Physiognomists Anonymous
A compassionate inquiry regarding a certain sensitive young man.
A Star is Born
The commercial success of GLP agonists have forced a culture-wide renegotiation of beauty standards. In the past decade, much effort was expended towards the abolition of taste. But, no more! After a decade of hectoring everybody to artificially proclaim that the fat and ugly were not so, it turns out: Yes! Looks do matter.
It’s something we’ve all known by the marrow of our bones, and though it is entirely obvious… isn’t it such a relief to be able to state the obvious? Short and fat still wants tall and fit. Tall and fit does not want short and fat.
Duh.
However, as banal and self-evident as this “new insight” is, it does actually reflect a change in the zeitgeist’s ideals. We’ve beheld the fat models for about a decade, and so their star rose. Now that they have been displaced, a new star is to rise.
Enter Clavicular.
Clavicular is a controversial streamer who garnered his following by the promotion of looksmaxxing; the idea that physical attractiveness is the core determinant on one’s lot in life, and the practice of enhancing one’s looks by any means necessary. For Clavicular, “any means necessary” is taken literally and seriously. At the ripe age of 20, Clavicular has already done multiple steroid cycles, TRT, GLPs, and meth to curb his appetite. Consequently, he reports that he is “currently infertile.”
In a way, nothing he has done is groundbreaking. Destroying one’s body in pursuit of beauty is a tale as old as time. Models have been using coke to stay lean since they knew about it and bodybuilders do all sorts of shit with their hormones to bulk. Looks matter, and drugs help. Nothing new. What is novel is candidly advising regular people to do all of the extreme practices for advantages in completely normal arenas.
The vernacular of the looksmaxxing culture has terminology to describe this: softmaxxing and hardmaxxing.
To softmax is basically normal health and grooming advice. Brush your teeth twice a day, shower regularly, eat a salad, and go on a run.
Boring!
To hardmax is basically when your pursuit of beauty has become a Faustian bargain. Surgeries, hormonal therapy, appetite suppressants, and spending your college loan money on such things.
Exciting!
Clavicular’s proposition is a fairly simple one: since looks are the most determinant input into a life, why would I not be using every possible avenue to enhance my attractiveness? The simple retort would be that it is doubtful that looks are the most determinant factor in life, and they are certainly not the sole determinant factor. Like, I dunno, maybe being marginally more attractive for a few years is not worth jeopardizing your entire bloodline.
But I digress.
FRIEDLAND: Where do you rank male beauty in like—the kind of scale of what’s important? Like…
CLAVICULAR: The highest.
FRIEDLAND: Like higher than uh— like, uh— like kindness, or something.
CLAVICULAR: Yes.
While Clavicular’s ideals have relevance to the shifting discourse about beauty, I suspect that his unique appeal comes from much of a character he is. I hate to say it, but the guy is entertaining as all hell. He’s just so weird!
For instance, take a look at this thread he posted in 2024:
“I dread talking to people IRL, even if it’s for 30 seconds. Id do anything to avoid those awkward, meaningless exchanges.
Here’s how I say 50 words or less per day.
I wake up 30 minutes earlier than I have to, so that I don’t have to see my parents in the morning. I get up at 6 am for school even though I don’t start for like 2 hours after that. I just sit in my car and wait for it to start.
Don’t walk into class first or last, both of which draw attention, which I don’t want. I just walk in the middle of the pack, so no one notices.
Sit in the middle of the room, sitting in the back may cause the teacher to cold call you to try to catch you not paying attention, sitting in the middle has allowed me to never get called on for a question the entire year.
Keep eye contact with the teacher and divert your attention when she looks at you to another person. Also never use your phone when your not supposed to, she will go out of her way to embarrass you.
Don't follow anyone on instagram, this will make it awkward to walk by them. Am I supposed to greet this person now?? I dont wanna talk to you!!
Dont try to make small talk, then it is custom to greet people the next day. Just ignore everyone.
NEVER PARTICIPATE IN CLASS DISCUSSIONS
Start counting your words, you shouldn't be saying more than 50-100 words per day. I have gone entire days without speaking before, this should be your goal.
When walking into a room, dont make eye contact with ANYONE. If need be just give them a nod and walk the other way
When I get home I try to go straight to my room without seeing my parents, I always greet my dog though because I love her.
this is the only female I will ever feel a connection too, i care greatly for my dog because she gets so happy when I come home from school!
When I go to have my pre workout meal, I eat it at an obscure time to avoid overlapping dinner with the rest of my family who are always home.
At the gym always wear a hoodie and sweatpants, dark colors to be unapproachable.
NEVER WEAR DEODORANT TO THE GYM, no one asks you to work in ever if you smell really bad. Only do this at the gym not anywhere else because it draws attention.
When I get home, i go straight to my room to come on looksmax.org or incels.is for the rest of the night. Sometimes I watch a movie!
I use to have a therapist but I stopped going because of how dreadful it is. They constantly try to bluepill you and warp your sense of reality.”
-Clavicular
One user responded:
I believe this exchange accounts for a perfect summation of why looksmaxxing is a thing, why Clavicular is currently the face of it, and why Clavicular’s antics are so prone to garner engagement. Looksmaxxing seems to have become a thing because of poor social skill, and Clavicular is a very extreme case of such. Practically the philosophical object of the culture. A very attractive man, but pitifully socially inhibited. Super representative. And so, he does just about the entire catalogue of cosmetic enhancement procedures to compensate for his poor social skills.
In a way, Clavicular is a success story of the culture. He does have suitors who will approach him on merits of his looks alone. But inasmuch as he is still socially crippled, these interactions end up being just as peculiar as the mindset that produced it. The results end up being quite entertaining.
Let’s demonstrate:
Suppose you have a patient with an anxiety disorder. Let’s call him “Braden.” Braden’s condition inhibits his prosocial behavior because he’s just too shy and to awkward to speak. At best, he exhibits social passivity and at worst, anti-social tendencies. Social passivity is inherently the opposite of social activity. As social activity is usually a necessary precursor to sexual activity, social passivity will usually be concurrent with sexual inactivity.
Hence, sexual frustration.
In a clinical setting, the first-line treatment for an anxiety disorder is exposure therapy. By repeatedly exposing the patient to the anxiety trigger, you gradually desensitize their response over time. But Braden is a tough case. Treatment resistant. He’s insistent that his unwillingness to speak to people is not the primary issue, and is externalizing the locus of control to his looks (something which is largely outside of him control). Not uncommon. Disorders do not materialize if the patient’s native patterns of thought do not reflexively reenforce pathological thought processes.
Unfortunately, Braden is quite paranoid. He doesn’t even believe you want to help him. He actually believes you are in leagues with a very cruel world, and have conspired with the rest of society to sabotage him. He refuses treatment, and goes on about his very pathological day.
Now, he’s out in the world, with nothing pushing back on his beliefs. He still refuses to talk to people. His primary social contact is a culture that also is very uncomfortable talking to people, and their commonality is the idea that if they improve their looks, people will come talk to them, without having to do anything. Assured in his notion that all he has to do is look better to have better dating outcomes, he starts using steroids to get buff.
It works… sorta.
Braden, recently “ascended,” has gotten exactly what he wanted. Pretty girls will now approach him without him having to exhibit much social effort. A bashing success! But he’s still very uncomfortable in social settings. His primary expertise is legally sketchy body-modification and cruel assessment of physical attractiveness. He doesn’t have a lot to talk about, and the only topics he has comfort and expertise in are prone to offend, humiliate, and destabilize any woman that decides to speak to him. Admittedly, these can be short-term aphrodisiacs, but are longitudinally prone to produce either relationship failure, or very dysfunctional relationships.
The girls come up to compliment him on his looks. Great! He’s in his element now. Proud of his work, he talks shop, promptly informing them that it’s a combination of hormone therapies, methamphetamines, diabetes medication, and whacking his face with a hammer.
The girls are rather alarmed and a few have the ick. But at least he still “mogs.” A few peel off, but as he is quite the physical specimen, two very pretty girls remain interested. Braden, feeling rejected, laughs it off, telling the girls that their friends who left were “mid anyway.” Both girls are even more puzzled, having thought all of their friends were quite attractive people. But, they have some intrigue about Braden’s seemingly exacting taste. Perhaps, if they hear him out, they might get an ego boost. After all, he did just suggest that they were prettier than their already cute friends.
Curiosity gets the better of them, and they ask Braden what he thinks of their looks. Confidently, he responds that one of them has a deformed jaw that would cost tens of thousands of dollars to fix, and that the other has some what drooping eyelids that can be remedied by a few at home procedures, with his help. Neither girl had ever considered either of these things to be a problem before. The one with the “deformed jaw” is understandably incensed, and leaves in a huff. But the one with the “drooping eyes,” bless her wounded heart, is relieved that Braden thinks she “would be cute” and that he’s happy to help her be attractive to him.
They start a relationship.
Their dates are… weird. They consist mostly of Braden livestreaming their DIY injections and facelifts. Also, meth abuse. Progressively, they become more and more unhappy. Is it the shame pact that they are in? Or is it the way the amphetamines are destroying their pleasure circuit? Is that still a shame pact? Who can really say? Whatever it is, it is ruining them, and after 6 months of being together, they decide to call it quits.
Clavicular repeats the process.
If TLC knew that “My 600lb Life” could have an equally successful show about orthorexia, they would have greenlit the show before Clavicular’s first steroid cycle.
My Very Own Clavicular
The day I met a bonesmasher was the day I learned I was getting old.
I met the guy in a group chat for incoming students, and we started talking because a few of the students wanted to see a concert before school started. At the time, he was little more than a perfect stranger. The first thing I learned about him was that he liked Kanye West. The second thing I learned about him was that he hated “kikes,” “trannies,” and “faggots.” The third thing I learned about him was that he was a looksmaxxer.
Needless to say, I was nonplussed by this first impression.
Still, I was beyond intrigued. For someone so expressly bigoted, he was endearingly open with me. We had bonded over a shared awareness of fashion and hip-hop, and he would casually share his looksmaxxing philosophy with me. Inevitably, the cruel calculus he’d expound upon would result in me catching strays, and I would politely inform him that he was talking to a “subhuman,” who was not white, not <10% body fat, not 6 feet tall, and not jacked.
Of course, he didn’t really care.
In my early conversations with the guy, I was acquainted with a plethora of arcane practices to enhance one’s attractiveness such as a raw meat diet, sunning your genitals, and light blunt force trauma to the jaw (aka bonesmashing). He touted this regimen as what one can do to “ascend.”
I’m pretty much where I was before I met him.
While I was unconvinced of either the validity or the necessity of these routines, I remained fascinated by the transparency he had about how psychologically mutilating his outlook was. He did not recommend it. He spoke about looksmaxxing with the reservation a special forces veteran would have for serving: a blend of smug pride and sincere warning. He characterized his “transformation” as married to a psychological point of no return, where one’s perception is so totally marred by vigilance for physical flaws that it could only have the effect of making someone permanently sadder. A sort of analogue to operator syndrome. He remarked, only half-jokingly, that the self-imposed criticism was so atrocious that it could easily result in suicide.
Despite the bravado of his “most people cannot survive what it it takes” attitude, I recall feeling pity. Not in a “I am better than you” kind of way, but more in the sense that I could see that he had sustained a severe psychological wound unbefitting of anyone his age. I hoped that he would get to a point where he would not have to clutch it so actively.
My guess was that his wound was simple and his response was convoluted and confusing. Many such cases when someone feels they have something to hide. But for all of his -isms, he just seemed like a closeted gay guy.
Even before I met the guy in person, there were a lot of tells.
He would often respond in voice messages, which, in my experience, was something only girls would do.
When a city was mentioned, he would appraise it saying, “Lots of pretty girls there,” as if you could find yourself in a metropolis of more than a quarter million people and be at a loss for a fuckable person.
He mentioned that he loved going to raves, even though they were “full of drug addicts, trannies and fags,” all of which he claimed to despise. And not to beat a dead horse, but of course they were full of drug addicts, trannies and fags. That’s who raves are for. So like, why was he there?
There was always something kinda fishy about how he expressed his attraction to girls. It always felt performative. A little like an alien doing a shitty imitation of a human.
Hello, fellow man! You can tell I’m of your kind by how I ingest my caloric intake through my lower head hole.
It felt too clinical. I might understand “hip to waist ratios,” but when I see a fat ass, I don’t bring up the low-likelihood of a still birth. Because of course I don’t do that!
If you need help, the apt reaction is this:
My suspicion about looksmaxxing is that its practitioners have come up with this incredibly ornate ruleset for how to judge if someone is attractive because they don’t relate to a much simpler and more reliable test:
Did my dick flinch?
Why would anyone have to study “attractiveness” in such a sterile fashion if they had any healthy relationship to their sexuality? It just seems so… nutless.
After measuring the gap between your pupils, and assessing your canthal tilt, I’ve concluded that you are mid and dysgenic, and thus, I don’t want to fuck you.
What a long walk for a short drink of water!
Gosh, isn’t that a lot of steps to decide they don’t want pussy? Don’t they know that most people don’t have to actively think about whether they should be horny? That thinking with your dick is a euphemism for not thinking at all? Why are they doing a geometry test every time they consider sex? If they were regularly getting laid, isn’t that way too much thought to contribute to someone you already didn’t want to fuck?
Put the skull calipers away, and stop scaring the hoes, weirdo!
Sweet as a Sugar Plum
I remember the exact moment when I became genuinely convinced that he was gay.
It was during orientation week. The school had decided that we would have mandatory student housing, so we were all just moving in and getting to know each other. People were all very excited to share their personalities through their living spaces. As somebody who felt relatively settled in with a guitar, a few changes of clothes, no bed-sheets, and some boy-dinner (a 40 of Olde English and a pack of long Newports), these people’s curiosity baffled me. I was not particularly interested in learning about them, nor did I care to share too much about me.
Save for one…
How could I pass up the looksmaxxing, Kanye-loving, homophobic Nazi?
He invited me to his place (pause), and I simply could not refuse his offer. As he walked me back to his dorm, he started giving me the new racist-chud DLC pack. “Keyed” is the new “based.” To “ascend” is to gain the ability to “mog.” Jingo lingo bingo makes me a pretty pink flamingo!
Something like that, anyways.
We got to his place, and the room greeted me with a lovely, Philips Hue-red mood lighting, that he presumably kept on at all times. Without doxxing this guy by the layout of his room, I can just say that—to a person who had been sleeping directly on a nylon-webbing, piss-proof hospital mattress for the better part of a week—he had all his ducks in order. Rugging, wall-mounting, supplemental furniture… you name it and he had it. I could not think of a more maximalist room-setup than what he had done in the past week.
Honestly… pretty tasteful!
We sat on the floor because it was still just a bedroom with only one chair. I sat criss-cross applesauce, reflecting my childlike curiosity about flamboyant neo-Nazis. He sat—um, kind of like…
I mean—I ain’t gay, but bedroom eyes are bedroom eyes…
Moving on.
I ask him about his roommates because I’m intensely curious about how he reacts to people who spend relatively little time considering the contents of Hitler apologia. By this point I’d noticed a pattern. We’d be talking about somebody perfectly pleasant before he’d suddenly interrupt himself.
“But (sharp inhale)... they’re Jewish.”
So naturally, I assumed he’d despise his roommates.
What I actually got was:
“Oh, they’re all super sweet guys! I think we’re gonna get along really well. Yesterday, I baked them cookies and they really liked them. That made me really happy.”
Cookies!?
Now… I’m locked in. This guy isn’t weird because he’s a Nazi. He’s just genuinely weird! I had half a mind to ask him who was the resident baker for the SS potlucks, but I was afraid it would blow my cover. After all, I was killing it for the past 20 minutes with this flow:
He’s calm. Behaving without acting.
I’m welcome in his natural habitat. Observing. Taking mad notes, brother.
CLAV GUY: What about your roommates? Do you like them?
ME: Umm… you know, I’m not too sure. Although, there is one guy who’s a producer. Loves Kanye. I think he’ll be fun to talk to this year.
CLAV GUY (with an ever-so-slight, elongated, upward lilt at the end): Oh yeah?
I almost couldn’t contain myself. I thought, “This soon? Damn… I’m goood. Dialed this guy.” I had not heard the gay voice until this moment, because this was the first time I heard him speaking softly. After all, he, with graceful hospitality, had been pouring me a hot cup of Nazi tea.
From then on, every word he said had an unmistakeable fagcent.
I was convinced.
The Emperor Has No Hoes!
You know, I thought if I shared my research, we could all reach consensus. My data was good. Evidence was mounting.
Not so.
Not even a little in the beginning.
“Him? No way, dude! He’s always talking about which girls are pretty! Also, he hates gay people.”
My suspicion was that the school’s God-awful gaydar was a consequence of it being a very right-wing school. Quite homophobic. Because every gay dude lived in hiding from them, they simply had no reference set for modeling closeted gay guy-isms. Meanwhile, my Cali-native ass was pulling my hair out like:
THIS IS ARCHETYPAL!
I knew he was gay by how he groped me!
The data got bigger and bigger. A pretty girl in his orbit for literal months with no moves made. Way too many “homiesexual” jokes. Kicking girls out of his two-seater because “you know I gotta put the homies first.”
Huh?!?
Even the way he lost his virginity was sus.
CLAV GUY: So, I lost my virginity…
ME (locking the fuck in): Ahh, nice. What’d you think?
CLAV GUY: Uhh, you know, I don’t really know.
ME: Don’t know? What do you mean “you don’t know?”
CLAV GUY: Well, first let me show you what she looks like (pulls out phone to display the most vanilla-hot IG model to ever search engine optimize).
ME (to myself): Objectively irrelevant social credit-seeking, but a truly rich data point. Noted.
CLAV GUY: So anyways, we had been dating for a few weeks and she kept asking to have sex. I kept putting it off, cause I didn’t really want to do it, but after like the 6th time, she kinda just threw herself on me and forced me to. So I was like, “Eh, alright, I guess.” Anyways, I ghosted her right after, and I feel kinda bad about it.
That’s cause you were sexually assaulted, my guy!
ME: I guess I can understand that. I’d be pretty put off by that behavior. Did you like her?
CLAV GUY: She was pretty.
ME (probing): What else did you like about her?
CLAV GUY: Well, she was tall. She was also pretty high-IQ.
ME (to myself): Noted.
ME: So what’s next for you?
CLAV GUY: Well, since I ghosted her, I’ve just been pumping and dumping everybody. It’s kinda bad. I don’t really know why I do it.
ME: Are you at least having fun?
CLAV GUY: Mmmm… I guess.
ME (charting a new course): You want to be married, right? What qualities would you want in a partner?
CLAV GUY: Well, I’d want her to be tall. Pretty. Traditional. High-IQ.
ME (to myself): What the hell is this, the specifications for a park bench?
ME: What about her personality?
CLAV GUY: What do you mean?
ME (in anticipatory suspense): Like, does it matter to you if she’s talkative? Do you want her to be outgoing or introverted? Sensitive or practical? What kind of girl do you think you could mesh with?
CLAV GUY: Hmm, I’ve never really thought about that!
ME (to myself): JINGO LINGO BINGO!
CLAV GUY: What about you?
ME: Dark sense of humor. If I can’t think openly around her, it’s going to be an unhappy household. Also a dealbreaker if she isn’t kind.
CLAV GUY: Interesting…
ME (looking to validate conclusions): What about your friends? Who are you close to, and why do you like them?
CLAV GUY: Well, with Skylar… I don’t know how to put it. He’s got this ability to say something absurd, with just the right amount of deadpan inflection to kill me every time. And Thomas, his laugh is so distinctive. You know how he smiles with his whole face when he laughs? Ah man, its infectious! And you’d think he was just a class clown, but he’s always got me thinking about new things. As for Isaac, [GOES ON ABOUT A BITCH].
Noted.
Skull-Calipers, Revisited
After all my data, people still remained steadfastly unconvinced. So, who really knows if the guy is really gay? (I do! He is!)
What I do know is that he could spend twenty minutes telling me why one of his friends was impossible not to love, and struggle to give me a single reason he’d want to marry a woman besides the fact that she looked good standing upright.
Whatever was going on in his head, that seemed like the more interesting pathology.
And this brings me right back to looksmaxxing. As a refresher, lets look at it’s two major functions:
Substituting attraction
Substituting seduction
The way it is able to achieve this is through objective systematization. Facial symmetry, relative proportions of features, inter-pupillary distance… these are all measurable qualities. Suppose you didn’t know how attractive others were, and you didn’t know how to engage with them either. You can know, with some decent certainty in the upper-boundaries, how hot someone will generally be considered to be. Apply that to people, and you can make sure you don’t date someone who is “chopped.” Apply it to yourself, and you can make yourself so physically conspicuous that other people initiate the conversation for you. I’m not gonna lie. In certain circumstances, I could see the utility.
But why would the circumstance be that you need a chart to tell you who is attractive? Why do you need “aura?” Why do you need to be a measurable statistical outlier of a specimen in order to connect with someone? Plenty of average looking people get by with little more than “hello.” Why do you need that someone to also be a measurable statistical outlier before you would greenlight the relationship? Wouldn’t you have a feeling if they were “chopped?” A different one if they were “mog?”
You see, my issue with the looksmaxxers is not that they’re wrong, but rather that they aren’t even wrong. They are simply speaking on a different subject matter than the rest of us.
Where most of us would ask, “Do I like this person? Do they like me?” looksmaxxers instead ask, “Am I generally acceptable and regarded as a trophy? Are they generally acceptable and regarded as a trophy?” Do they have an accurate predictive modeling structure of their domain? Probably to some extent, but on a way deeper level…
Who the hell cares?
The vast majority of us already have feelings about who’s hot and who’s not. It animates us. It justifies itself. It’s not even a negotiable. And so, the vast majority of us will likely pair up without ever having to consult our rulers and protractors.
What does looksmaxxing offer as a positive augmentation to this?
Huh… what a weird way to relate to people.
It’s just so patently absurd. The purported aim of this movement is to help people find sex… by convincing everybody that everybody is butt-fugly? Do these people know why people want to have sex? I swear, their whole schtick is sitting on their hands in the peanut gallery, ranting about how all of humanity is somehow below itself.
As advertised, it doesn’t make logical sense.
As advertised, it doesn’t make practical sense.
However as a post-hoc rationalization of an anti-libidinal defense mechanism, I think it makes perfect sense.
So, the question I leave for looksmaxxers is “Are you talking to me or are you talking to yourself?”
Perfect analysis of very confusing behaviors!
Gem