2 hours ago
2
How’s your “jestermaxxing” game? Have you been “brutally frame-mogged” lately? If you’ve been finding this kind of online discourse even more impenetrable than usual, a 20-year-old content creator calling himself Clavicular is probably to blame.
Born Braden Peters, Clavicular is a manosphere-adjacent influencer who has recently broken containment for a string of high-profile controversies, including livestreaming himself apparently running over a pedestrian with his Tesla Cybertruck and being filmed chanting the lyrics to Kanye West’s Heil Hitler in a nightclub with the self-styled “misogynist influencer” Andrew Tate and the white nationalist commentator Nick Fuentes.
Before taking up with what some feel are among the worst men alive, Clavicular was known only as a “looksmaxxer”, a young man intent on optimising his physical attractiveness by frequently extreme measures (such as steroids, surgery and, er, taking a hammer to his jaw).
Yet Clavicular’s gonzo live streams and absurd lingo have seen him escape his subcultural silo, landing him a modelling gig at New York fashion week and a profile in the New York Times.
So where has he come from? And what does his rise mean for humanity?
1. He’s the internet’s most famous ‘looksmaxxer’
Peters came to prominence last year on the streaming platform Kick (like Twitch, but more laissez-faire with content moderation), where he now has nearly 180,000 followers. That’s dwarfed by his audience on TikTok which, at time of writing, is more than 760,000.
Clavicular’s niche is looksmaxxing, a practice of physical self-optimisation increasingly popular among young men. (His screen name refers to the collarbone, which is prized within that online community.) Having achieved a disquieting transformation himself, Peters first gained a following for posting about the process behind his hard-won face and physique, and the rewards he has allegedly reaped with women.
For a fee, Peters will also coach individuals on how to “ascend”, as he puts it, and become more handsome themselves, though lately his focus has shifted from looksmaxxing-specific content to streaming great stretches of his day-to-day life. Peters earned more than $100,000 (£74,000) from Kick last month alone; his most recent upload to the platform is more than nine hours long.
2. There’s very little he won’t do to look good …
Peters is notorious for the extreme lengths by which he claims to have achieved his chiselled appearance. By his own account, he is infertile as a result of years of steroid abuse, and uses methamphetamine to suppress his appetite. “It’s really not as bad as people think,” he told another Kick streamer last October.
According to the New York Times, Peters began looksmaxxing at 14, ordering testosterone and fat dissolvers on the internet and refining his vision by altering pictures of himself using Photoshop. His parents gave up trying to intervene, he said, when they realised “there was nothing that they could do to stop my ascension”.
He was subsequently expelled from college for possessing testosterone. These days, Peters’ goals extend to double jaw surgery. For greater facial harmony on a budget, he has endorsed smashing facial bones with a hammer – or, if you are really in “hardmaxxing” mode, your fist. “Bone smashing is legit,” Peters said in December, in conversation with the popular conservative podcaster Michael Knowles. It should go without saying that medical experts strongly advise against this.
3. … but it’s an ugly business
Having begun with “incels”, self-described “involuntary celibates” who see conventional attractiveness as a claim on women, looksmaxxing is considered a subculture within the online manosphere, defined by its hostility to feminism and belief in male supremacy.
In its pseudoscientific calculations and striving towards a physical ideal based in whiteness, looksmaxxing has also been criticised for reviving “eugenic beauty standards”. Peters has dismissed these accusations of racism as “dumb”, and defended his repeated use of the N-word as “not a racist thing”.
A Rolling Stone writer who paid to access Clavicular’s online academy reported finding a “godly colouring” routine for non-white looksmaxxers who got the “short end of the phenotype stick”. In the advice on translating physical attractiveness into sexual success, meanwhile, women are referred to as “targets”, “slayables” or “foids” (“female humanoids”), while followers (the “Clan”) are advised to “inch closer until your erection is her problem” or “guide her hand”.
Asked to comment on whether these techniques constituted sexual coercion, Peters responded: “Who the fuck is rolling stone magazine LOL”.
4. He ‘hates politics’, but is buddies with Andrew Tate
Peters claims to be apolitical, stating that he will endorse whichever party gives him “the fattest bag”. That’s not to say he doesn’t have opinions.
On the political commentator Michael Knowles’s podcast, Clavicular said he would vote for Democrat Gavin Newsom over US vice-president JD Vance because the latter was ugly, or “subhuman”, with a “recessed side profile”. (In the same interview, Peters described actor Sydney Sweeney as “malformed” with “eyes of doom.”)
While some have described Peters’ worldview as standard incel nihilism, he doesn’t seem all that invested in the aims of the manosphere. Peters’ affiliation with Tate, the “misogynistic influencer” accused of sex trafficking (who denies wrongdoing), and Fuentes, an avowed white nationalist, seems motivated by a shared love of shock value and online infamy rather than a mutual or coherent ideology. On the viral video showing Peters with Fuentes, Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate, chanting along to Heil Hitler in a Miami nightclub, Peters defended it as “just a song”.
5. The vernacular is key
Clavicular’s ridiculousness can make it hard to take him seriously – with his malign influence masked by his idiosyncratic argot.
Working on your personality, for example, is derided by Peters and his followers as “jestermaxxing”. If you “mog” someone, you are better looking than they are. If you “frame-mog” someone, your shoulders are superior to theirs. If you are “slaymaxxing”, you are having sex.
Like the ubiquitous 67 meme, the lingo is deliberately obscure to exclude “normies”, but it has increasingly been catching on, even in spheres that you’d really rather were more discerning. Last month, the US government’s Department of War tweeted: “Low cortisol. Locked in. Lethalitymaxxing.”
6. He’s courting controversy with all the subtlety of a Cybertruck
Clavicular’s profile has been boosted by a string of recent controversies, most originating from his own streams. In November, he broadcast himself seemingly injecting his then 17-year-old girlfriend with fat-dissolving peptides, calling himself “Dr Clav”.
The following month, he appeared to strike a pedestrian with his Tesla Cybertruck. “Is he dead? … Hopefully,” Peters said to his passenger. He later claimed that the man had been stalking him, and that he had been acting in self-defence. Peters has said he is a target for other content creators who want to piggyback off his profile by provoking him in public; others have suggested the incident was staged. It has proved difficult to verify independently.
Certainly, all attention is good attention, per the Clavicular worldview, and it has proved difficult to substantiate his controversies or even pin them on him.
It bears emphasising that Clavicular is not yet a celebrity, or even straightforwardly aspirational. He has even expressed doubts about his path, describing his life as a “fucking horror story” and expressing regrets about being expelled from college. “I wish I had that experience … I will never get to live the normal life, of a normal kid – so I’m going to try to mog.”
