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Today, Explained

The darkness behind looksmaxxing

18 Feb 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What shocking actions has Clavicular taken for looksmaxxing?

1.364 - 6.33 Noel King

By now, you've definitely heard that Clavicular got brutally frame-mogged by an ASU frat leader.

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6.51 - 7.671 Clavicular

Yo, Clav, two words.

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8.132 - 31.16 Noel King

Frame-mogged. Maybe you heard that he mogged the Dime Square Jester Gooners. You probably know that Clavicular, Little Man Tate, and whitish supremacist Nick Fuentes danced to Heil Hitler in Vendome, and then Clav got fight-mogged in the club during Fashion Week in New York. Or maybe you're lucky and you have no idea what I'm talking about.

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31.461 - 45.63 Noel King

A remarkable new online subculture has young men clockwork oranging, bashing their faces with hammers and snorting crystal meth to drop weight, all in the interest of being the most handsome boy. Coming up on Today Explained, clavicular and the looks maxers.

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60.123 - 75.296 Unknown

I got in the water in the very early morning before the sun had risen and the water was pitch black. I started swimming and I felt the water hollowing out around me and felt like something really big was swimming below.

75.336 - 92.882 Phoebe Judge

I'm Phoebe Judge and this is Love, a show about the surprising things that love can make us do. More than 100 episodes available now on This Is Love. This is Today Explained.

94.224 - 99.613 Charlie Warzel

My name is Charlie Worzel, and I'm a staff writer at The Atlantic and the host of its podcast, Galaxy Brain.

100.073 - 102.377 Noel King

Charlie, who is Clavicular?

103.399 - 116.64 Charlie Warzel

Oh, great question. The question of our age, really. Let's see. Clavicular is a young man. He's in his 20s. What up, Jack?

Chapter 2: Who are the looks maxers and what motivates them?

164.102 - 169.508 Clavicular

Is he dead? I don't know.

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169.528 - 172.952 Noel King

Hopefully. Tell me about the LookSmaxers. What is their deal?

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172.983 - 200.275 Charlie Warzel

The Luxemaxers are complicated because they are in an overlap with lots of other communities online, right? There's the involuntarily celibate community known as incels, right? That have links to violent extremism. But really there's this core feeling in looks maxing that the only thing that matters in all of life is how good you look.

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200.295 - 206.584 Charlie Warzel

That that is tied to your self-worth in every way and that what you should be doing

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206.564 - 235.918 Charlie Warzel

is trying by all means necessary, whether that is breaking bones in your body, whether that is chewing on a rubber ball for hours a day to get your jawline to be straighter, whether that's steroids or drugs or anything to get a leg up, you need to do that because the best thing that you can do is go out in the world and look better than everyone else and document the heck out of it.

236.359 - 243.229 Noel King

Those examples sound extreme, but I suspect you're going to tell me they're not. What do we know about what Clavicula has done to himself?

243.67 - 269.41 Charlie Warzel

Well, we only know what he tells us, right? So, you know, unreliable narrator, perhaps. But he has said on various podcasts, et cetera, that he has smashed his face with a hammer. The theory there is that when your bones break, they grow back stronger. I'm saying that's his theory, not my theory. I'm certainly not endorsing this.

269.39 - 288.023 Clavicular

How does it work? So you're bracing yourself. You don't have to do it. And then you're hitting real hard. And what this is doing is this is creating micro fractures. And according to Wolff's law, the bone is going to grow back stronger. And not only that, but you're also getting a lot of inflammation and swelling. So it makes your cheekbones look a lot bigger.

288.256 - 300.457 Charlie Warzel

And so he has smashed his face, his jawline, in order to strengthen it, to make it look better. He started, according to him, taking testosterone when he was around 14 or 15 years old.

Chapter 3: What extreme methods do looks maxers use to change their appearance?

729.311 - 730.992 Clavicular

Yeah, W's in the chat for that.

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731.174 - 764.238 Charlie Warzel

Fuentes, who is influential enough that he's trying to force the MAGA coalition further towards white nationalism, that he's able to go into a club with these guys and get them to play the Ye song, Heil Hitler. and turn that into this viral moment that then gets the mayor of Miami to have to react to it, to condemn it, to basically apologize on behalf of the city for letting this happen.

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764.939 - 772.15 Charlie Warzel

These guys are extremely effective attention hijackers, and that is important.

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783.638 - 812.379 Noel King

The Atlantic's Charlie Warzel ahead. Charlie comes back to tell us how the looks maxers are taking over the real world. Support for Today Explained comes from Chime. When you're checking your finances, the last thing you want to see is a bank fee. But with Chime, you don't have to let bank fees ruin your day. Chime says Chime is not just another banking app.

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812.419 - 829.511 Noel King

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829.551 - 848.899 Noel King

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848.919 - 853.405 Noel King

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865.22 - 881.223 Unknown

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