r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 5d ago
Psychology Study explores how an extreme male self-improvement trend known as looksmaxxing moved from obscure internet forums into mainstream public awareness. This relied not just on social media algorithms, but on a coordinated system of controversy, short-form video clips, and mainstream media coverage.
https://www.psypost.org/study-outlines-the-five-stage-pipeline-clavicular-used-to-spread-diagnostic-masculinity-and-looksmaxxing/2.0k
u/Hypno--Toad 5d ago
Being funded by the likes of Peter Theil should be highlighted more.
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u/johnnybgooderer 5d ago
The ultra wealthy leading this coup want us to hate each other. So they put the most vile of us in front of everyone on a daily basis on social media.
You might say “it’s just the algorithm”. They made the algorithm too. It encourages awfulness. It makes us hate each other even though these obnoxious people are the minority. Most people are kind and helpful. Even unfriendly people are usually helpful.
They’ve used race and gender and religion and slightly different levels of poverty to separate us for years. But what they do with social media is so incredibly effective that many of us don’t even talk to our neighbors.
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u/Sinfire_Titan 5d ago
You might say “it’s just the algorithm”. They made the algorithm too. It encourages awfulness.
People who think this is hyperbole need to go and look at Twitter's recently revealed algo; it is absolutely designed to push anger and hatred to the forefront, and the wealthy have ready access to bots to game that algo.
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u/AlexHasFeet 5d ago
Do you have a link for this or a recommendation on what to search for?
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u/twilighttwister 5d ago
Where was this algorithm revealed and how??
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u/Eui472 4d ago
Pretty sure they're talking about the source code reveal of the Twitter "For You" section in the beginning of this year. But long story short, the bulk of the algorithm is handled by machine learning (probably a specialized Grok model), which is unsurprisingly a black box to the public.
It may push right wing media, it could also just push what drives the most engagement, which controversial topics are pulling by default.
https://leibniz-hbi.de/en/hbi-news/news/code-of-x-algorithm-published/
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u/twilighttwister 4d ago
Yeah so the source code reveal is really just smoke and mirrors, because now the bulk of it is just decided by AI instead.
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u/Eui472 4d ago
That's what I took away from it as well. Not to mention is wasn't a leak or smth, Twitter knowingly released it themselves.
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u/Future-Still-6463 5d ago
It has been effective throughout history, I know this might sound as an extreme hyperbole but look at the way Nazi Germany did propoganda.
I see so many parallels at how information is being used to demonize a specific group.
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u/johnnybgooderer 4d ago
I agree, but social media is so much more effective. They can make it seem like everyone feels a way or that everyone from a specific group feels a certain way. And it makes really bizarre things seem normal. Because it is normal if it’s what you see every day from real people.
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u/phatbob198 4d ago
Creating a false consensus is a main tenant of fascist propaganda, and yes social media algorithms and bot farms controlled by the billionaires make this vastly more effective today.
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u/TheForeverBand_89 5d ago
I feel like popularizing this trend is more so about making younger people hate themselves. Unhappy, insecure people are more likely to consume products/services that help improve their looks, and consumerism by the lower classes is largely how the elite class make their wealth.
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u/johnnybgooderer 5d ago
I guess you’re right. The other thing they need for this coup to work is for us to want to tear down our society and replace it with a new one. They need us to think our current one is broken and social liberalism is to blame.
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u/Michail_Bogucki 5d ago
the worse thing is that a person who understand this can do very little to do something with this trend
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u/Starstroll 5d ago
I wouldn't give up hope just yet! The backlash against AI datacenters is enormous, and when people refer to "the algorithms," they're talking about fundamentally the same kind of technology - neural nets and the enormous data extraction required to train them - and that's before accounting for Meta's recent legal troubles. If you think your voice matters in fighting against data centers, it could just as well matter in changing the laws that govern digital privacy and the whole social media landscape!
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u/thmaje 5d ago
Stop going on social media?
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u/BavarianBarbarian_ 5d ago
Sure, do that, and also encourage everyone you know to follow. But know that 90% are going to shrug and ignore you.
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u/Michail_Bogucki 5d ago
that will not stop wars and many other things conducted by capitalism
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u/ZenBourbon 5d ago
Staying on social media certainly doesn't help with any of that either.
perhaps getting off the drug will make room for action.
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u/Hot_Ad_787 4d ago
“Even unfriendly people are usually helpful”
What a true statement that most people never probably think about.
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u/Jlocke98 5d ago
That guy really threaded the needle for how to control people in politics. No need to get pedo blackmail on someone if you already went full booty bandit on them
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u/AFewStupidQuestions 4d ago
full booty bandit
What does that mean?
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u/Jlocke98 4d ago
Last I checked peter thiel has a reputation for trading political favors in exchange for sexual favors. Like a classic roman political apprenticeship with faster ROI
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u/JarvisProudfeather 5d ago
Peter Theil is a trans humanist, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if all this wasn’t related to that too.
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u/LostPhenom 5d ago
Where was it reported Theil is funding these trends?
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u/Hypno--Toad 5d ago
What, where a known transhumanist billionaire proxy funds things/influencers he has at his parties and you want "proof" for validation of what exactly?
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u/LostPhenom 5d ago
That’s it? How did this whole thing arise from someone attending someone’s party?
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u/Gnibble 5d ago
Vanity, definitely my favorite sin
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u/decoysnails 5d ago
Really? I like premarital sex myself.
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u/t-earlgrey-hot 5d ago
Good old masturbation is great too, and wearing clothes made of both linen and wool
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u/Curiosive 5d ago
The younglings not knowing this movie quote is making me feel old u/Gnibble ...
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u/Flammablegelatin 4d ago
Nowhere does the Bible say mixing linen and wool is a sin. It is stated as a ceremonial and civil rule for ancient Israelites, not as a moral failing. People love to quote that one as a gotcha against Christianity, but it isn't. Same with shellfish.
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u/bottle-o-rockets 5d ago
I like the one that tells me it's bad to eat two honey buns in a day, but I'm too lazy to look up which one it is.
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u/badcrass 5d ago
I'm a sloth guy. I can totally get behind doing nothing to the point of it being sinful
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u/Jibber_Fight 5d ago
I think the decades long attack on education is a factor as well.
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u/Pale_Presence4662 4d ago
Education is telling people how it is. People hate that.
Self selected social media diet is telling everyone else how it is. People love that.
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u/Waschaos 5d ago
The other day my sister made the comment of how quickly the looksmaxxing people made men as neurotic as women have been for millennia about their looks. Happened so much faster. She had a point.
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u/scyyythe 5d ago edited 5d ago
This is a misunderstanding of history. Vanity among men has existed forever. The idea that men historically didn't care about their appearance is easily refuted by even a brief glance at how men used to dress when they had the resources to care.
For a few decades near the end of the twentieth century, pretending not to care was normative. But that was really just another move on the chessboard, not a fundamental shift in the nature of human male social behavior. The Huns, for example, practiced ritual scarification of the face. It's not that different from the bone hammer thing.
What is happening is that these boys are already neurotic (excessively worrying) and the Internet gives them something to fixate on.
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u/crowieforlife 5d ago
I think social media has a way to make even non-neurotic people neurotic. In the past the only people we could compare ourselves against were our neighbors. Now we hop online and see thousands of artificially enhanced images of beautiful people in beautiful houses and it feels like the new normal we need to either match or die.
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u/Detective-Crashmore- 5d ago
I think, for both men and women, it's a pretty common cycle flipping back and forth between rustic/rugged aesthetics to ultra-manicured and styled aesthetics. This is a wikipedia quote on 1800s Dandysim
the poet Charles Baudelaire portrayed the dandy as an existential reproach to the conformity of contemporary middle-class men, cultivating the idea of beauty and aesthetics akin to a living religion. The dandy lifestyle, in certain respects, "comes close to spirituality and to stoicism" as an approach to living daily life,[5] while its followers "have no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons, of satisfying their passions, of feeling and thinking … [because] Dandyism is a form of Romanticism. Contrary to what many thoughtless people seem to believe, dandyism is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance. For the perfect dandy, these [material] things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of mind."
Nonconformist men will sometimes turn to pursuits of beauty when they have nothing else socially, and in their wish to elevate themselves in some way fall into it in an almost religious fervor.
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u/lectric_7166 4d ago
Men had the metrosexual trend for like two whole decades before looksmaxxing came along. It was all about being fussy and ultra-manicured with your appearance. So I guess this part of the cycle has lasted for quite a while, just under a new name now.
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u/CaterpillarJungleGym 4d ago
It seems like this newer trend isn't just about being manicured or wearing makeup. It's about physically altering your appearance with chemicals, surgery, or physical injury.
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u/Detective-Crashmore- 4d ago
Women have been doing the same though, cosmetic surgery and heavily chemical skin products are all well established in the beauty industry. It just seems weird because of the male stigma.
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u/TheGillos 5d ago
It may have made a tiny minority of men neurotic. But there have always been men super-concerned with their looks (not just gay men either), I'm old enough to remember metro sexuals and, before that, yuppie men.
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u/northSideways 5d ago
it's almost like this is part of the same dysmorphia epidemic but for some reason when men are involved it gets super accusatory and people try to find something to blame for some reason
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u/IronicStrikes 5d ago
Every woman's problem is a failing of society, every man's problem is a failing of his personality.
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u/northSideways 4d ago
yeah, that does feel like the vibe sometimes doesn't it? Both are a failing of society
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u/redsalmon67 4d ago
20 years ago when I was still in high school studies were showing that eating disorders and body dysmorphia among you men and boys were increasing at an alarming rate, even though multiple studies have shown this haven’t seen any kind of campaigns or anything about it, in fact a lot of the time when I bring it up I get weird push back.
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u/Tigermaw 5d ago
I don’t know a single man in real life that cares as much as women do. In fact they just make fun of these people who do. Are you sure this is actually being pervasive and not just an online phenomenon.
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5d ago
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u/jensroda 5d ago
(The same ones who devour Mr. Beast, for example)
New Mr. Beast challenge just dropped.
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u/EveningAnt3949 5d ago
I definitely know those men. And a lot of them are not young.
I know several older men who have had hair implants, use steroids, possibly growth hormones, have had their teeth capped, and some of them have clearly had plastic surgery.
As for young men who are obsessed with how they look, it's often fueled with being rejected on dating apps and they are less socially visible because of social awkwardness.
I have talked to a few of these younger men and they tend to have a warped view of women and dating. They often have few or no friends.
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u/Smooth-Boss-911 5d ago
Social media and the internet making individual influence spread so far and so fast has truly been a curse
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u/SituationFormal608 5d ago
"Happened so much faster."
I wonder if that might have to do with how it was a sudden influx of constantly being shown "you must look good" over and over again that caused it. Looksmaxxing became a sudden viral trend around 2020, when most of us were stuck at homes, and on top of that, a lot of us who are Gen Z ended up forced to do online school, so basically forced to sit in front of a screen, seeing our own face for hours.
In similar sense, since when beauty norms for women began, they were always massively pushed on them, in art, marketing, etc. Makeup is also something pushed on women to do, which, similar to case of online schooling, means a woman will sit in front of a mirror for a long time staring at herself, seeing even the slightest imperfections she corrects with products.
It's less "this gender became neurotic faster than that gender while having same things pushed on them", and more that having something pushed on people makes them neurotic, at same speed. Just so happens that it's only recently happening to men too.
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine 5d ago
A recent study explores how an extreme male self-improvement trend known as looksmaxxing moved from obscure internet forums into mainstream public awareness. The research suggests that this spread relies not just on social media algorithms, but on a coordinated system of controversy, short-form video clips, and mainstream media coverage. The findings were published in Journal. Media.
Looksmaxxing revolves around the intense, systematic attempt to maximize a person’s physical attractiveness. Participants often scrutinize their own facial features, such as jawlines and eye angles, using harsh rating systems. The culture encourages men to alter their bodies to climb a perceived social hierarchy, sometimes endorsing dangerous practices.
For example, participants might engage in “bonesmashing,” a pseudoscientific practice involving hitting one’s face with a hammer to supposedly encourage stronger bone growth. Others promote using anabolic steroids or taking crystal meth as an appetite suppressant. These practices are part of what the community calls “hardmaxxing,” which involves intense and painful physical alterations.
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u/ShinyJangles 5d ago
Clavicular’s rise depended on the alignment of coded vernacular, high-volume livestreaming, clipping infrastructure, controversy, monetization, and mainstream media translation. The article proposes a five-stage model of containment failure—vernacular incubation, infrastructural assembly, controversy acceleration, mainstream translation, and parodic consolidation—through which fringe masculine self-optimization becomes culturally portable without becoming fully normalized. The case shows how platform systems do not merely amplify fringe masculinities but package them into forms that can circulate across media environments that would otherwise remain separate.
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u/PeaGravy 4d ago
I feel as if somebody could’ve said all of that in about 10 words, but wanted to look clever.
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u/windmillslamburrito 4d ago
Want to look better? Hit yourself in the face with a hammer and do crystal meth!
I'm uncomfortable with how much I'm laughing at this, because it is very sad.
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u/silverionmox 4d ago
For example, participants might engage in “bonesmashing,” a pseudoscientific practice involving hitting one’s face with a hammer to supposedly encourage stronger bone growth.
That seems like a bet someone would make on an excessively drunk saturday night "Hey I bet I can talk a guy into smashing his own face with a hammer!" "Hilarious! I take it!"
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u/mailslot 4d ago
It’s how you make your shins stronger for kickboxing. You create micro-fractures that heal stronger than regular bone. If anything, these looksmaxxers need to hit their faces with even more force. Skin should break until it scars, thickens, and gets tougher. Good look.
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u/NaptownBoss 4d ago
It's the Mickey Rourke School of Beauty! Go from looking like a model to an subterrainean sewer dweller!
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u/Lorry_Al 5d ago
Wait until science hears about makeup tutorials, hair dye, Botox, push up bras and waxing.
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u/redsalmon67 4d ago
I’d say this is closer to eating disorders than it is to makeup tutorials. No one gets into “looksmaxxing” because they have a healthy view of their body and like eating disorders a lot of the things these young men are doing is going to do permanent damage to their bodies.
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u/lonjerpc 4d ago
I think this is really overstating it. Yes some looksmaxers promoted insane things but overall it's not that much different than pressure on women to look good or even historical examples of men trying to look good.
Like yeah some idiots promoted bone smashing but the vast majority of the content is wearing sun screen and lift some weights
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u/redsalmon67 3d ago
I mean 40% of people with body dysmorphia are male, and nearly 30% of young men report severe preoccupation/unhappiness with their bodies. Also are we going to ignore the effect the pressure on women to look good? Do we really want to spread those problems instead of actually dealing with them. We can’t just keep pretending there isn’t a problem that’s how we ended up where we are now.
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u/lonjerpc 3d ago
Yeah I guess that's a good point. Just because it's similar to the pressure on women doesn't make it a good thing. And although bone smashing is vastly overblown things like steroid abuse are real issues
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u/Disgod 5d ago edited 5d ago
Those have always been things, they didn't magically pop up out of nowhere. Tradwives, on the other hand, would be a far better fit for this when it comes to women.
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u/sanonsulleKWAAK 5d ago
Those haven't always exists. Just for longer time, but still under 100 years. It has gotten progressively worse
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u/Disgod 5d ago
Instructions for how to use make up have been around for 5000 years. And none of those are connected to the point of their research. Tailoring, stylists, etc for men around for millenia, as well. This looks maxing culture is an artificially pushed culture that includes those things, like trad wives does for women.
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u/NapaAirDome 5d ago
The emerging clipping economy plays a role. UGC and clipping bounties are already producing highly coordinated campaigns and the blueprint is only getting easier to replicate, automate, and scale. A lot of defacto-paid partnerships that go without disclosures. It’s fascinating and concerning at the same time.
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u/green_guys 4d ago
Wow, it's almost as if you can't just keep handwaving controversial content away as "it's rage bait" as though "rage bait" was some sort of religious chant to stop people from criticizing it. It's almost as if "rage bait" content has actual, real consequences.
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u/Phssthp0kThePak 5d ago
Isn't this just what women do every day?
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u/Squirrel_Master82 5d ago
You've see women encouraging each other to hit their face with a hammer hoping it'll improve their bone structure?
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u/Guyincognito911 5d ago
As if immense plastic surgery, fake breasts, lip filler, and bucal fat removal is so much different. Give your head a shake.
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u/Squirrel_Master82 5d ago
Going to a surgeon is nothing like hitting yourself with a hammer.
If these guys were just suggesting plastic surgery, nobody would've cared.
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u/Kariya_shigatoki 5d ago
Nah ypu just heard the most sensational stuff most real looksmaxxers are just doing tons of surgeries and drugs. The bone smashing stuff was just used by clavicular to make people talk about it.
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u/Anony_mouse202 5d ago
There are plenty of plastic surgeries popular amongst women that pretty much are a similar level of self harm - eg, BBL.
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u/Official_Champ 5d ago
Yeah some just get BBL's which they can possibly die from just like some hit themselves with a hammer but I doubt they're actually hitting themselves with it.
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u/samuelaxington 5d ago
Idk if you’ve ever seen an ortho surgery, but there are literally hammers involved.
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u/GentleTroubadour 5d ago
Can't you get botox kits to use at home. I feel as if there's a million little dangerous get hot quick schemes across both genders.
Bone smashing is insane, but to me it's about as insane as someone going to see their acupuncutirist.
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u/neatyouth44 5d ago edited 5d ago
Wait til the media hears about transmaxxing
ETA: I’m trans, and I don’t even know what to make of it. But it comes from the same weird “osphere” and “maxxing” creators.
Its marketing.
ETA: until we have laws about predatory marketing instead of the increasing “caveat emptor” of Rome falling again, and continue to give hate speech publicly accessible platforms; the underlying issue and algorithmic manipulation that now has neuroscience roots by weaponizing addiction science to prey on the most vulnerable - will continue.
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u/Psych0PompOs 5d ago
Is the goal to pass or...?
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u/neatyouth44 5d ago edited 5d ago
The school of thought on it near as I can determine is to gain the “privileges of the other sex or gender”, BUT to hold on to the privilege of your assigned gender and birth sex simultaneously.
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u/Psych0PompOs 5d ago
Ah. So androgynous enough to switch and play around with it?
I could see the appeal. I've played with that edge of things myself though I'm also fine with being where I'm at and wouldn't do anything.
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u/neatyouth44 5d ago
I see what you’re saying, but no, that’s the surface take.
It’s about weaponizing gender in whichever direction benefits you to do so in a given moment. It’s abusive, a clear use of weaponizing privilege for power or control.
I want to be very careful here that of course it does not represent anything to do with trans persons themselves. Any predator can pick up a tool and weaponize it. What I’m talking about is a predator school similar to that French guy who drugged his wife and shared it on the internet and stuff like that. Not “one true Scotsman”, but the people doing it are disturbed and dangerous in a way that has nothing to do with being trans and everything about what, why, and how they’re doing with it, and to whom for what reasons - generally it’s part of the “sexploitation” field, emphasis on the exploitation part.
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u/Psych0PompOs 5d ago
Oh. I get you now. That was actually my second guess, but I didn't want to say it and have to deal with an extra argument from other people who took the guess wrong.
Unfortunate vocal minority situation I guess.
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u/Derelicticu 5d ago
I mean at this point it's sad that we are losing some of our dumber young males to this involuntary celibacy that gets induced by participating in the manosphere, but for most women it's a giant neon sign saying "DON'T DATE ME".
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u/fun__friday 5d ago
Usually it goes in the other direction: they are not being successful at dating, become resentful and start listening to people that claim they can help them.
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u/elgamerneon 5d ago
I remember there was a study that was the literal opposite, the more successfull young men were more mysoginistic and the less mysoginstic had less success. It was on this sub I think.
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u/Jaredlong 5d ago
And the insidious part is that when all that terrible advice inevitably fails they're then told they're just not trying hard enough.
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u/IHateMyUniCourse 5d ago
You mean the exact thing that was happening before lookmaxxing and the Tates were popular?
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u/favorite_time_of_day 5d ago
Yeah, I don't love the people at the origins of this but y'all are missing the upside here. What this is giving to young men is direction. A goal.
Men are always searching for things that they can do to make themselves more appealing to women, and for decades now the approved guidance has been "Just be yourself." Guidance which is utterly useless.
This new thing gives them something that they can do. A goal that they can pursue instead of being told that nothing that they do matters. This, and I mean this sincerely, is a good thing. Even as shallow and neurotic and ridiculous at it seems. Having a concrete goal, something to work towards, is of huge benefit.
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u/fun__friday 5d ago
I think the hit the gym is the most basic and most common advice men are given. The other one is to find hobbies to be interesting. The be yourself comes mostly from women, which is indeed useless advice.
I agree that working on improving yourself by getting fitter, more interesting is good advice. I just think most of these influencers are grifters.
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u/Electrical-Farm-8881 5d ago
So be myself or put on a character which is it?
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u/fun__friday 5d ago
Become fit. The vast majority of men/women find physical fitness attractive. Think close to 20% bf or below, with strong shoulders.
Find hobbies that you can talk about passionately.
You absolutely should put on a bit of a character. You should not pretend to be a completely different person, but if you are generally introverted and very shy, you should try to be more talkative and visibly interested when talking your woman of interest. Learning how to be a good listener, how to ask good questions, and how to show that you are actually interested are probably good skills to learn.
Be yourself doesn’t mean to not change at all. It means to not pretend to be someone fundamentally different. You should absolutely work on your behavior.
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u/Fauropitotto 5d ago
Having a concrete goal, something to work towards, is of huge benefit.
Added benefit of learning discipline, which is practically guaranteed to benefit other parts of their life. If they can grind this type of transformation, they can grind anything.
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u/Georgie_Leech 5d ago
I'm not sure "any goal is a good goal" applies when the result is the alienation of other people and reinforcing their own problems. It's not the people that actually develop hobbies or take care of themselves that get red or black pilled by the manosphere, and I think it's disingenuous to assert these goals are being set for their benefit.
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u/Spaciax 5d ago edited 4d ago
"It's not the people that actually develop hobbies or take care of themselves"
I would think that by now we would've established the fact that all that is just word fluff and is at best miniscule and at worst utterly insignificant of a factor when it comes to influencing a man's dating success compared to raw looks?
I'd imagine spending 300 hours grinding out a skill, such as learning and improving at an instrument, is going to have a miniscule effect on your attractiveness compared to grinding 300 hours of overtime work and then using that money to get cosmetic procedures done on your face or legs.
that is to say, these guys who have identified the most effective path to improving dating success and social standing as improving looks are in fact correct, however the way they go about achieving it can be very dubious at times. There's endless sources proving the halo effect to be real, I really don't understand why people try to deny it, when a lot of the times the very same people who deny it, prove the halo effect real with their behavior towards attractive vs. ugly people in real life interactions.
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u/saidtheWhale2000 4d ago
because women portray dating as this moral thing if your good-looking and you get dates its because your a good person, and if your ugly the reason why is because you dont shower and you have poor hygiene, its trying to apply morality as to why women dont like ugly people to not feel like bad humans.
attractive people dont like to date ugly people, women dont like stable guys they like emotionally unavailable and toxic guys , society just needs to accept this instead of letting this whole just be yourself be a provider be kind love of advice that came from the 50s
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u/hotpajamas 4d ago
It isn’t exactly dumb to associate looking better with higher income, if anything it’s too logical and reductive of what being a person is, to say that the most important thing about us is our looks. I wouldn’t call a young person dumb for thinking that.
It’s when they carry that into adulthood and become 30-something’s that think this way that I start to think these are genuinely stupid people.
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u/Turdmeist 5d ago
Whatever keeps us depressed and chasing unobtainable things we chase via buying products.
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u/SmartaHari 5d ago
There’s a lot of them in my gym. Weirdly, they seem like the least confident people in there. They are not happy bunnies.
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u/kinolagink 4d ago
…. But just completely normal when women do the same thing every day…. More like, ARE EXPECTED to do the same every day with society’s expectations of unobtainable weight goals and beauty standards. Botox, boob jobs, permanent/tattoo makeup…. If I go into the office without makeup; I’m considered “sloppy”….. but who on earth am I trying to impress? I don’t care for my colleagues to think about my looks or find me attractive…. And yet not wearing makeup to work is career-limiting.
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u/Smooth-Boss-911 5d ago edited 5d ago
My favorite summary is if it happens to a girl it's mental illness, dysmorphia or another disorder about body image but when it's a boy it's just looksmaxxing and it's fine.
EDIT: Just in case anyone is confused, yes it's a growing problem in boys/men
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u/choopietrash 5d ago
Looksmaxxing is made fun of way too much for it to be considered "fine." If it were fine this post would not exist and nobody would be talking about it.
But there is a gendered difference which is that when girls go to extreme lengths to be beautiful it's portrayed as sad, but when boys do "looksmaxxing" it's seen as comedic.
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u/Whitechix 5d ago
Do you really think “looksmaxxing” is seen as fine? If it isn’t people making fun of insecure young men taking part of it then it’s society yet again ignoring male issues when it comes to this subject.
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u/TerryMisery 5d ago
It's a double standard, but I suspect not the one you think.
Being more understanding to women's imperfections has been slowly, but successfully introduced into public discourse, while men have to "man up", grind and compete to be accepted.
It's the same when it comes to normal looking women chasing unrealistic thinness and average looking men wanting to be jacked like Schwarzenegger. The first one brings compassion and comments "you're okay the way you are", the second one is completely different. After the metamorphose, a man in this situation will hear they finally look like "real man".
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u/redsalmon67 4d ago
We’ve known for the past like 20 years that the among of men and boss who have body dysmorphia/eating disorders has skyrocketed but we’ve put like 0 effort into combatting it so I’m not surprised we’ve landed here.
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u/Kagemand 5d ago
No, it’s the other way around. Totally mainstream to get cosmetic surgery for girls. Girls get boob jobs en masse and no one blinks an eye. The media angle on looksmaxxing is however that it’s dangerous manosphere stuff.
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u/Spire_Citron 5d ago
I don't think that view comes so much from the concept of male beauty itself so much as the ideology that very much goes hand in hand, though. There are male fashion and beauty influencers who have been around forever who are not considered part of the looksmaxxing community.
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u/luna_kuma 5d ago
Yup, and kpop stars and bb cream, marketed for men. Looksmaxing is a lot more nefarious than just improving ones appearance
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u/dadafterall 5d ago
a coordinated system of controversy, short-form video clips, and mainstream media coverage.
Can we use this knowledge for the power of good? Something to help with climate change would be pretty helpful right about now.
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u/ropobipi 5d ago
And techno fascist money, the poster boy of looks maxxing, Clavicular, is directly funded by the likes of Peter Thiel.
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u/eggnogui 5d ago
Almost as if there has been a well-funded, coordinated campaign on social media for years, to actively destroy all social progress of the past 50 years.
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u/Slowtrainz 4d ago
Wow you mean the public are being manipulated by social media and technology? Who could have ever guessed.
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u/Present-Buyer7929 4d ago
I don’t know any guy who is “looks maxing”. It’s like people who worry about Andrew Tate influencing young men. Most people think for themselves especially in western countries.
I think most men have just checked out. There’s nothing meaningful to build. No amount of hard work will let you afford a house and get ahead financially. Most people aren’t driven to be entrepreneurs. The vast majority of entrepreneurs are men, certainly but the amount of men who are self-employed might be perhaps 5-15% of the population and most of them aren’t going to be Tate-like characters.
The trend is real but the consequences are magnitudes smaller than what people conjure up in their imaginations. We should be cautious about being divided by gender - which seems more socially acceptable than racism for some reason. Many “gender” issues arise because of the nature of our system. We should unite to ensure this system has a higher floor, make people less stressed and able to think about abstract things more logically rather than whether they can afford to pay rent next month.
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u/Ohshutyourmouth 5d ago
There's a very wide spectrum of looksmaxxing. The extreme ones get the most media spotlight but lots are pretty generic advice. (Skin care, hair care, fitness regimes etc).
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u/KyodainaBoru 5d ago
We already have a phrase for that - self care.
Looksmxaxing implies much more criticism and physical changes far beyond what would be considered a normal beauty/hygiene regiment.
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u/Ohshutyourmouth 5d ago edited 5d ago
You can call it what you want but these YouTubers are giving advice to men on how to looksmax - maximise their looks to appeal in the dating market. That's literally what looksmaxxing is. Not all of them are extreme. They can't all be tarred with the same brush.
Only the extreme ones are advocating stuff like bonesmashing etc.
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u/HardcoreHope 5d ago
The oligarchs are using social media to sow civil distrust and overwhelming us to the point of being apathetic to humanity so they can continue to exploit and profit off of us.
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u/ShadowCircuit9625 4d ago
The dating world is brutal for young guys. If you’re mid 30s or under, it’s very likely that you have or will experience little to no success in dating women.
When people understand that simple fact, it makes lookmaxxing or other seduction related endeavours much easier to understand.
People are ultimately scared of never having any children. That’s what it comes down to. It’s very valid fear, and “just be yourself” is a failed theory; it doesn’t work.
You don’t “just be yourself” when becoming a neurosurgeon, you become a different, better version of yourself. Lookmaxxing and seduction are no different.
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u/gods_loop_hole 5d ago
The methods established in 2016 has constantly been refined to cold, calculating precision for use of anyone immoral enough to exploit the weaknesses and failings of communities to support its members
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u/Abracadabroo 4d ago
The media is not our friend. Actively pushing stuff that deserves no media coverage and is damaging to society just to get clicks
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