they never, ever have to feel a bad feeling again. [8:34] It's not true.