Yes, Do you need it? Sometimes. Sometimes no. Yeah, they like listening. Yeah, sometimes I like to hear it. They'll. Read. They'll read. The stream, you know? Yeah, yeah, I've gotten piss mugged before, you know, I wrote a thread about it. Real ones, no. Really. Yeah, wow, like when someone pisses next to you and they have like a bigger stream. Oh, I'm sure. It's pretty brutal. Welcome back to posting through it. I'm Jared. And I'm Mike.
Patreon shout out off the top. We've got 1 today in the platinum tier. Please read Worm by wild Bo. Is the username OK? I guess it's a book, I don't know. Yeah, let's do it and quick plug my article. Who the fuck are these men? Which sounds like a posting through it title, which I didn't. I didn't make the title, actually. Jared this, the editor does that. And Mother Jones this.
This spring issue of Mother Jones is out, and there's a digital copy out now, and you can learn all about all the radical right activity that has been brewing in Idaho since Trump's resurgence. There will be a link to that in the description. The other link in the description from us is this week's listener Submitted Music. This is from Nathaniel S who listens to posting through it, but it's also in a band called Loon, the band from their band
camp. They describe themselves as plain quote twanged up rock'n'roll that is inspired by punk rock and Hard Knocks. So the transition music you'll hear today is their track called Indiana. Yeah, and the other thing to plug is in on April 11th in Washington, DC at Politics and Prose. You can we'll, we'll put a link to this in the description too, right, Jared? Oh yeah. I am doing a book event for Strange people on the Hill, my first book, which comes out on April 7th.
And I believe if you go to Head Chat's website, you can still get a discount of 20% with this with the code Strange 20. And we are, we are thinking about possibly doing some posting through it live stuff or something, some event in connection with that. So if you are anywhere near the Washington, DC area, you can potentially start thinking about how you can be there that Saturday and get to know us. We'll be books maxing. Oh no. Yeah. Oh shit. Well, you already know what this about.
Probably also probably when you clicked on the on the description. Jared has already. He hasn't done it yet but has created some beautiful image that lets you know this is about looks maxing. Yeah, today we're going to, somewhat reluctantly, I'm being honest, talk about looks, Maxing. We thought we might cover something else this week, but I kind of feel like our hands have been forced, you know?
Mainstream media outlets are taking a sudden interest in one Looks Maxine influencer in particular. His name is Brayden Peters, but he's better known by his online handle Clavicular. Lots of people are adopting the Looks, Maxine rhetoric, slang, lingo, whatever you want to call it, sometimes ironically and sometimes in a way where it's kind of hard to tell. Most of the people who are writing and analyzing this looks maxing trend right now are men,
full stop. Our guest today, Annie Kelly, is a researcher of online trends related to misogyny, conspiracy theories of far right. And she is not a man and we really wanted her perspective for that reason. Clavicular is essentially the Michael Jordan of looks Maxing. He represents pockets of men online on places like TikTok and Instagram, as well as these specialized forums that are hyper obsessed with their physical appearance,
particularly their their face. And also we yeah, their body too, like weight lifting, potentially with steroids, etcetera. Yeah, they obsessed. So for the geometry of their physiques in the minutiae of their bodies, you know, thinking they can sum it down into mathematic formulas to derive an idealized beauty standard. How symmetrical is your face? How wide are your shoulders compared to your waist? How strong is your jawline? There's a softer side to these discussions, too, you know,
mental. In these spaces, we'll talk about skin care, diets, their workouts, but there's also a darker and harder side where men, like you said, Mike, are encouraging people to use steroids, adopt disordered eating habits, seek out surgical procedures. Some of them even claim to hit themselves in the face with hammers, AKA bone smashing, in the hopes that their jaws will grow back stronger and fuller. You know if they are doing that.
The audience for this content by all appearances, seems to be male, of course, but they're also alarmingly young and white, which is why critics associated with eugenics. Some of the content pushed around in these specific in these spaces specifically targets teenage boys as they're developing through puberty. Not good. By the way, many of the influencers in this movement are younger too. Clavicular is just 20 years old. He's a, he's a, he's a mere pup. So what about Clavicular?
He's having a moment right now, but it's still debatable how big his reaches beyond this really loud wall of traditional and social media hype. And, you know, we kind of wonder how long this will, how long this can last. Earlier this month, The New York Times published a profile that called him the Quote UN Quote First star born out of the looks Maxine community online. Mike really hated this article.
You want to explain why? Jared, you know, I don't even think I mentioned this to you before, but actually it wasn't just me. You hated it. I taught this because I'm, because I, I teach journalism students and, and my, my classes happens to be young women, like they're like all 1819 and I, they're doing their next assignment is a profile. So I was like, well, let's look at all kinds of profiles and have them look at this.
I was, I was surprised to find that they all had a very similar reaction to me, which is why is this in the New York Times? Why is what they they wanted to know? And they're and they're of Clavicular's age. So they're just like, I don't understand why this is in the New York Times. And I don't think this was very clearly established in the story. Joe Bernstein wrote it and Joe has wrote some very impactful stories on the far right, one of which is about Sam Hyde.
The comedian was associated with the neo Nazi movement and other things. And you know, he became a target of a lot of bullying online bullying from from far right extremists and things like that. And you know, I will tell you he's not going to be getting very much bullying from this because maybe he is, I don't know, to be clear.
But like, I don't think he would get it the same way he did for the stories that he wrote back in the day early on and BuzzFeed, because it doesn't really throw a punch at all. And that is what concerns me. The tone is written to me like it was it's like 1994 and you're you're profiling Trend Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. This is the kind of thing that takes Clavicular from being a sort of freak fringe Internet celebrity into kind of mega stardom with glossy photos and
so forth. The other thing it doesn't do Jared for me is he doesn't, he doesn't dig up any dirt on Clavicular. Clavicular presumably had no anxiety about this coming out. He doesn't. He doesn't talk to like anybody really from his high school, or at least they're not profiled who could tell, like what he was like before he became clavicular and stuff like that. We don't hear about his parents who basically fought through, who allegedly gave up on trying to stop him from this.
What did they think of this? Because if it were my son, I would be pretty disgusted. So yeah, this one really bothered me because I don't think clavicular warrants this kind of treatment. But this particular show is about criticism. Ours, you know, we are, we are critical as well as reporting. And I think it's important to look with a critical eye on why everyone is talking about this, not only on social media but also in apparently in
traditional media as well. We called out the New York Times story, but it's not alone. Clavicular has also been featured by GQ. He's appeared on Pierce Morgan's program, The Adam Friedland Show recently, and others. He's reportedly making more than $100,000 a month. That's $1.2 million a year, folks.
A little quick math there. Live streaming on a platform called Kik. He walked in New York Fashion Week and he's steadily earning fans among right wing social media personalities like Brett Cooper. She flew to New York City to watch him in that Fashion Week show. That's kind of an insane life for a 20 year old to lead. I don't know what you were doing at 20. I was. I was probably stoned and seeing movies at the Angelica and Film Forum like I was at NYU, so that's what I remember.
Yeah, people who know me in real life listen to this show. I'm not going to talk about what I was up to when I was 20. If you've been in line the last month or two, you've you've seen too much of this, this fucking content on your face and everybody is talking in the looks, maxing slang and it's it's completely outlandish and over the top and people are doing it for a cheap laugh. I don't know, I'm not particularly crazy about the trend. Not I'm not. I'm not looks maxing, but just
ironic looks maxing posting. I don't like taking their their culture and making it our costume, whatever you would say. Yeah. It's loaded with slang terms and weird personalities that some of which we'll probably get into with Annie. Yeah, You know, I think the point we want to make on this episode is that this hyper curated facade, and I mean that in like a extremely literal sense, we're talking about looks maxing, right? This this pursuit of aesthetic perfection in your bodily
appearance is outlandish. It's cartoonish. It's attention grabbing, you know, just by how absurd it is. But beneath the surface is a political and social movement that's actually quite sinister. Joining the show, we have Annie Kelly, an award-winning journalist and researcher who covers digital culture related to topics like anti feminism, conspiracy theories and the far right.
She is the UK correspondent for the QAA podcast, so if we have crossover listeners, you may have heard her there. And he has a new podcast with QAA that series worth checking out called Truly Traply Deeply. We're excited to have her on today to talk about Look Maxing. Looks Maxing. It's an honor to be invited. Thank you so much for having me.
What prompted this episode is all of this media interest in looks Maxine, specifically Clavicular, which is like the stand out influencer of this space. But this has been around for years and years, right? The New York Times did a big glossy profile of Clavicular. But you know, here's earlier they had done a piece about looks Maxine as an online movement. So I you know, where does this come from? How deep is that history? Yeah.
I mean, I have been finding a lot of the coverage actually of clavicular a little bit shallow. And maybe this is unfair because maybe I'm expecting kind of a genealogy of manosphere subcultures go stretching back further than a journalist writing a 1500 word piece can really justify.
Having said that, I think it's very important to understand the ideology because looks maxing and the looks maxing subculture is not just trying to make yourself look good to attract women and to understand that, I think we do need to go back to where it starts, which is with pickup artists in early noughties online culture. These were some of the earliest Internet boards essentially kind of dedicated to swapping tips and strategies for chatting up women.
A little bit of lore about myself was I basically stumbled across this stuff when I was in my early teens because I wanted to know what dating would be like. So I have first hand experience of these spaces and I don't want to sound like I'm justifying them because obviously they were they were cesspools of misogyny back then. But I think if you go back compared to what the manosphere looks like now, it was very mild in comparison.
A site that was born out of this space though, that had a grievance with the pickup artist sphere was called Pickup Artist Hate. And this was essentially a site for users who had tried the pickup artist techniques and had found that they were lacking in some way, that they they didn't work, they weren't suddenly becoming irresistible to women overnight. You mean nagging is there? Is it? Do you? Mean nagging doesn't work with girls when you walk up.
To a girl and say in a bar you. Mean a woman in a bar and you're like you're like your nose is a little funny you mean she's surprisingly she doesn't like to go home with you that's. So weird. I wouldn't. That's not that's not intuitive at all. Who would? I guess approaching romance like a chess game that you have a cheat code for would not pan
out. Yeah. I mean, I don't think the cruel fact of a lot of pick up artist tricks is many of them will work if you are already a fairly charismatic person who's nice to hang around with. Do you know, many of them will kind of are sort of social strategies that, you know, if you have a good or even decent kind of social sense. And yeah, you know, sometimes women do like it when you kind of playfully make fun of them. Maybe you don't mean bad it, but, you know, stuff like that,
things like that. But you have to have a sense already, I think of where. But the line is a good set, a good sense of social intuition. And unsurprisingly, there's actually quite a large section of people who are looking up this stuff who do not have that and therefore find that this stuff is actually just making them blunder and embarrass
themselves. And Pick Up Artist Tape was a site that was made for people who had found that, but it didn't really, its focus of Aya wasn't really pick up artists as such, despite the name being called Pick Up Artist Tape. It was women because they hadn't worked the way that the pick up artists had told them they would.
And so an ideology developed out of this forum which said that it was actually there was actually nothing that you could do as a person to become more attractive to women because essentially your destiny was written in stone based on what you looked like. And this was one of the early kind of in cell forums. As a result, people there started identifying as involuntarily celibate and very much viewed this as something that could not be changed.
In fact, infamously, Elliot Rodger, the mass shooter who came out of this forum, was the reason that it was actually shut down because he was a known poster there. And then it became something called slut hate, which, yeah, speaks for itself. And I think from then on, it branched out into something called Lux ISM, which again, was this kind of ideology that everything essentially is determined by how good, how good looking you are, what you look
like. And so this is where then the subculture of looks maxing comes from, which essentially kind of comes to this ideology, which says that, yeah, it's nothing to do with how nice you are. It's nothing to do with how funny you are. Your success, not just with women, but in life in general, will be determined by what you look like. It therefore is imperative for you to go to extreme measures to be as good looking as possible.
But I think we've got to remember this undercurrent of misogyny that comes out of it because I think sometimes when people hear about lux maxing or writes about lux maxing, they still very much have the attitude that these are guys who want to be good, looking to attract women.
I actually think it's better. And kind of you will find the subculture much less confusing if you think of it as a subculture that's about becoming better, looking to reject women, to humiliate women and to dominate women. Can you explain that? More, I think it's probably. Plausible that the reason a lot of young guys will find themselves in this space in the 1st place is because they want to become better looking. Because they are aware and we should be. We can be honest.
Like it is true that the better looking you are, the more attractive you will be to women, to men, to whoever, whoever you want to attract. You know, there's a kind of like underlying logic to it, even if they obviously take it to extremes. But because this subculture is born out of in cell subculture, it also has a great deal of resentment towards women for having to do this in the 1st
place. You know, the in cell subculture kind of doesn't really view women wanting women desiring attractive men, straight women desiring attractive men. I should say that a lot of this is just kind of completely heteronormative. So I apologize if I'm talking in a kind of heteronormative way as I describe it. They don't really view that as a as a rational impulse or an understandable one. It's very much viewed as a insult and as one of the reasons that women are essentially
inferior to men. So there is kind of a great deal of resentment built up in this ideology around women's attraction to men. And even if you essentially are the stereotypical teenager who wants to who wants to get chicks and gets kind of drawn into this as Clavicular and his biography seems to suggest that he was, I don't think it seems that you likely that you will stay that way. If you become very ingrained in the subculture, It becomes much more about what they call ascending.
You're trying to look as good as possible to press other men to attract women. But also I think you know, to you want to attract them not because you want to like date them or because you actually enjoy being around them. It's because of the level of status that that will give you
that attraction will give you. Having the having actually watched a few clavicular streams, it seems something that a lot of journalists seem to be missing is that these dates and interactions that he has with women that are live streamed, he largely insults them. You know, they ask him for a rating and he says to, you know, beautiful young girl, he's my club. Your mid face is too wide and your I don't know, your nasolabial area is recessed and
all of this kind of stuff. And I think there's a real savage pleasure and his audience, it looks maxing audience that are are living vicariously through that and presumably. Some of them haven't hammered their faces like he has or whatever to try to get whatever look he has not yet. But they may just enjoy seeing, you know, in the same way I like to watch Juan Soto of the New York Mets, like hit a home run. I can't do it.
They can watch this guy who's like, you know, there there's he's on the battlefield of dating. They can watch their favorite dater go and insult these women and show off how he is. I want to ask you a question that I had written a component that I don't, I did not, I have not seen addressed in any of the profiles about it or anything about it, which is this idea that, you know, looks or a
science. And that is what women respond to. And I'm bisexual, but, you know, so I have a little bit of a, you know, more of a thing, you know, but women in my in my, in my experience, much more than men do not necessarily go for, oh, the face is symmetrical or this. And I'll give you one example of that, you know, that has been on my mind recently. The French singer Serge Gainsbour, right, who's like kind of funny looking, but literally could walk in anywhere in France in like 1971.
And like, you know, women would be just all over him because of his tremendous charisma, his humor, his ability, his songwriting ability, his his captivating stage presence. And it's like I, I, to me, it feels it's so foreign to actual, you know, sex pairings between men and women. It just doesn't seem like at all how it works. You know, I don't know if you could weigh in on that.
Yeah. Yeah, well, I I saw quite a fascinating little bit of dialogue between Quavicular and the comedian talk show host Adam Friedland. Adam Friedland essentially raised this point to him. Do you know, he said, I don't get it. I I see, you know, I see beautiful women with not that
attractive men all the time. And I think I had a couple of answers for this, which are both standard in the manosphere and also kind of contradict each other, which is to be expected, I think from ideology, which kind of just revolves around resentment towards women and then kind of picks your answers for that. So he said, well, yeah, you know, it's not necessarily looks, looks at just the just one very important part of the puzzle.
But if you have enough money, if you have enough resources, then sure, you'll, you'll be beautiful women will will still throw themselves at you. It's just harder to do that than it is to become beautiful. But then he also had a point where he said, which I found really fascinating because I think this comes back to the really deep ideological nature of Luke's maxing, which a lot of people miss, where he said, Oh, well, actually those women aren't that beautiful.
That if you, if you actually assess them according to this objective scale that we've developed on our forums, you would see actually, you know, that they're probably looks matched with the guy that they're dating. But we just think that they're beautiful because because we're attracted to them, Which I, I think it's a really hard thing to get your head around if you haven't spent a lot of time on these forums. Because we think, well, I'm
attracted to them. They're probably good looking as a result. But because they have this mathematical scale by which they are supposedly can rate any any human being, you know, This is why he ends up, I think, saying that Sidney Sweeney, for instance, the actress is actually only a three but men meant because they're so attracted to her because of her body, they don't notice this so.
I have a question for you. I was just curious your take this idea of that there is this attainable mathematical perfection that a male can achieve in his appearance right? I mean, this archetype is muscular to a degree. It had, you know, they talk about the rate, how far apart are your mouth and your eyes? How wide is your face? How strong is your jawline? And how does that compare to your shoulders and that sort of thing. Underneath all of that, that image is also white, right?
In nearly every context. In fact, there's been people of color in this community that have been chased off in the past and attacked saying, well, you can never achieve this because you're you're not a white person. Do you? Think it would be fair to also, when we're talking about the ideology undergirding this online movement, to also think about it in the terms of it being eugenicist? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it's very explicitly eugenicist.
Lots and lots of in cell writing will often kind of talk about the, yeah, I think in quite sort of fatalistic terms. I mean, this is this is what they call black Pilling, right? And we can talk a little bit maybe about later about the in cell influence on digital language, which I've always found fascinating. The way so much Internet slang actually just dates to back to in cell forums.
But yeah, the the kind of the black pill, essentially that it would be better if you'd never been born, if you were born below a certain level of attractiveness, which quite explicitly correlates to race, as you're right to point out. Jared, I mean, one thing I hesitate to call insole subculture what supremacist is because it is actually very, very diverse. A lot of insole users aren't
white. And I think this creates a kind of interesting dialectic on insole forums as a result, in which users will often be bemoaning the fact that they live in a society where there is a white beauty standard which they, as you point out, will never, never live up to, while at the same time kind of also buying into that white beauty
standard as an objective scale. So, yeah, all I can say is, yeah, I think it's an interesting contradiction that exists in in cell subculture and largely in the manosphere in general, which has diversified a lot over the last 10 years. So we see a lot. Of different women on these streams, I got to say like some of it really reminds me of pro wrestling. Like it does not seem real. Right. And I feel like there's just. Like, OK, there's a lot of things going on here.
I I will cop to finding that guy androgynic, whatever that gigantic looks maxer like. I do find the, the, the, the videos, the clips that people share of him, like just going out hunting the ASU frat leader or whatever it was for people who don't know this, it was an I mean, I, I can't even explain it because I'll I'll get it wrong and someone will. It's so stupid. Don't even don't even if you haven't heard it, don't worry about it.
But like there's this gigantic looks Maxer who is like 6 foot 5. And I want to point out something very quickly about that guy does not seem attractive. There is nothing soft about him. He's like a hunter. It's he looks like a Terminator or something, right, which is not not usually something that you want to like go to bed with. And he's just like, you know, walking around it. It looks like pro wrestling to me. Like you're like, oh, I like androgynic. He's like 6 foot 5 and like I
like clavicular. He's like the slightly, you know, I don't know, Twinkie, like pretty guy who goes after her like these these girls. And then the ASU flat, flat leader whose body looks really strange to me, by the way, like just too much muscle. Whatever's going on there with steroids or whatever. I don't know what it is, OK, whatever, but it looks like pro wrestling where you bring out a bunch of different guys and they fight, but without the wrestling. Like they're just sort of like
they're kind of just stand next. To each other, yeah. They try and attempt to frame mug each other, yes. And then there are these women that kind of appear on these streams. And to me, I have like an ongoing debate in my head about how much they could even really want these guys. And I don't want to be in denial and be like, well, he is A now unfortunately like becoming a sort of B list celebrity called vicular. So that may be attractive to people.
And according to this, he makes like a like $1,000,000 a year in streaming already. And he's 20. So that may be attractive to people. But I I can't help but think these women want to access the stream like wannabe streamers themselves or want to be seen on a stream or become celebrities and that's why they're there. And there's this clip of this, you know, recent one of a guy who he claims, you know, that that that he's been dating this
girl for a year. And O Clavicular, please give me my girl back and it to me it sounds fake. Jared, do you have the clip of that? Can we play it? It's Valentine's Day, bro. You my girl. You're a good guy. I know you're a good guy. Valentine's Day, The kindness of your heart. You're a good guy. I know you're a good guy, brother. 18 minutes ago Valentine's Day ended, so you're going to have to fuck off.
All I do is win, win, win. Sounds like the worst time anyone's ever had to be. I know I can't. Believe they're still playing that song in clubs. That was weakest song they were playing when I was going out, hitting the club on. Valentine's Day, Worst clubs ever. Get down with. DJ Khaled I'm. Sure, I'm sure would spike his quarters all levels if he went to the kind of club that I
prefer. But, you know, they, I guess my question, my question is, is any like, well, maybe some of it's real, but I mean, is it fair to say that some of this is fake? Because that doesn't that that whole interaction seemed, it just doesn't seem like people, the way humans interact. Yeah, I, I. I have to agree. I mean, I, I, I don't have any insight and knowledge on that clip, but I also saw it and thought, yeah, that's not real.
And it's very common for these, I think they're called IRL streamers on Kik, these people who stream themselves for like 16 hours a day, just going around their day, going about their day to, to set things up to have an entourage A-Team who will essentially kind of, you know, these people won't, will be, won't necessarily be like paid actors or anything kind of really super formal. But there'll be people there in the club and they say, hey, do you want to act out this scene
for us? You know, we've got so and so many subscribers, things like that to kind of, you know, a bit of a bit of play acting, a little bit of drama. My guess is that's probably what was happening there. But I think it's, it's worth pointing out because I think this is a, an interesting development in the manosphere in general, which is when I did my PhD about the manosphere and when I was writing about it, it was largely text based.
And it was also not a super comfortable place for women to be involved. There were always, you know, women involved in the manosphere, female figures, but it was, it was hard. Do you know, it was hard to have that level of scrutiny in your, in your personal life, that kind of level of hostility towards women in your fan base and to scrape by unscathed? And there's a great many women who tried and kind of eventually ended up bowing out.
One thing that I have found interesting with the rise of platforms like like Twitch and Kik, but also things like Only Fans, is that there has become a much more monetary incentive to be a woman involved in the manosphere. And you can actually now monetize the humiliation in a way that the women I was writing about never really could.
I'll give an example from a different sphere, but a podcast like Fresh and Fit or the Whatever podcast have created this model, which I'm still a little bit astonished by and how successful it is, where they will have usually one or two male hosts and then they will get on weekly a new set of women. Some are only fans models, some are Instagram influencers, some are aspiring trick Twitch
streamers and stuff like that. And for hours, literally hours, they will sit around and dissect their personal lives. They'll call them sluts. They'll, you know, laugh at them, they'll mock them, they'll degrade them. They'll encourage their audience to send in donations so they can, you know, do text to speech and read out things, calling
them hoes and things like that. But it obviously benefits these women to sort of sit and kind of just, you know, take it and kind of act, act a little bit offended and things like that. But they're laughing all the way to the bank because, you know, that's at the end of the day, their subscribers will go up.
And so there's a kind of interesting dynamic here, I think going on, which is that it's actually the manosphere has become more profitable all round, but it's actually become more profitable to become one of the manospheres villains for a woman. And I think probably with at least some of these women who are going up to Clovic here and saying, oh, rape me, rape me. I think I'm a 10.
And then he kind of gives her a dressing down and says, so actually, you know, according to the objective scale, you're barely worth my attention. My guess is there is also an element of what's the wrestling term, kayfabe. Kayfabe. Completely slit my mind going on here where that women actually didn't really, really want to hit on Clovic that will have him rape her or something like that.
But she's aware that this will become a clippable moment, that there's actually nothing his audience and indeed social media in general, wants to see more than him dressing down a pretty young woman. There are no. 10s, I think, yeah, there. Are no 10s he's like he he. It's an impossible standard, I think. Remember when Trump used to? Say the wall, he'd be like the wall just got 10 feet higher, he used to say back when he. Back when he used to pretend. That there was he was going to
build a wall. He'd be like, the wall just got 20 feet higher or whatever. It's like 10. You know, it's, you know, we're talking about some sort of weird ethereal being that doesn't exist and, like, glows in the dark, right? It's not even a real person because he's he's looking at Audrey Hepburn or whatever, and he's like, she's a six. Like, yeah. Yeah, I think obviously it's constantly getting updated the the scale with new, new celebrities.
But I think last thing I saw they were saying that Timothy Chalamet was a four, which which feels a little bit harsh, you know. But yeah, you know, I so I think there's, there's an incentive essentially, if you're a woman kind of trying to trying to launch your career to get your face out there, even if it is on one of these interminable,
interminable streams. Because I have to say one thing I was really struck by when I first started watching these clips and then then the streams, and maybe I shouldn't have been at all. Looking back on Pravicula's life story, it's just how awkward and bad talking to people he is. He's just really, really bad at it. He's just a dope. Yeah.
I mean, it's an element of, it feels a bit like, like a Victorian morality story, you know, about the dangers of, of focusing on vanity without cultivating any other virtues.
You know, I feel there's something kind of like wildy into it, watching him kind of stumble through conversations with young women where he's just kind of just referencing memes and kind of just sort of, you know, saying just the kind of same sort of like Gen. Gen. Z sort of slang, just sort of stump string together a sentence. It sort of feels a bit like, I
don't know. Again, I don't want to sound like I'm really nostalgic for the the good old days of pickup artistry, but I do sort of look back to, you know, the early naughties pickup artist scene. And I do think, well, even if it didn't really work for a lot of people, it was to a certain extent trying to teach men to be fun, to be around, to be do you know, to to be good company in a sense, Yeah.
I mean. It's like when you give, you know, people a recipe and you get a good cook and they make a fantastic meal and then you give it to somebody who can't cook or, or, or is really not well practiced and it tastes like crap. It, you know, the ingredients aren't necessarily good. But you brought up that thing about about negging where it can be fun. Yeah, I've actually had. I've had women tease me, right?
Where it would be like sort of like make fun of like, I'm like, oh, wow, you really like that band, huh? Or something, you know, like that's a nag. And then, you know, but I know it's also like I'm being, I also know they're flirting with me. And it is very disarming, right? It's like, it's like that. But then if you have somebody come up and be like, you know, that band sucks. And so do you like, you know, like a guy saying that it's like
they're not going to work. So yeah, I mean, at least there was an attempt. I don't know. I don't want to now. I feel like I'm crediting. I don't want to credit. I don't credit the I. Genuinely do feel. Like we, we it was, it was a scummy subculture, but we we did compared to what came
afterwards. We didn't know how good we had it trying to. Communicate this thing where it's sort of like, you know, that men have issues of confidence, I think in part because of this sort of patriarchal structure of the culture, right? Where they're under tremendous pressure. They're like, you know, men are dying fast and like feeling
tremendous. Very proud of partly because the world men created for themselves and they're trying to figure out how to crack the code and just get a, you know, somebody to be cozy with and watch TV and have a little kiss every once in a while, you know, so they can feel better. So like, yeah, this feels different. And the other thing about it and I, I, you know, I, I don't, I, I think it's very easy to just look at this and be like, this
is gay. You know, this feels really gay to me. But it does feel, I, I must say, it does feel like it is it almost like taking the woman out of the heterosexual equation, which is why I think people are quickly saying this is gay, You know, people who are critical of it online. I'm talking about not not talking about like, you know, refined leftist critics, but like the average person online who's a sports guy, be like, OK, this stuff's gay. You know, you'll see them in the
replies all the time. And I think it's like, it does feel like a little bit like that to me. Like it just like males focusing on males with the woman as a prop. Yeah, I. Mean, it's funny because there's so much of the manosphere that, as you say, will eventually come under this level of scrutiny. And I think when people call it gay, I think what they are mistaking for gay is actually a political fetishization of masculinity and men. Of of. Like male supremacy of male. Supremacy.
Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's funny because sometimes it can really, it really does kind of come across as an erotic fetishization as well. But I think it is, it is ultimately, you know, if you kind of want to go back to old second wave feminist theory, there's actually kind of nothing gay about this kind of the heteronormative, heterodominant kind of valorization of masculinity.
But certainly some of the ways that it plays out when you sort of take that logic, that kind of heterosexual logic to its utter extreme, I mean, it can be really comical. I remember reading a thread and some old bodybuilding forums which are another huge influence in in cell culture, which kind of had the same devolution as the pickup artist culture.
You know, guys who want to get ripped to pick up women ultimately find that that doesn't actually isn't just like The Secret Life hack to romantic success and then devolve into misogyny. And I and Bronze Age pervert came out of this scene. Yeah. Is that a? Guy Yeah, I remember 1.
There's one thread that just has always struck with me where a bunch of users from this bodybuilding slash incel slash manosphere forum all get together and start talking about how objectively, if you take away all sexual attraction, women aren't actually that beautiful and men are much more
beautiful. You know, they sort of say, well, obviously we're just kind of program that's just sort of, you know, that kind of chip in our brain that wants us to reproduce that isn't, you know, mistake clouding our judgment and making us think that the female form is beautiful. When actually, if you think about it, it's kind of soft, it's squishy. It's nothing like these kind of clean, masculine like hard lines which you find in the male body, which obviously objectively superior.
And I, I find it really interesting because it's the philosopher clouds Tivolate and his book Male Fantasies kind of really drills down into this impulse in proto fascist literature in Germany. It's a, yeah, male supremacist impulse, but it's ultimately kind of a fascist one as well, which has so elevated the kind of masculine, the strong, the dominant over what is seen as kind of the feminine and the weak that it ultimately, despite being extremely homophobic,
extremely politically OK, opposed to LGBT people, also has this element of male Eroticism, do you think? That could be a reason why it feels like this stuff's getting pick up lately. I mean, the especially in the United States, I mean, we're in a fascist hellscape, you know, with federal agents murdering people in the street. Just the nastiness in our political and social culture right now is so bleak and so poisonous. I mean, even in Clavicular's case, we look at who he's
hanging around. It's people like Andrew Tate, It's people like Nick Fuentes. He lives in a condo owned by Aidan Ross. All of these guys are like hardcore, you know, it have have very far right politics. Even though Clavicular claims to be a political, you know, this is who he surrounds himself with. This is the pocket that he's in. Do you think there is a relationship between the rise of far right politics and the visibility of this kind of stuff? I mean, do you see that as connected 100?
Percent. And yeah, on the Nick Fuentes point, my colleague on the QA podcast live has actually just put out an episode for us about Quavicular. And one thing that she points out is that Nick Fuentes was actually pretty instrumental in his rise as a as an influencer. And that's not coincidental. Do you know, like even though Clivic, the kind of yeah has sort of disavowed politics and says, Oh yeah, I, I don't care about that at all politics. Is gesture. It's just.
Yeah, yeah, it's. It's clear that Fuentes sees, I think sees the appeal of someone like Clavicular and I think probably, well both of them I would say are the only influences, essentials, you know, popular influences to kind of come out of the in cell space. So I think that's quite significant. Yeah. In terms of its sort of salience
for the political moment, yes. I mean, one thing when I was working on my series about trad wives that I couldn't stop noticing once I started researching it was that there was this element of super politicized fraud wives, fraud wives who are, you know, kind of clearly commenting on every every little feature that comes out of the culture war in every part of the new cycle. And, you know, kind of, yeah, clearly news junkies, essentially.
But there was a much bigger portion of them that I thought were much more passively inculcating right wing values by that they would often, Yeah, do a similar kind of dance, disavowing politics. That's not really my thing. I'm not interested in that. I just think I want to focus just on me and my little family, and I think it'll make you happier just to focus on you and your little family, too.
When I look at people like Clavicular and all of the kind of bodybuilding looks maxing side of the right wing, I kind of see something similar which is. Essentially. Kind of telling that audience to drop out to, to stop paying attention to the news, to stop paying attention to the cycle, to kind of just let things flow as they may and just serve all of their attention to. Well, in women's case, it was like the home, but in men's case it's much more often just their bodies.
I find it a funny parallel to some of the most egregious, some pop feminism of the 20 tens, which was kind of doing a similar thing of saying, you know, self-care is is so important as a woman. In fact, it's revolutionary for
you to buy the shampoo. And you know, there seems to be something, something similar going on, which is in some of the kind of bodybuilding spaces, which is saying, you know, it's, it's so important that, you know, they, the powers that be are so afraid of a strong alpha male populace that can, that can, you know, take, take, take on the government anytime they
want. So therefore you need to be spending all of your free time at the gym and pushing steroids and taking and researching vitamin supplements and things like that. And I sort of think like, well, actually, if I were the powers that be, I would feel intensely relaxed about a huge section of the population just focusing, turning all of their attention into themselves. Do you know, I, I couldn't think of anything that would be more liberatory for me. The yeah, great evil woke powers
that be frankly interesting. Too, I just want to point out that like in addition to wanting to throw out that like women, women want to sleep with the staff, the podcaster, women want to sleep with Jack Black and like because they think they're funny and cool and they like their thing. And sometimes it also doesn't have to do with money. Also, sometimes it's a guy who works hard and is just cool and not necessarily the, you know, mind blowing it.
It's just it, it is so weird, but it's it, it feels like we've come as a culture beyond just it. It obviously being, to me, it's obviously it has to be a symptom of fascism that somebody with with absolutely zero talent, like is like famous for like hammering his jaw to look a certain way. I mean, I don't need, you know, I'd go back in time and throw that in the mix up like, Oh no, fascism happens in the future. But yeah, I just. Just to interrupt, I'm not totally convinced he was doing
the the jaw smashing thing. It may not have. Been I don't know, I, I I. I get a bit of a sense that again, I I, I don't this is good. I like yeah, interjecting us. It is here's my conspiracy. I kind of sense that he has a bit of a, you know, not to yeah, largely talentless, but I think he actually has a bit of a flair for self promotion and kind of saying exaggerating all of the
extreme things that he's doing. I think probably initially to gain just a bit, you know, attention and excitement on the looks maxing forums that he was on. And then I think sort of taking it, taking it to social media and things like that. It's yeah, I, I just sort of sometimes get a bit of a sense that that he has an, he kind of has a canny understanding essentially for stuff that's a little bit shocking, a little bit outrageous.
And that sometimes that might be what's going on with the I'm going to get double jaw surgery or I'm going to, yeah, get break my legs so I can be an inch taller and, and things like that. You know that is. Fair. And I and I sometimes overlook the talent of self promotion, which is something I could do not possess, partly maybe because I don't have it. I'm like this guy don't have no talent. Like, Oh yeah, are you in the New York Times, Mike?
But like, you know, I, I don't know if this is a question, but maybe the talking point or whatever. I was like when I, I'm, I'm 4046 when I, you know, was first sexually active or whatever, be like the 90s, right, mid 90s and now view like sex as like 3 reasons for, there are like 3 main things here we're going on. One is to have children in some
cases, but not for everybody. Like there's a sort of spiritual sort of comfort, kind of the Marvin Gaye sexual healing aspect of it. Very important for some people, very important for maybe. And the other is just pleasure, right? It's just for pleasure, right? Same reason we enjoy going to the, the cinema. Same reason we enjoy reading a book, right?
It's like it's pleasurable and you know, obviously, like during, you know, when I first discovered I'm I was interested in all the things that you could do after after she consents, right, right. You know, it's like what think about all look at all the different things we can do, like all this. Look at this, can we do that? That's crazy after consent, right?
And it seems like the culture, like the sort of the sort of Trumpy, you know, fascist male culture these days is completely removes the pleasure part of it. It's either just or I mean, or the sexual healing. It's just like about getting there. Some sometimes removes consent
too. That's very important part of it. Like let's let's be honest, but it's really just like she has the babies and whatever and like I get in the door and he quite he actually says like that's sex enough for me to know that she could do it. I find that completely insane. And maybe that's the most fascist thing of all that to to not want to experience that. Right. What what even is that? What what is the where's the pleasure in that?
Just to me, it seems like a really creepy world for young boys to grow up in. Yeah. Absolutely. I think again, this is where trying to strip looks, maxing of its roots in the manosphere and so subculture unnecessarily leads to a kind of impoverished understanding of what's going on, what's going on. When Clavicular says, you know, I'd rather actually not have sex, It's it's a just waste of my my time and energy.
It's enough to know that that she wants to that I could because I think again, that comes back to this understanding. And even though we were being nice at the about the old pick up artists 10 minutes ago, let's be real, they they started this in a sense, at least in an Internet cultural sense. I can't can't say that they pick up artists started patriarchy in general, but they they did start this kind of understanding of the sex as an act of domination
essentially. And what often emerged out of these spaces, which, yeah, again, I think there's actually not really anything necessarily wrong. I think with thinking, hey, I'm. I'd like to, I'd like to be more attractive to the opposite sex. I'm going to look up tips on how to do that. Like, I don't think that as an
impulse is a bad thing. What I think was so damaging about so many of these cultures was how once you get enough people with this idea together and kind of get them talking is how often they would come up with these ideologies. That would sort of breed resentment about the fact that they had to do that. Anger about the fact it wasn't working, and would try and find ways to essentially denigrate women for having having forced them into this position in the
1st place. And I think there's a interesting economic basis for why the manosphere has exploded in the Internet era. And I think it's because we're actually at a slightly unprecedented moment in human history where increasingly for women, getting a male partner is no longer an act of survival, which it was for a very, very
long time. Even for working class women, who obviously always had jobs pre the feminist movement, free women's and liberation, a lot of those jobs were not well paid enough for you to be able to survive by yourself, let alone support children. Yeah, I mean it. Really. Wasn't that long ago that women became able to get credit cards in their own name, right? Right. I mean. I mean. It's just everything was stacked against them. They had to be married. They had to have. They had to be.
They had to. Basically have a sponsor, yeah. And you know, with the removal of a lot of these, that basic incent, survival incentives to be with a male partner that has come at A at a loss for a lot of straight men. Do you know, a lot of straight men have just frankly lost out from that? Some people will say, you know, well, men don't lose anything from feminism.
It's not a 0 sum game. But actually that is that is a lost, you know, it's, it's now harder for them to get a partner than it was in the times when it was by the sticking with him or
destitution. And I think that it's, we can often forget when we're kind of talking about Internet subcultures, the way that some forum came out of another forum, the way that this ideology, this way that this language developed, that I think there is actually just like quite a like hard material factor in the way that a lot of this stuff has taken off this kind of desire to be attractive to women, but also, you know, this very deep anger towards women.
A lot of the stuff constantly revolves around the idea that women are too picky these days. Women have got an inflated sense of of their own worth and they'll attribute this to various factors, to dating apps, to social media, the fact that, you know, that lots of women get lots of likes if they post a bikini picture on Instagram and things like that.
But I think they actually might be speaking to a much more brutal economic fact, which is that for many women, it's not an act of survival anymore to have a male partner. And that has disempowered, I think men, heterosexual men on the dating scene. And I, I think that a lot of this manosphere anger comes comes from that too. Bad. Now you have to actually be of some value to her in a way that is to actually. Be a pleasant person you have to you.
Have to you have to provide company that she enjoys and and have to be a good kisser and and have to have to be able to share meals together that that she enjoys. Tough tough for you. Sorry. So just ramping up here. You know, this type of stuff is certainly grown in its profile, right? I I mean this clavicular guy, stupid name I can't pronounce. You know, he's getting he's on Adam Friedland show, He's getting the New York Times profile. He's with Piers Morgan. GQ did a write up.
Is this stuff actually exploding online? Is it actually like certainly the stuff is getting more visible, but do you see this as a movement or, or a subgroup of the larger like manosphere movement that is gaining
traction? Because if that's the case, seems like like there's obviously the ideological risk, but this also seems, you know, if it is the type of thing that they're advocating bone smashing, taking steroids and, and, you know, mixing these cocktails of various nutritional supplements and, you know, extreme fasting, disordered eating, all of that to an audience that is largely comprised of teenagers and young men. Aside from ideology, it also seems insanely dangerous.
Some of the things. That get recommended could kill people. Right. And I feel like. That's been missing from a lot of the coverage. But, you know, as we wrap up here, I'm curious, as somebody who spent so much time looking into this issue, when you see these stories and see these features and stuff, do you get a sense of like, oh, finally people are catching up to this? People are talking about this, or do you feel something else? Yeah.
Well, I mean, I think sometimes the focus on the most absurd examples of it, the most absurd, absurd examples of a phenomenon. I mean, there's so much that's absurd about quavicular. It's absurd that he pretends or actually does smash his face with a hammer. Whatever he does, the language that is deliberately used around him is deliberately comic.
It's deliberately absurd because yeah, as I said before, the there's always been a real fascination within cell language and you know, a lot of a lot of words that we kind of use in an Internet slang, things like something maxing or blackpelling, doomer, ISM, chads, beaters, all the rest of it, you know, it's all it all come comes back from in cell forums. They really have an incredible amount of influence on on digital slang.
So I think there's always been this level of fascination, but the focus on the most absurd examples I think might mask the fact that there is something going on. You know, that I think eating disorders and young men are
massively rising. I think they're still not on level with eating disorders with the young women, but I think we have we are basically seeing slightly unprecedented levels in terms of how many young men are getting diagnosed with things like anorexia and orthorexia, which to me suggests, I know that these are complex psychological phenomenon and I don't want to simply attribute them to you know, 11 trend or
another. But to me suggest that there is something slightly emblematic, even if deliberately exaggerated to the most distorted extremes, and someone like Clavicular that there are body image pressures on young men. With social media, with even just dating apps, you know, things like Tinder and Hinge and all the rest of it, which are all solely image based, I think probably there are a lot more pressure on young men to look a certain way.
And it wouldn't surprise me essentially if as a result, you were seeing kind of influences and people giving advice, but essentially kind of raising in their profile, the more extreme they advise you to go kind of similar to the old. Well, they they probably still exist now, but the old kind of pro Anna blogs and forums and kind of the 20 tens and things
like that. The kind of more out extreme, the more kind of outrageous, you know, the more upstream, the kind of images were, the more extreme the advice would be given on on starving yourself and things like that. The more followers those but those blogs would get. And it's kind of easy, I think, when you're seeing it about young women to understand that that is a result of a, a, a culture which is demanding kind of ever increasing sort of
perfection from female bodies. But I think we might be starting to see kind of something similar with men. And that probably is what the fascination with figures like Clavicular are representing. I have just one. Last question, which is this you can, you can be as wrong as possible. We won't know right now. Where? Where do you see Clavicular? His name is Braden Peters, right? Braden Peters. I hate his stupid name so much. I know we've used it throughout this whole thing.
Where do you see Mr. Peters in 1020 years. I I just I asked that because it is this is a young man's game and I'm just curious like what you think will happen to this guy because I, you know, I have my thoughts, but I just want to hear yours. I mean, you could never. Have like a normal life after this? No, definitely. Not a nun, I mean, yeah, as you
say, it's a young man's game. I am not really convinced that he is charismatic or funny or charming enough to kind of move into something else after he's been been frame mocked by a younger man. Having said that, you know I don't, I don't want to be on fat you. He's only 20 years old. I probably wasn't super fascinating when I was 20 years old. We do, you know, people, people develop, people cultivate kind of different aspects of themselves as they age.
I don't want to, I don't want to write off the, the poor young man right now. Maybe, maybe, who knows? Maybe he'll write the next Great American novel. Yeah, I'm going to. I'm going to go ahead and say I'm going to take the under on that one. If there's a Poly market odds, I'm ready to vote. I'm right at that now. I think he says. Reading spikes his cortisol levels or something, so he says something like that, I don't remember.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, as, as I understand that, you know, he he streams sort of like 15 hours a day and then spends the rest of his time either sleeping or watching clips of himself to see what he can do better. I mean, there is. And obviously injecting peptides or whatever next and steroids or whatever. And to himself. I mean, there is something to be said about just how, and I kind of mentioned this before, how kind of autocannibalistic this culture is.
It's so focused on the self. It's so focused on the the image. Kind of hard to imagine moving on to anything else. Again, this will this will kind of maybe sound like I'm praising other terrible manosphere influences and things like that. But the Quinters or Andrew Tate or people like that, they are kind of at least amusing. Do you know, they have like a comic talent, They're kind of
delivery and things like that. They're performers and I guess yeah, I sort of don't really see that in clavicular so much as somebody who is kind of willingly being a kind of live streamed. I want to say freak show that that sounds kind of too mean. I don't mean in the sense that he's a freak, but I don't think it's too. Mean, I just want to, I don't think it's too mean if I can just throw it because it's, I have a phone.
You can tell. So there, there was a like a gay identified account who said that like back in the 60s, late 60s or whatever early, you know, he would have been part of Andy Warhol's Factory and he would have, you know, he would have had some sort of an affair with like one guy or whatever. And he would have been murdered at like age, whatever. Yeah. And it, it spoke to something that I, you know, someone said, I said, I said this guy's going
to be dead and like, whatever. I'm not predicting that because I don't want to predict that for anybody. It's terrible. It's terrible vibes. But there is one of the reasons it's a dead end is because it's so superficial and so contrary to the nature of of of development. My part of my beard is most of my beard is white, actually. Now taking a look at it. OK, that's yeah. I haven't looked at him like deeply. Look, it's part of, you know,
it's part of it, right. I just saw, I just saw Wallace Shawn perform the fever in in Greenwich Village. He was amazing at age 82. Part of part of aging with the Betty Friedan. Betty Friedan thing about like she has a whole book about aging. Like, you know, it, it's, that's what it's about. It's about, you know, I mean, it's it's about letting go of that. And he is, he has created a culture around not letting go of certain youthful appearance, you
know, aspects. And I, I, to me, it's just like, what is there? You know, if it, if it's not death in a little literal sense, it's death in the cultural sense for him or in a, in a influencer sense. I don't know how what do you do? You can't keep your you can't. It's like the guy who, who's that weird tech guy Jared, who like wants to keep himself alive forever and he's aging backwards. This stuff is insane to me. All this you got. People have to accept death and accept aging. One person.
I mean, I really agree. I mean, I'll sound very guru like here, dispensing my my pulse of wisdom. Is it Brian Johnson? By the way, something like that, yeah. That's right.
It's always seemed to me, and I'm glad I grasped this quite early, it's always seemed to me like a huge, huge mistake to really, really value your youth and your beauty, to place a high premium on that because it's the one thing that you're constantly running out of. Do you know, like, so I think I just sort of grasp quite early on, even when I was very young, I think that it wasn't a good idea to become enamoured with being young because it felt like a bit of a losing, a losing
strategy for life. It's a way to make yourself miserable. Yeah. I actually now I'm a parent and I kind of think a bit about being a parent as well. It can. There's a certain seductive pull to kind of, you know, getting attached to to your baby and thinking how sweet and baby like they are and oh, I wish they could just stay like this
forever. But if you think that if you start to, you know, kind of like dwell on that and think that then you are making the act of parenting become miserable because they're not staying a baby forever by and you know that they're always growing. And I I think I see a bit of that and I wish I could just say it was the the freak shows like clavicular. Honestly, I see a lot of it in Gen. Z social media culture just in
general kind of terror of aging. And and this isn't in just general kind of what me and my colleague on truly tried deeply. Megan called the the girl Internet, you know, focus on anti aging products age 23 and things like that. Here's how I look so young, age 25, stuff like that. It it seemed to me like a very dangerous and quite miserable
way to live. Again, I kind of speculate in a slightly vulgar, materialist sense that it's something to do with a demo age demographic where aging doesn't necessarily equal status and material gains. Maybe in a way that it would have the previous generations where they might have viewed as a bit of a trade offshore. I have Gray hairs now, but I'm a bit more economically stable. I've got a house maybe for generations where that is no longer the promise of aging.
Maybe aging becomes more terrifying itself. I don't know. Yeah, as I say, it's just pure speculation on my part, but I see a lot of it everywhere. And I I think it's very sad. Yeah, I've. I've. Always thought well, I haven't always thought, but for a while have have kind come to understand the temperance of life, the end of it right from the second year before and you start dying right. And that's what makes it worth it.
That's what makes it vivid and beautiful and it gives you a reason to engage with the world around you and to appreciate things as they come. And this format, this incentive structure, I guess, if you will, of these online cultures, I think kind of Rob's life of the things that can make it beautiful. But on that big note, as I put down my comically sized bong here and tuck it, tuck it behind my desk. We've been talking to Annie Kelly. Thanks so much for joining us.
Last question, guests, get this on posting through it. What kind of music you fucking with? Because this is a music podcast first and foremost. Oh nice. So I like a lot of modern kind of western music. Actually. I inherited it from my dad, who's Irish and American guy. I don't have Americans know this, but Irish people love country and western music I think. I actually did not I actually. Did not know that, yeah. Yeah, it's really New York New. Yorkers like The Pogues, if
that's. Like a nice trade. Off we can have that. We can have that, yeah, I think. That's something to do with maybe a kind of a similar musical heritage happening there, which kind of branched off at one point anyway. Yeah, So I, I grew up listening to old style country and Western things like Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton and things like that.
And yeah, as a result, I kind of, I don't know, when I'm just trying to zone out, I like to listen to music that makes me feel like I'm a cowboy riding through New Mexico or something like that. I did not. Expect this answer, but I love it. Yeah, I. Think this is the first guest who's recommended some country music on this show. All right. Well, Andy, thanks so much for joining us. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks so much for having. Me. It's been so much fun. Thank you, Cornfield.
'S. Planted on the graves of native peoples that we've always the Deep South of north.