NZ Skeptics Articles

Clavicular: Looksmaxxing, Mogging and Bonesmashing

Mark Honeychurch - 11th May 2026

Clavicular, better known to his mum and dad as Braden Peters, is a 20 year old internet influencer who promotes an extreme beauty regime known as “looksmaxxing”.

Clavicular is currently the most well-known and popular looksmaxxer on social media, with his howto videos and live streams garnering millions of views. Now, before you start complaining that you don’t know what looksmaxxing is and you’re fed up with the youth of today inventing new words, I’m going to try to explain the word to you - along with a list of other words that are either obscure, made up, or used in a non-standard or non-obvious way within the looksmaxxing community:

Glossary

Looksmaxxing - by the end of this list, you’re probably going to be annoyed with “maxxing” as a suffix. Looksmaxxing is a collection of different ways in which you can supposedly improve your physical appearance. For the looksmaxxing community, the “maxxing” suffix is not only used for the overall process of making yourself look more beautiful/handsome, but also for each of the constituent parts.

Heightmaxxing - a mixture of ways to make yourself look taller, such as adding a pair of folded up socks inside your shoes as makeshift insoles. If you have to take your shoes off in front of a woman when you get home, vantagepointmaxxing can come to your rescue to help you maintain the deceit of being tall. If you prepare your house before going out for the evening, strategically placing boxes and other small, hard objects on the floor around the house, you can then stand on these items in a non-obvious way to maintain your deception. There’s also tiptoemaxxing, where you can pull your trousers down a little so that the bottoms of your trouser legs cover your heels, and you can then tiptoe without it being obvious.

Shouldermaxxing - for Clavicular, this involves either using a set of exercises to work on his shoulder muscles, or at times when he’s not focused on his shoulders at the gym for a while, sticking skin-coloured bra inserts on his shoulders to make them seem bigger than they are.

Methmaxxing - this is the use of the highly addictive, illegal recreational drug methamphetamine in order to lose weight. Apparently it’s useful because it gives you a whole day of appetite suppression.

Drugmaxxing - separate to methmaxxing, this is using a cocktail of over-the-counter and prescription medications to help the maxxer become relaxed and confident. Apparently this is required for Clavicular as, in his estimation, he’s “autistic” and not very good at socialising and talking with women.

UVmaxxing - This is just getting a suntan. I think we already have a word for this, sunbathing. But I guess UVMaxxing sounds much more masculine.

Dickmaxxing - okay, okay, by now you probably get the point that pretty much anything can be a part of this idea just by adding “maxxing” to the end of it. And, for those who are curious, this one involves injecting experimental chemicals into the base of your penis.

Jestermaxxing - If you don’t have the time to dedicate to all of the above, or if you’re so unfortunate looking that even 10 different types of maxxing can’t help you, you can instead choose jestermaxxing, where you play the fool and make women laugh as an alternative to wooing them with dashing good looks.

Chewmaxxing, Hairmaxxing, Sleepmaxxing, Skinmaxxing, Framemaxxing, Scentmaxxing, Statusmaxxing, Moneymaxxing, Sharkmaxxing, SEAmaxxing - feel free to look these up, they’re all real things - at least for some kind of definition of real.

Ascending - reaching a state of physical perfection, something that many looksmaxxers are striving for.

Mogging - This phrase originates from the term “Alpha Male of the Group”, which was later shortened to AMOG, and then turned into a verb. When you mog someone, you’re better at something than they are (more Alpha). Looksmaxxers like Clavicular spend a lot of time considering which life metrics they’re mogging others around them with (money, status, intelligence, looks, etc), and in which ways they’re being mogged by others.

Hypergamy - a posh term for “marrying up”, or improving your state in life by marrying someone who has a higher social status than you do. Clavicular drops this term into conversations liberally, and thinks that women are overwhelmingly partnering with people above their status.

Incel - Involuntary Celibate, a term used by young single men to describe their status as someone unable to find a female partner.

Chad - The opposite of an incel, a man who is naturally endowed with the physical and social status that allows him to have everything he wants - women, money, fame, etc.

The Halo Effect - when someone judges you based on what they know about you, and extends that positive or negative judgement to other aspects of your life, like your intelligence, kindness, etc. However, Clavicular has warped this idea to make it all about beauty - if you’re beautiful, people will consider you to be perfect. He goes so far as to say that if Charlie Kirk was more good-looking, and had spent time looksmaxxing, he wouldn’t have been assassinated last year as the gunman would have had more empathy for him.

Biohacking - the use of experimental, unconventional or illegal, often extreme, treatments to alter your body’s physiology.

Wolff’s Law - this is the idea that areas of bone that are put under stress will become stronger in response. This will become relevant later on, when we talk about “bone smashing”.

There are many more terms used by looksmaxxers and other communities inside the “manosphere”, and this handy document has a list of many of them.

The Technique

So, with all of these terms and their definitions in mind, what’s looksmaxxing all about?

Let’s take Clavicular as our prime example. He thinks that women are all partnering with Chads - rich, beautiful, successful men - and that because of this there are no women left for less naturally handsome men like him. He’s trying to lift himself out of an incel life by using a wide variety of medical treatments and trickery, collectively known as looksmaxxing, and then relying on the halo effect to fool women into thinking of him as a viable partner, or “Chad”, that they will want to date and eventually marry. He considers being physically attractive to be the “most important thing in life”, and he’s willing to fake being naturally beautiful in order to get what he wants.

Clavicular seems to be missing at least a couple of issues with this thought process. Firstly, what he considers to be beautiful is not necessarily what other people would agree with as being attractive. And secondly, even if the Halo Effect works the way Clavicular assumes it does, and people assume he’s smart, rich, and more because of his looks alone, that effect will only last until someone gets to know him better. At that point, they’ll see beyond the facade and be able to judge him based on knowledge of his personality and bank account, rather than using guesswork.

The Regime

So, what’s Clavicular’s beauty regime, and how evidence-based is it? Let’s look at some of the treatments he’s mentioned in interviews and promoted on his social media channels:

Clavicular has been taking testosterone since he was 14, and apparently managed to avoid his parents’ attempts to stop him using it by renting a PO Box and having it shipped there rather than to his parents’ home address. It seems that Clavicular’s parents’ involvement in the bodybuilding scene may have normalised the idea of taking the drug, despite their overt disapproval.

I’ve written about Mewing in a previous article. It’s a discredited technique that’s meant to strengthen your jawline and make you look handsome simply by pushing your tongue against the roof of your mouth for an extended period of time.

Bonesmashing is almost as brutal as it sounds. You use a blunt instrument, such as a hammer or your own fist, to repeatedly hit yourself in the face - specifically the cheekbones and jawbone. The idea here is that Wolff’s Law will make your bones stronger if they have to repair themselves after you cause microfractures. There’s no evidence that this kind of repeated damage to your face actually creates microfractures, although there is good evidence that it’s likely to cause long-term damage to your nerves and skin. I wonder if maybe looksmaxxers have got the wrong end of the stick on this one, and have conflated the idea of having a “strong” jawline and/or cheekbones with the idea of having stronger bones in your jaw and cheeks. Of course, in the first sense, strong is a synonym for well-defined or chiseled, and has nothing to do with how structurally strong your bones are - it’s more about having prominent bones and very little fat under the skin in your face. Kids, don’t do this at home. Or at a beauty parlour or health studio. Or anywhere, for that matter.

Face stretching is a way to supposedly improve the look of your jawline by repeatedly pinching the skin over your jaw between your thumb and fingers and pulling it outwards.

Jaw lengthening is an elective surgery that Clavicular is planning to undergo soon. His top and bottom jaws will be broken on both sides, and metal screws will be used to create a gap that new bone will grow into, effectively extending his jaw forwards. He says that this will improve his attractiveness by “1.5 points”, on some totally arbitrary made-up points system.

Towel pulling is yet another attempt to improve the jawline, in this case by biting down hard on a towel and then trying to pull it forwards out of your mouth as hard as you can. From what I can find online, this is at least as likely to cause you issues with your jaw as it is to improve its look. And on top of that there are risks of damaging your teeth, creating chronic pain and more.

Clavicular injects peptides such as NAD+ and GHK-Cu regularly. NAD+ is supposed to help reduce ageing and make skin smoother, and GHK-Cu is meant to help improve both skin and hair. There’s also BPC-157 (which aids the body’s recovery from injury), Melanotan II (a tanning aid) and Tesamorelin (a growth hormone), amongst others. Most of these peptides are not yet approved for human use, and are still being actively studied.

I really shouldn’t have to explain that taking methamphetamine to lose weight is a very risky endeavour. But Clavicular seems happy to admit that he’s used this illegal drug as a get-thin-quick hack.

Dutasteride is used to avoid hair loss and boost testosterone. Side effects apparently include sexual dysfunction and face bloating.

Minoxidil is another hair loss treatment, with the most popular brand name being Regaine. It seems that hair loss is a major concern for looksmaxxers, and something worth treating even before it’s begun.

Accutane (generic name Isotretinoin) is an acne treatment - one of the more extreme ways of treating persistent acne. Looksmaxxers like Clavicular use this to not only treat any acne they might have, but also to improve the overall look of their facial skin.

Anavar (generic name Oxandrolone) is an anabolic steroid, used to help in increasing muscle mass. It’s impressive to see how muscle-bound some of the more influential looksmaxxers are, but a little less impressive when you realise that they’re using steroids and other drugs to do it the easy way.

Retatrutide is an experimental obesity treatment currently undergoing clinical trials. I’m not sure what this use this has for someone who’s not overweight.

Groups of looksmaxxing drugs are called “stacks”, and these combinations are considered to be superior to taking a single drug. As well as the chemicals listed above, there are stacks used for partying that include mood-altering chemicals. Clavicular’s current stack of choice is called the “pentastack”, and contains:

This combination of drugs seems to be used to both get high and to help increase confidence and mental acuity, as a crutch to help when talking with women. For Clavicular at least, he states that he is autistic and not naturally very good at socialising, and so he claims that the pentastack is a necessary part of his social life.

All of these treatments lead Clavicular to publicly state that he’s been made infertile. Much as this might not sound surprising, the evidence for this “fact” is just as solid as it is for the efficacy of many of his beauty treatments - that is to say he has no evidence whatsoever. He’s just asserted that he’s sterile, and as far as I can tell he hasn’t bothered to get any kind of fertility test to find out one way or another.

The Result

I will admit that, at least in many of the photos and videos shared online, many of these young men have managed to put in enough effort that their looks are what would generally be described as handsome. How much of it is genuine, and how much is a combination of make-up, prosthetics, lighting, camera filters and more is hard to say, but I’ll concede that I’m no Doryphoros myself, and they look a damn sight more attractive than I do!

However, as much as I don’t want to be accused of an ad hominem attack, I figure that critiquing how these people look is fair game given that they’re all about the looks. As such, I can’t help but see parallels between the chiseled appearance many of them are aiming for and some popular comedic takes on the ideal male form. Androgenic, 24, is an Australian looksmaxxer who is friends with Clavicular, and was with him when he recently overdosed. Below I’ve compared two pictures of Androgenic with over-the-top handsome versions of cartoon characters Robin from Teen Titans Go! and Squidward from Spongebob Squarepants, because the parallels are just too striking (and funny) to ignore.

It needs to be kept in mind that Clavicular is only 20 years old, and Androgenic is 24. There’s no way of knowing how these young men would have looked without all of their tinkering. Their claims that the pain and inconvenience they’re going through is improving their looks isn’t backed up by any evidence, it seems to be nothing more than a case of wishful thinking. Looksmaxxers will often show pictures of themselves from a few years ago looking unattractive and awkward. But these pictures are usually of them at age 13-15, when they were in the throes of puberty, covered in acne, and with a face that is only just starting to mature. Of course there’s a good chance they’re going to look more handsome in their early 20s than they did at 14, but it’s laughable to try to attribute most of that change to anything other than the simple passage of time.

Another angle I think these young influencers are likely not paying enough attention to is the long-term effects of their many, many biohacks. Because of their years of tinkering, by the time these guys are 40 I suspect they might find themselves looking like they’re old beyond their years. Even worse, they may end up looking like they’re both old and desperately trying to look young - a not particularly flattering look that can be seen among many ageing Hollywood movie stars who have the money to try to turn back the clock using copious amounts of plastic surgery. A recent image of 24 year old Androgenic out on the town in Brisbane, after someone snatched his hat and wig, shows that looksmaxxing is often just a thin veneer of beauty, and it doesn’t take much to pierce the veil:

Importantly, because these people are influencers with huge numbers of followers, it’s not just their own health and wellbeing they’re risking. Every affiliate link means that Clavicular, Androgenic, Syrian Psycho, Nocturnal Kent, ASU Frat Leader, Derb, Dr Mog, Rorz and others (yes, those are all real looksmaxxer names) make hundreds or thousands of dollars from their dubious advice. Too many young, impressionable followers are now hitting themselves in the face in an effort to improve their bone structure, and more are trying to purchase illegal pharmaceuticals off the internet and self-administer them. And millions of young, confused men are being told to see women as an enemy that needs to be conned and conquered, rather than being urged to think of them as human beings. I just hope that the social media algorithms that are feeding the young kids looksmaxxing content are also showing them some of the excellent take-down videos I’ve seen, where rational people not only ridicule the crazy “therapies” being used by looksmaxxers, but also supply evidence to back up why they’re not only likely to be ineffective, but also in some cases dangerous.

If you want to see some cringeworthy content from Clavicular, rather than his TikTok feed I’d recommend both the challenging Australian 60 Minutes interview (that Clavicular walked out of when he was asked about his friendship with Andrew Tate) and the much less critical Michael Knowles interview (I’ve mentioned Michael Knowles from the Daily Wire before, when I wrote about how he was scammed by Chris Langan into believing he’s the smartest man in the world):