How Clavicular and his 'looksmaxxing' subculture are like toxic gays without the sex

“The whole thing about the Clavicular, ‘looksmaxxing,’ macho, testosterone, pretty boy Olympics competition is that it is literally just toxic muscle gay circuit party culture escaping containment and being transmitted to straight people,” Judah said in his video. “That’s literally all it is. Like you want to talk about ‘frame-mogging,' you mean a bunch of dudes that spend 10 to 20 hours a week in the gym comparing physiques and making each other feel insecure? Yeah, that’s the dance floor at a circuit party.”

But how does the “looksmaxxing” subculture that’s intrinsically tied to “incels,” or self-described “involuntary celibates,” and their stated desire to attract women, connect to toxic muscle gays and gay circuit party culture?

What is ‘looksmaxxing’?

“Looksmaxxing” is a new term used by a subsection of chronically online young men to describe the obsessive pursuit of physical attractiveness — using everything from skin care to plastic surgery and even workouts that include “dick-ups,” where you place weights on your penis to maximize girth.

“Looksmaxxing is an approach to enhancing one’s physical appearance through a combination of grooming, fitness, diet, and, increasingly, cosmetic procedures,” explained Christian Bumpous, a licensed psychotherapist and the founder of Therapie, who has spent the last 12 years working with the LGBTQ+ community. “The concept evolved from an online space where men rate each other based on physical attractiveness and share ways to improve their ratings.”

Joel Blackstock, a clinical social worker and the Clinical Director of Taproot Therapy Collective, calls “looksmaxxing” an “obsessive process of trying to maximize physical attractiveness,” and he said the people within the subculture can be broken down into two camps.

“Softmaxxing is the heavy grooming, skincare, fitness, and things like ‘mewing’ to change jaw posture,” he explained. “Hardmaxxing crosses into permanent or dangerous medical interventions, like steroids, unregulated fillers, or even ‘bone smashing’ where guys intentionally micro-fracture their facial bones hoping they heal back more rugged.”

Tara Jones, an LGBTQ+ sex educator who recently gave a talk on “looksmaxxing” and the “manosphere” at the National Sex Education Conference, said that the scary thing is that many young men’s entry point in “looksmaxxing” is relatable.

“With ‘looksmaxxing,’ I think of how common it is for adolescent boys to feel insecure about their appearance,” she said. “They may be beginning to experience rejection with no means of coping. They may be beginning to compare themselves to one another, as well as the unattainable expectations of masculinity. When they go online to seek community or ask for advice, they’re instead told that the solution lies in smashing the bones in your face and using meth.”

How is ‘looksmaxxing’ connected to incel culture?

Both the ‘looksmaxxing” and incel subcultures link one's ability to access love, sex, social standing, and even money to physical appearance, and both started in small corners of the internet before gaining mainstream recognition.

“They come from the same fundamental beliefs and largely the same pain points, but in some ways they’re two ends of a spectrum,” Jones said. “If you’re an insecure young man absorbing these ideas about ‘nice guys finishing last’ and ‘the sexual marketplace,’ you might either accept and claim your fate as someone who will remain celibate, or go out of your way to control your fate by manipulating your appearance so you can manipulate women.”

According to Blackstock, both incel and “looksmaxing” tells men that their “sexual market value” is the only thing that matters in life, the only difference is that looksmaxxers fight back against this by going to extremes to change their appearance, while incels turn that perceived rejection into hate towards women, but both come from the same basic place and use the same terms.

“Almost all the terminology — like mogging, ascending, and Chads — came directly out of involuntary celibate forums,” Blackstock said. “TikTok might have softened the aesthetic, but the foundation is pure Blackpill incel ideology. It relies on the nihilistic idea that women are just a monolithic hive-mind that only responds to hyper-masculine traits. It basically rebrands incel despair into a self-help project, making it a highly effective radicalization pipeline.”

Are they really trying to attract women or is it all about other men?

The irony is that looksmaxxers claim they are doing all of this in an attempt to attract women, but what they seem to care most about is impressing other men, which, as Judah stated in his TikTok video, bears a striking resemblance to gay men peacocking for each other at the gym or at clubs. But looksmaxxers have also dehumanized women to the point that their opinions become meaningless, and all these men care about is the opinions of other men.

“The only respectable humans to you are other men, but the masculine status you’re working towards discourages intimacy with them,” Jones explained. “You have no option but to spend your life trying to impress them, trying to ‘win’ masculinity by proving you’re the best among them.”

This means that, instead of the stated objective of attracting women, the men who subscribe to this belief system are really evaluating each other because the opinions of other men hold more weight in their eyes.

“Regardless of whether or not there is any sexual element to these behaviors, the need to be recognized and validated by other men is a fundamental human need,” Bumpous said. “Looksmaxxing offers these men an outlet that appears socially acceptable since it’s framed around female attraction.”

How ‘looksmaxxing’ ties in with toxic gay gym culture and circuit parties

Going to extreme lengths to increase attractiveness — as determined by other men — may be a shared experience between these two groups, but according to Judah, there is one major difference that he fears will eventually lead to violence.

“The peacocking can reach its zenith and then be sublimated sexually because we’re trying to have sex with each other, but these dudes are not interested in having sex with each other — or at least that’s the claim — so there’s nothing constraining the animosity created by the ‘who’s the hottest’ hierarchy,” he said. “It’s not held in check by being attracted to one another, and it can’t be sublimated sexually, so there’s nowhere for it to go. It just continues to grow in greater and greater conflict, and if it can’t be sublimated sexually, then the most likely pathway for it to be sublimated is violence. I’m just telling you right now, this is not going to be pretty.”

The similarities are startling, even though for gay men, the competition at the gym or circuit parties is largely about being sexually desirable within a community that also shares that desire. But looksmaxxers are just egging each other on to go to greater and greater (and often extremely toxic and dangerous) lengths to achieve desirability without the end goal of sleeping with each other.

“The parallels are huge because both subcultures are ultimately using the physical body as a shield against shame,” Blackstock said. “Both groups perform this exaggerated, almost drag-like version of masculinity with extreme muscle mass and rigid grooming. Using meth to stay shredded or awake at circuit parties is the exact same behavioral mechanism as looksmaxxers taking unregulated research chemicals. In both worlds, the body becomes currency to buy status within the tribe. It’s all about surviving an intensely judgmental, data-driven gaze.”

This is an opinion shared by Jones, who also believes that while gay men and looksmaxxers shared a desire to be aesthetically appreciated by other men, the end result of this competition is very different.

“We’ve already seen examples of this violence, like the show Adolescence, which draws from real knife violence in the U.K. linked to manosphere radicalization,” she said. “Even Elliot Rodger, who brought the term ‘incel’ into the mainstream lexicon, did so through mass acts of violence targeting women he felt had unjustly rejected him.”

Sources cited:

Christian Bumpous, a licensed psychotherapist and the founder of Therapie.

Tara Jones, an LGBTQ+ sex educator.