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IMPACT x Nightline S04E27 Looksmaxxed H 264
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00:19How's that?
00:21If I walked into a room and I saw my male partner heating himself in the face with a hammer,
00:28absolutely not. Stay right where you are. I know what you are. Looks Maxxer.
00:33It's a term you may have never heard before. Looks Maxxing.
00:37The trend can range from superficial practices like hairstyle and skin health
00:40to serious measures like breaking bones in your face.
00:47Looks Maxxing is an online subculture dedicated to ascending, which means basically just getting hotter.
00:54Mostly very young men, teenage boys, who go to extreme lengths to improve their appearance.
01:01I started taking the steroids and I'd say it changed my life.
01:04Elements of this have become really mainstream.
01:07We're talking about it on the news. They're making fun of it on SNL.
01:10I'm absolutely frame-mogging you into oblivion right now, dirt.
01:15But it's not exactly all positive.
01:19Looks Maxxing emerged out of incel forums.
01:24Guys who feel sexually frustrated.
01:26Those forums were extremely misogynistic, nihilistic, hardcore.
01:30Bone smashing. Steroids.
01:32I think everyone should be on testosterone.
01:34Influencers giving medical advice to teenage boys.
01:39It's a complete and total disaster.
01:42Social media influencer known for looks Maxxing is back in the spotlight.
01:47Clavicular had an apparent overdose here in South Florida.
01:49It really makes you wonder who young dudes are looking up to these days.
01:53Who they're actually lifting up.
01:54And the idea that the line is blurring between self-love and self-hate.
02:16I don't actually understand how people can't see the reality that is.
02:21The better you look, the better you're treated, and the more power you have.
02:25But it was just like obvious to me.
02:29So my name is Dylan Latham.
02:31I am a looks Maxxing slash life Maxxing creator.
02:34I help people improve by giving them tips.
02:37And my main focus is to improve everyone's life.
02:44My day starts around like 2 p.m.
02:48As soon as I get up in the morning, I go to the mirror and I do whatever it takes
02:54to look better.
02:55I use makeup.
02:57I use Vaseline.
02:58I use various oils.
03:00People always say don't care what other people think.
03:02I think the only way to operate is discovering what people think and then capitalizing off of that.
03:12I grew up in Virginia, small town.
03:15I was always different from everyone.
03:17When I was younger, I wasn't too insecure until I was made fun of by family members about the way
03:26that I looked.
03:27And from that, I became very deep-rooted in insecurity.
03:31I was slightly like overweight when I was younger.
03:35So being like fat, whatever.
03:37My hair was really long, so people call me emo for that.
03:40Even though there were jokes, it definitely got to me.
03:43And I took it as, all right, how can I fix this?
03:48The first thing that I did to start improving my appearance was going to the gym.
03:54And then I started derma stamping my face, which is something I went viral for, where I would stamp my
04:00face with needles.
04:01Very important that you keep this needle clean, otherwise you will literally fry your face.
04:06Thirdly was, and this is the most viral thing, was getting a perm.
04:10Here's the final review.
04:12What do y'all think?
04:13This is kind of crazy.
04:14And the perm actually was a huge glow-up.
04:16I looked way better.
04:17But that simple ascension made me viral and almost gave me a career, I would say.
04:25Looksmaxing emerged out of a few forums that were popular in the early 2010s that were incel forums.
04:34Incel meaning involuntarily celibate, as in guys who feel that due to their appearance or due to some aspect of
04:40their life,
04:41they will be sexually frustrated forever.
04:45It's not exactly the same as the looksmaxers, but there's a through line.
04:50There's DNA that has passed through.
04:53And some of those same people have traveled sort of from one circle to the next.
04:59Understanding looksmaxing's rise within the broader economic and political context,
05:06I think requires us to look at a few different things.
05:10One is the nihilism of the young boys who participate in this, who say that they don't have a clear
05:18path to a quote-unquote normal middle-class life.
05:22Gen Z, and especially teenagers, they went through the pandemic, they maybe sort of missed a year of school.
05:29They are not used to having social relationships in the way that older people are.
05:34From the early 2010s to around 2022, 2023, looksmaxing was extremely, extremely secretive.
05:43It was sort of fight club rules, so to speak.
05:46The first rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club.
05:49That changed with the rise of short-form video.
05:54TikTok, Instagram reels, it also produced a certain number of looksmaxing influencers, celebrities.
06:01But by far the most popular or most notorious is Clavicular.
06:07I took one for the team last night and I fucked another girl.
06:10Clavicular is a 20-year-old guy's real name is Braden Peters.
06:14He's from New Jersey and he sort of came to online fame because he was at top of the leaderboard
06:23of looksmaxing.com.
06:25When he was 14 years old, he kind of felt like an outcast and he took to the internet and
06:29found the looksmaxing community.
06:30I spent a lot of time on bodybuilding forums growing up.
06:33I started with 300 milligrams of testosterone and I did that for a while, up until I was 16.
06:39And then I experimented with a couple of orals.
06:42He does live streaming on the app Kik.
06:45He's really blown up and clips of his video streams have proliferated on TikTok and all sorts of other social
06:52media platforms.
06:53Streamers just have crazy names.
06:55You can think of MrBeast, iShowSpeed.
06:58But a name like Clavicular makes you do a double take.
07:01Clavicular comes from the idea of how wide should your clavicle bones be, which is something that most of us
07:06have probably never thought about.
07:07Because I'm trying to optimize every single metric of my life.
07:10I'm not only interested in fitness, right?
07:12I am trying to IQ max.
07:14I'm trying to money max, like all these different things.
07:18Obviously, you know, for the normies watching this, I say max at the end of everything, maximize, just for that
07:25clarification.
07:28Here's some of the key terms to know for looks maxing 101.
07:31Soft maxing and hard maxing would be sort of your two broadest categories.
07:36Soft maxing could be as simple as plucking your eyebrows, trying to lower your body fat percentage, doing your hair
07:44differently.
07:45Hard maxing is what they are referring to for things like actually getting plastic surgery, limb lengthening, bone smashing.
07:53This is how bone smashing got me this.
07:57Which is repeatedly hitting sensitive parts of your face with a hammer to try to grow the underlying bone and
08:04change the look of your face.
08:05It doesn't work, all right?
08:07Bone smashing is a fallacy.
08:10It's fraud.
08:13Modging means that when you're in a group of men, the most looks maxed, the best looking person in the
08:19group will mog everyone else there.
08:22They will have the status.
08:23They will have the attention.
08:24If I am six foot eight and someone's five foot ten, I height mog them.
08:30If someone is less attractive and I'm more attractive, I facially mog them.
08:38Mewing comes back to a dentist named Dr. Mew, and the technique is you hold your tongue in a certain
08:46position in the mouth, creating stress like this in the jaw muscles.
08:52I almost think it's like a flexing of the face.
08:54Let me see.
08:59Was that a mew?
09:02It doesn't work.
09:03So it's just a dumb idea.
09:06It's dumb maxing is what it is.
09:14This is the official Chad rankings website where people literally rank Chad's.
09:19So for me, for example, I'm the number 24th ranked Chad.
09:22A Chad is basically someone who mugs.
09:26Having a square jaw, having a square chin.
09:29People will likely consider you a Chad if you have good ratios.
09:32On the PSL scale, I would say I'm about a four out of eight.
09:35The PSL scale is the preferred rating system for looks maxers to assess their facial attractiveness.
09:43PSL uses a one through eight scale.
09:46Ones will be your supposedly least attractive people.
09:49The area between seven and eight will be people who are almost mythically attractive.
09:56The top PSL mongers people talk about, one would be Sean O'Prye.
10:01He's a model.
10:02Another one would be Matt Bomer.
10:03People love to talk about Jordan Barrett.
10:06I can look at my face and see this picture.
10:07I could have better coloring.
10:09I could be tanner.
10:10My eyes could be lighter.
10:12My neck could be wider.
10:13My cheekbones could be more prominent.
10:15I have a lot of things that I could work on.
10:23I wrote an article about the PSL scale for GQ.
10:26I contacted raters who used the PSL scale to get an actual rating of my own face.
10:32Here's one I have right in front of me.
10:33I sent him my photo.
10:35He responds, I gave it quite a thought, bro.
10:41So I sent them photos of myself and they ran their whole analysis on me.
10:46I gave it quite a thought, bro.
10:48I'd say 4.25.
10:51Low tier normie, basically.
10:53So that means four, right at the dead center of our one through eight scale.
10:58He's basically saying I'm average Joe.
11:01The soft maxing advice was to get lean AF.
11:04Thicken the eyebrows.
11:05Join the gym.
11:06Get that V taper dialed in.
11:08And then you have the hard maxing.
11:10The main flaw is jaw recession.
11:12Bi max double jaw surgery.
11:14Jaw and chin.
11:15Implants, fillers.
11:17And then we get my photos.
11:22This photo he generated shows me with the thicker neck and the wider, stronger jaw.
11:28And how did that make you feel?
11:30I think you'd be lying if you said there wasn't some little part of you that's like,
11:34you hope they give you some amazing score and you're like, wait, really?
11:38I'm so incredibly handsome and I never knew, but I'll take, I'll take middle.
11:42And you have to remember also, this is just some random kid on the internet.
11:46You can't, you can't, you can't really care about it.
11:51Can we get a wave?
11:53Let's go.
11:54I think when you look at the Kardashians and their rise in media, we live in an attention
11:58economy now.
11:59We're the best way to make money and have power is to control people's attention.
12:02Yeah, I know you looking, know you looking at me.
12:04Everybody talking when I step up on the seat.
12:06If your body is your brand, the best way to have a bigger brand is have a better image,
12:11which means you're going to have to looks max yourself.
12:13Everybody wants to look better.
12:14In this video, I'm going to be giving you guys 13 ways to improve the way you look for
12:18completely free.
12:19It's very natural and normal to want to look better.
12:23They're turning to many of the same ways of getting control over themselves and their future
12:27that women have with maybe an eating disorder or bulimia.
12:30I've always said being a woman feels like you're almost pretty.
12:34If you bought one more thing, if you lost this, but if you gain that, you could be pretty.
12:40It's definitely funny that men had to come up with a brand new terminology in order to
12:43justify the fact that they're doing what women have been doing forever.
12:51So I use a lotion-based self-tanner to fill in any gaps.
12:56Having a slight tan on any part of your physique is going to bring out your muscular definition.
13:02So I try to put it anywhere where I want more definition.
13:09So now I have a waterproof mascara.
13:11And first, actually, I use an eyelash curler.
13:15So by curling the eyelash, it's going to go up, concealing that upper eyelid exposure,
13:24alluding to a better eye area.
13:28Apply this under the eyes.
13:31In this zone here.
13:33I don't actually think people see me as one of those extremist elux maxers who is harmful.
13:39Like, people don't really say that I'm similar to clavicular.
13:43People actually say I'm the antithesis of someone like him.
13:47I have more followers than Clav, but he's more culturally relevant by a lot.
13:52What matters is people posting you, people talking about you.
13:56Everything he does is on the extreme, so that's what people want to see.
14:02The algorithm rewards over-the-top behavior and extremes.
14:07He's gone, he's gone.
14:09The more attention they get by acting the most outrageous,
14:13the more views, the more clicks they get,
14:15which will translate into financial reward for them.
14:19Clavicular has said that he has been making about $100,000 a month.
14:24There's a lot of money that can be made simply live streaming
14:27if you can get a lot of eyeballs on your live stream.
14:30There are no holds barred on clavicular streams.
14:33It seems like he does everything that you wouldn't do on camera on camera.
14:38I mean, he's committed sex acts.
14:40He's said racial slurs.
14:41He's even smashed his face, bone smashing.
14:45So my whole regimen is as follows.
14:49For growth, for the gym, I'm taking testosterone every single day
14:53because I'm taking a very short ester of testosterone
14:55to keep my hormonal profile most in line with what it would be as a natural.
15:00I take minoxidil for my hair.
15:02I take dutasteride for my hair.
15:05That's my hair protocol.
15:06I also take Accutane.
15:08I take 7.5 milligrams of Accutane a day.
15:10I use crystal so methamphetamine as a stimulant and to lean max, right?
15:17If you take a lot of these hormone blockers like dutasteride,
15:21which is supposed to be for hair loss,
15:23it's just going to stop your genital development.
15:27When you use these things in an unregulated way,
15:30when you mix them with street drugs,
15:33now you're getting what we call polypharmacy
15:36where he's mixing and matching various drugs
15:39that he's learned about on the Internet.
15:42You're getting uneducated, unlicensed,
15:4520-year-old and younger influencers
15:48giving medical advice to teenage boys.
15:52It's unregulated.
15:54It's dangerous.
15:55And fundamentally, it really just doesn't work.
16:01I heard Claf say this once.
16:02He said that there was a way to get to your goals faster
16:06and achieve the things you want.
16:07Why wouldn't you take that route?
16:09I kind of agree with that in a lot of ways.
16:26When I really wanted to start improving my looks,
16:28it was about a year ago.
16:29I was more just fat and just more insecure about myself.
16:34I just took it upon myself to start working out
16:37and, you know, taking the diet more serious,
16:40taking the gym more serious.
16:41So that's when I started taking the steroids
16:43and I'd say it improved my life for the better.
16:49My name is Zaid.
16:50I'm a senior in high school.
16:52I'm 17 years old.
16:53I live in Dallas, Texas.
16:55A lot of influencers would just come up on my feed,
16:58like Claf,
17:00and it kind of, like, inspired me, I'd say,
17:02to want to improve my looks.
17:04I like Claf a lot just because the way he speaks, you know.
17:07He doesn't really care what other people say.
17:09He's really open.
17:10He doesn't have a filter.
17:11I really like people who are like that.
17:14This is testosterone.
17:16I always used to be afraid of you,
17:18but after, like, the first time,
17:19it's kind of, like, actually easy.
17:21My parents weren't really too happy
17:23when they found out about it,
17:24but I kind of sat them down and had a talk with them.
17:27This is something that is, like, a life decision,
17:31and it's not something you can just really come off of.
17:34It's, like, it's a commitment, you know,
17:36and once you start, there's not really any going back, so.
17:41I'm not concerned about the future.
17:43I'd say too much of anything is bad for you, you know.
17:46Too much alcohol is bad for you.
17:48Even drinking too much water can be bad for you.
17:50I think there's always limits to certain things,
17:53and if you just do it the right way,
17:56you won't really harm yourself, I'd say.
17:59The problem with looks-maxing is it's designed to make kids,
18:03teenagers, young boys look as good as possible.
18:07One of the main things they do is they use steroids,
18:09and so although you might get muscular hypertrophy,
18:13you can get high blood pressure,
18:15an increase in your LDL, a decrease in your HDL,
18:19all of these cholesterol parameters,
18:20so it can have a paradoxical effect
18:23on their health and wellness,
18:24and they're very dangerous.
18:28I think the danger of Clavicular specifically
18:30as this figure in media right now
18:32is that purportedly he's getting all this attention
18:35because he's looks-maxing,
18:36and I think if you are a young man
18:38or a teenage boy following him,
18:40you might think,
18:41oh, okay, if I looks-maxed too,
18:42I'll have the fame he has.
18:43It's sort of a behaviorally-induced body dysmorphia,
18:48meaning when you're trying to look as good as possible,
18:52having as many surgeries as possible,
18:54it's just never enough.
18:55They're pursuing an unobtainable perfection
18:59that doesn't exist.
19:00With enough time and enough procedures,
19:03enough drugs,
19:04you're going to run into a complication.
19:09Rescue 16, trying to respond,
19:1120-year-old male, overdose.
19:12Now a social media influencer known for looks-maxing
19:15is back in the spotlight.
19:17Clavicular had an apparent overdose
19:18here in South Florida.
19:20During a recent stream,
19:21he was slurring his words.
19:24Oh, my God.
19:25I'm a slurring.
19:27He's sitting next to another streamer,
19:29androgenic,
19:30who sits next to him,
19:30and he asks him,
19:31just, how messed up are you?
19:33How fucked up are you?
19:34Dude, I'm shot.
19:35So after the stream cuts,
19:37you see this video of Clab
19:38being carried out by a group of people,
19:40and he looks completely limp.
19:42And the next thing you hear
19:43is he's been hospitalized.
19:45Wow.
19:48It's sort of tragic.
19:51The more that you learn about this kid,
19:53you do feel empathy for him.
19:55He's sad.
19:57Clavicular's OD may be an inflection point,
20:01a tipping point,
20:02in the looks-maxing movement.
20:04Hopefully people realize
20:05mixing and matching these things
20:08is particularly dangerous.
20:10Clav tweeted out that the experience was brutal,
20:13but that next night...
20:15Tonight I'm on nothing.
20:17I don't plan on being on anything
20:19for their foreseeable future.
20:22He was back at the club,
20:23live-streaming.
20:36Yeah, on looks-maxing.
20:37You guys looks-max?
20:38Yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:38Oh, we look-max, hello.
20:40I'm trying, I'm trying.
20:40I'm looking like getting into it right now.
20:42Locked in, bro, bro.
20:43Because before I was looking like a...
20:44I was looking like subhuman.
20:46You're ascending, you're ascending, bro.
20:48Let's go.
20:48W-mogers, W-mogers.
20:49Let's go, let's go.
20:50You too, bro.
20:51Peace, peace, peace.
20:52People DM me all the time
20:53saying that I changed their life,
20:55that I saved their life,
20:56that if they didn't find my content,
20:59they wouldn't know what to do with their life.
21:01Bone smashing, though, it doesn't...
21:02It's a coke.
21:03It's a coke.
21:04It's good for, like, getting a pump,
21:05but other than that, it's pride.
21:07Most people, 99% of them,
21:09I would say,
21:10fit on the side of soft-maxing.
21:13They will never get surgery,
21:16use pharmacology,
21:18inject steroids or anything like that.
21:22One thing people are really obsessed with recently
21:24is the use of height boosters.
21:26Height boosters are just, like,
21:27inserts you put in your shoes.
21:29That's crazy.
21:30But, like, you'll get found out, right?
21:31Like, the second you take those shoes off.
21:33Yeah, so,
21:34when you take the shoes off,
21:35you just got a vantage point max.
21:37So, like, around your apartment,
21:39if you have a girl or anything,
21:40you just throw down some stuff
21:42to, like, stand on that vantage point
21:44as you take off your shoes.
21:45And then, by the time you're, like,
21:47sitting down or, like,
21:49you're horizontal, you know,
21:50it doesn't matter anymore.
21:53I mean, these men are all getting the idea
21:55of what women want,
21:56not from in-real-life experiences,
21:57but from other men
21:59who don't know what women want.
22:01I've never, ever thought about a man
22:04defending me against an intruder
22:06or fighting a lion
22:08or defending my honor in the Coliseum.
22:11I think about someone
22:13who I'm going to grieve with,
22:14I'm going to share my problems with,
22:17that I need support with.
22:20Well, I think the irony of looks-maxing
22:22is that, sure,
22:23the idea is to help you get women,
22:24but it seems like
22:25once you get into the community,
22:26that's so unimportant, ultimately.
22:29The idea that you would be home alone
22:31spending hours and hours a day
22:33getting hot so that a man
22:34you've never met online
22:35in a basement could be like,
22:36yeah, you're a nine.
22:41Thinking of looks-maxing
22:43as a way to get girls
22:45is a very outside-in way
22:47of looking at it.
22:48The first thought, of course,
22:50is, oh, they want to have better luck
22:52with girls at school,
22:53but that's often not the motivation.
22:55It's actually just life treatment.
22:57I don't really think it's misogynistic
22:59to improve your looks,
23:02but even if it were for the sake of women,
23:05it's just, it's literally just not.
23:07It's for the sake of
23:08improving your overall life.
23:13People show me way more respect now,
23:15you know.
23:16When you have, like, a status,
23:18I'd say people just talk to you differently.
23:21They kind of, like,
23:22more look up to you in a way.
23:25I think this mainstream popularity
23:28or attention on looks-maxing
23:30might be the worst thing
23:31that ever happened to looks-maxing
23:34in terms of its survival.
23:35If your parents know
23:37what looks-maxing is,
23:38it's not a very appealing way
23:40for you to express yourself.
23:42There is always a new subculture
23:45for teenage boys
23:47that the adult world finds frightening.
23:50It could be punks, goths, emos.
23:54There is always some new moral panic
23:56that seems to be affecting lonely young men,
24:01and my theory is that looks-maxing
24:04is just the latest
24:05in a long chain of similar things.
24:07Beauty will not keep you safe from life.
24:10And for some reason,
24:12because of the highlight reel
24:14and the obsession with comparison online,
24:16and we only see people's good days,
24:18I think that boys think
24:20that if they are attractive enough,
24:21they never, ever have to feel
24:23a bad feeling again.
24:24It's not true.
24:52It's not true.
25:05It's not true.
25:06It's not true.
25:06It's not true.
25:07It's not true.
25:07It's not true.
25:07It's not true.
25:08It's not true.
25:08It's not true.
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