What is jawmaxxing?

Summary

Podcast Summary: Search Engine – "What is Jawmaxing?"

Introduction

In this episode of Search Engine, host PJ Vogt delves into the intriguing and somewhat controversial topic of jawmaxing—a trend aimed at enhancing jawline aesthetics through specific exercises and practices. Joined by Internet culture reporter Ryan Broderick, they explore the origins, cultural implications, and mainstream adoption of jawmaxing, shedding light on its connections to online subcultures and modern masculinity.

Understanding Jawmaxing

Definition and Origins

Jawmaxing refers to a series of facial exercises intended to develop a more defined and masculine jawline. This practice stems from the broader concept of "maxing," a term popularized on platforms like Reddit and 4chan, which encompasses various forms of self-improvement aimed at maximizing one's physical appearance or capabilities.

“Jaw maxing is the act of trying to make your jaw look more masculine. The term jaw maxing comes from another term looks maxing. They're kind of related.”— Ryan Broderick [09:06]

The Chad and Gigachad Phenomenon

Central to the jawmaxing movement is the meme culture surrounding "Chads" and "Gigachads"—archetypal representations of hyper-masculine men with pronounced facial features. Originating from 4chan, these memes serve both as parody and aspirational figures for young men seeking to enhance their attractiveness.

“The gigachad idea is like 4chan. Many years ago, 4chan users came up with like the idea of the perfect man, the chad.”— Ryan Broderick [10:17]

Orthotropics and the Mew Family

John Mew’s Orthotropics

The foundation of jawmaxing lies in orthotropics, a theory developed by British orthodontist Dr. John Mew in the 1960s. Orthotropics posits that facial structure is not solely determined by genetics but significantly influenced by environmental factors such as diet and tongue posture.

“In the 1960s, a British orthodontist named Dr. John Mew comes up with an idea that he's calling orthotropics.”— Ryan Broderick [18:12]

Mike Mew’s Contributions

Dr. John Mew’s son, Dr. Mike Mew, continued his father's work into the digital age, promoting techniques like mewing—a specific tongue posture aimed at reshaping the jawline. Despite skepticism from the mainstream dental community, Mike leveraged platforms like YouTube to reach a broader audience, inadvertently intertwining orthotropics with online subcultures seeking self-improvement.

“His idea is orthotropics... in Mike’s videos, over time, reflect that they now have proper YouTube thumbnails... this is mewing.”— PJ Vogt [26:00]

Spread Through Online Communities

Incel Culture and Red Pill Theory

Jawmaxing gained traction within incel (involuntarily celibate) communities, where young men, often disillusioned with traditional self-help and pickup artist cultures, found solace and a sense of improvement through these facial exercises. The movement provided a semblance of control over perceived unattractiveness, despite lacking scientific validation.

“Incels were like wholesome Little Angels in 2012... but I think they were becoming visible enough that a lot of strange people were like, I think I could make some money here.”— Ryan Broderick [31:45]

Mainstream Adoption and Influencer Impact

Influencers such as Astro Sky propelled jawmaxing into mainstream awareness by showcasing dramatic jawline transformations and endorsing products like specialized gums and jaw exercisers. These endorsements blurred the lines between genuine self-improvement and exploitative marketing, further entrenching jawmaxing in popular culture.

“Astro sky is this young man who... nearly has the face of an academic, except... for his jaw... It's like he's managed to construct in real life the bottom third of the Gigachad's face.”— PJ Vogt [26:00]

Sociocultural Implications

Impact on Young Men

The obsession with jawmaxing and related self-improvement trends places immense pressure on young men to conform to unrealistic standards of masculinity. This can exacerbate feelings of inadequacy and alienation, particularly in environments where genuine support and healthy role models are scarce.

“These boys are taking mewing seriously, but I wonder if it's not reached as big a stage as it has because of all the people who just find it funny.”— PJ Vogt [43:57]

Conspiracy and Pseudoscience

The movement intertwines with broader conspiracy theories about government inefficiency and medical establishment conspiracies, as exemplified by Mike Mew’s contentious relationship with traditional orthodontists. This blending of self-improvement with anti-establishment rhetoric fosters a fertile ground for pseudoscientific beliefs.

“The Mew family says that we can change the shape of our jaws without surgery or braces if our kids just follow the right diet and maintain the right tongue posture.”— PJ Vogt [20:32]

Conclusion and Reflections

PJ Vogt and Ryan Broderick conclude by reflecting on the complexities of jawmaxing as both a genuine self-improvement effort and a product of exploitative online cultures. They express concern for the vulnerable young men who seek validation through these practices and the broader implications for societal standards of masculinity.

“It's really hard and it just makes me a little bit like it makes me feel for them.”— PJ Vogt [48:10]

Notable Quotes

• “Jaw maxing is the act of trying to make your jaw look more masculine.”— Ryan Broderick [09:16]
• “There is a Donald Trump in every single town in America.”— Ryan Broderick [06:02]
• “Science is not done by consensus.”— Ryan Broderick [41:20]

Final Thoughts

This episode of Search Engine offers a comprehensive exploration of jawmaxing, highlighting its roots in orthotropics, its amplification through online communities, and its reflection of contemporary struggles with masculinity and self-worth. By dissecting the phenomenon through expert analysis and cultural critique, PJ Vogt and Ryan Broderick provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of how digital subcultures can influence real-world behaviors and perceptions.

Transcript

[PJ Vogt]

Before we start this week, I need your help. We need your questions for Allison Roman, chef, cookbook writer, the undisputed heavyweight champion of Thanksgiving. She is the host of the excellent podcast Solicited Advice. But we're bringing her to Search Engine and we need your questions for her. Not about the meal of Thanksgiving, but about all your questions around it, like the leftovers, the meals that come immediately after. How do you recover from the malaise? How do you begin to heal the soul of a fractured nation? To submit your question, go to searchengine Show. There's a forum there. This is gonna be a special segment only for our paid subscribers. It's gonna go on our Incognito Mode feed. So if you're not signed up, I mean, it's hard to imagine anyone's not signed up for Incognito Mode. The prices are so reasonable. But if for some reason you're not, you can do so now. If at Search Engine show, help me help you ask Allison Roman anything. Okay? As for this week's episode, our question what is jawmaxing and how did it go mainstream? After some ads, we call up Internet culture reporter Ryan Broderick. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by policygenius. Each new year is an opportunity to reflect and plan for the future, like setting career goals, making financial moves, and most importantly, ensuring your family is always taken care of, no matter what happens. With policygenius, you can find life insurance policies that start at just $292 per year for $1 million of coverage. Some options are 100% online and let you avoid unnecessary medical exams. Do you know that 40% of people wish they got life insurance at a younger age? Policygenius lets you compare quotes from America's top insurers side by side for free, with no hidden fees. Their licensed support team helps you get what you need fast so you can get on with your life. They answer questions, handle paperwork, and advocate for you throughout the process. Join the thousands of happy policygenius customers who have left five star reviews on Google and trustpilot. Secure your families tomorrow so you have peace of mind. Today. Head to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you can save. That's policygenius.com nerds. This episode is brought to you in part by Nerd Wallet Listener. A new year is finally here, and if you're anything like me, you've got a lot on your plate. Habits to build, travel plans to make, mocktail recipes to perfect. Good thing Our sponsor, NerdWallet, is here to take one thing off your plate. Finding the best financial products. Introducing NerdWallet's best of awards. List your shortcut to the best credit cards, savings accounts, and more. The nerds have done the work for you, researching and reviewing over 1,100 financial products to bring you only the best of the best. Looking for a balance transfer credit card with a 0% APR? They've got a winner for that. Or a bank account with the top rate to hit your savings goals? They've got a winner for that too. Know you're getting the best products for you without doing all the research yourself. So let NerdWallet do the heavy lifting for your finances this year and head over to their 2025 Build Best of Awards at NerdWallet.com awards to find the best financial products today. Hello, Ryan.

[Ryan Broderick]

Oh. Do you record the whole thing? Is that how you.

[PJ Vogt]

The whole thing? Maybe you're gonna say something charming and surprising. Yeah.

[Ryan Broderick]

I've been watching the Wire for the first time. Similar philosophy in that show. You gotta catch it on the Wire.

[PJ Vogt]

You should check out after you're done. There's this mob drama on hbo. It's really good, called the Sopranos.

[Ryan Broderick]

So I watched that for the first time, and then I was like, I want to stay in this world a little bit. So then I started watching the Wire.

[PJ Vogt]

What were you doing all the last 20 years?

[Ryan Broderick]

I'm sorry. I'm working class. So we didn't have HBO growing up. Wow. I didn't realize we were from different worlds like that.

[PJ Vogt]

What did you guys watch?

[Ryan Broderick]

My parents have very bad taste, I think.

[PJ Vogt]

I mean, my parents have impeccable taste, but I also sometimes watched stuff without them. Sometimes.

[Ryan Broderick]

I walked in last time I was home, I walked in on my dad watching Godfather Part 3. And he's like, this movie's pretty good, huh? And I was like, oh, okay. I think he literally was like, sofia Coppola is pretty good in this movie. I was like, oh, Jesus Christ.

[PJ Vogt]

Is. I've only seen. I've seen Godfather Part 1. I think I've seen most of Godfather Part 2. Three is the bad one, right?

[Ryan Broderick]

I've never seen the whole thing. I watched it between AD breaks with him. It didn't look good.

[PJ Vogt]

I've met your dad. Your dad has been on crypto islands.

[Ryan Broderick]

That's right, he has.

[PJ Vogt]

He's really such a charming guy.

[Ryan Broderick]

He's having a great time right now, now that his boy's back in the White House.

[PJ Vogt]

Oh, was he a Trump voter.

[Ryan Broderick]

Oh, he's always been a Republican. Yeah. I mean, he's, like, you know, normalish.

[PJ Vogt]

About it, but do you guys argue or do you just, like, agree to disagree?

[Ryan Broderick]

You know, I try to find places to argue with him, but it's, like, tiring. And sometimes just, like, I do this for a job. I don't need to do this when I'm with you. Like, I find it quite useful now that, like, you know, when I'm home, he takes me out to, like, a shitty dive bar full of, like, Joe Rogan guys because I understand their psychology perfectly now.

[PJ Vogt]

Oh, really?

[Ryan Broderick]

Oh, yeah. I mean, I've had so many conversations with these guys who are, like, deciding the future of our country now. And, like, I understand how they think and what they want. And it's not nearly as deep, I think, as people make it out to be.

[PJ Vogt]

What do you feel like you understand that, like, all the sort of New York Times political reporters who are hanging out at diners don't.

[Ryan Broderick]

There is a Donald Trump in every single town in America. Multiple, probably guys who just believe that, like, they should be allowed to do whatever they want. They're sick of dealing with, like, zoning regulations or, like, the light department or whatever it is. And so for Donald Trump, it's very inspiring for them to, like, be the Trump of their town. And it's not political. It's just like a power. It's like a. You're in your middle Ages and you don't want to listen to anybody.

[PJ Vogt]

You know, I had a moment this week. I had a moment this week. Can I tell you the moment that I had?

[Ryan Broderick]

You can tell the moment you had? Yeah.

[PJ Vogt]

I've got mold, I think, under my floorboards. And I was, like, trying to find a guy to deal with the mold. And I called the mold guy, and he was like, well, there's basically. New York State passed a regulation in 2016, apparently, that says you can't have a mold guy come to your house. You've gotta hire a different guy to come to your house and prepare, like, a plan for the mold guy to follow. And, like, the idea is they don't want mold guy guys going around ripping everybody off. So now there's the guy who makes the mold test and the guy who checks for the mold. But the guy who does the mold test, he was like, yeah, it's 500 bucks. And I was like, what?

[Ryan Broderick]

That's why we just gotta get rid of the Department of Education. You know, we just gotta. That's why Elon Musk has to make our government more efficient. No, but I do think there's something very radicalizing, unfortunately, about dealing with any single government regulation in America. Cuz they're all completely. I'm allowed to say this because I've lived in a country, you know, the UK is not exactly a efficient, but their government services are at least put together with a bit more thought. I've seen what could be.

[PJ Vogt]

Yeah.

[Ryan Broderick]

So I'm comfortable being like, America just like, maybe shouldn't have a government actually, because, like, we're really bad at it.

[PJ Vogt]

Okay, we'll stop this being a political podcast in 30 seconds. But I do just want to say I think the way I've been feeling this week has been the problem is like, the right is always just like the government, which we constantly sabotage sucks until we have no choice but to destroy it. And the left is like, the government should take care of everything. But also we have no curiosity about whether they're doing a good job, how to make them do a better job. It's just like we have Eric Adams for mayor in my city and we're running around being like, we should be in charge of everything because look what we did. Yeah. Now that we've solved the political polarization.

[Ryan Broderick]

Issue in America, I think we've got it. Yeah.

[PJ Vogt]

Can you introduce yourself?

[Ryan Broderick]

My name is Ryan Broderick. I am the author of the Garbage Day newsletter and the host of the new Panic World podcast.

[PJ Vogt]

Ryan's been covering the Internet about the same amount of time I have, which is about 70 years, if you like stories about fringe Internet phenomena and the way an idea can hop from the outside of the culture towards its mainstream. Ryan's a person whose work often gives me that these days. About a week ago, Ryan texted me and suggested that search engine ought to try to make sense of jaw maxing, a trend I'd only ever noticed peripherally, mainly among online subcultures of teenage boys. And so here we were. Okay, so what is jaw maxing?

[Ryan Broderick]

Bryan, Jaw maxing is a facial exercise you can do. I mean, you're like me. You've got a JD Vance chin. It could be better. Right? You could make it more by J.D.

[PJ Vogt]

Vance, you mean we both have soft round.

[Ryan Broderick]

We have soft millennial features. Yeah.

[PJ Vogt]

Yes.

[Ryan Broderick]

We look good in an American Apparel hoodie, but not so much, you know, as a mega chad.

[PJ Vogt]

Yeah.

[Ryan Broderick]

So if you want your face to look more like a mega chad, a gigachad, if you will, you can theoretically do this facial exercise to give yourself a sharper, more defined chin.

[PJ Vogt]

And wait, can I actually ask you about megachads and gigachads, so I have stepsons.

[Ryan Broderick]

Sure. You're the dad that stepped up. Yep.

[PJ Vogt]

It's really, it's a very strange way to learn about Internet culture. I'm sure, like my exposure to Mega Chad and Gigachad, I think came through them. Like, I know that it's. There's these black and white photos of just like a super over masculinized guy with like a super high cheekbones and a super deep chin.

[Ryan Broderick]

Right. And the sort of gigachad idea is like 4chan. Many years ago, 4chan users came up with like the idea of like the perfect man, the chad.

[PJ Vogt]

And were they joking or were they not joking? Did they know? Does anyone know?

[Ryan Broderick]

I mean, I sort of take everything that happens in 4chan as kind of like arch performance art. At least it starts that way very often. So in the earlier memes, it was like popular women were Stacy's and popular men were chads, and chads go with Stacy's. And it was sort of part of this idea of like early pickup artist communities trying to like codify sexual dynamics. And so the chad was like the archetypal man. And because these men who were talking about this are like insane nerds, they were using anime power scaling.

[PJ Vogt]

And what is anime power scaling?

[Ryan Broderick]

So like, you know, like for instance, like in Digimon, if you become like a very high level Digimon, you might have giga attached to the front of your name. So like, okay, so it's like these.

[PJ Vogt]

Nerds are trying to define. And when I say nerd, I don't mean that pejoratively, I just mean it descriptively. But these nerds are trying to define like kind of alpha jock masculinity. But as they're trying to do it, their anime inflected nerdiness creeps through. And so first they're like, well, they call it a chad and they're like, just like in like Digimon, there's this thing called a gigachad.

[Ryan Broderick]

Yes.

[PJ Vogt]

And then they're taking all the attributes they've used to label a chad and they're like exponentially increasing them to a place where they're ridiculous.

[Ryan Broderick]

Yeah. And when you ask about is this a bit or not, I think it's a not very useful way of thinking about this because context collapse is so just a part of the way the Internet works that even if you come up with something kind of funny, and even in the original thread, everyone in there kind of knows it's a joke.

[PJ Vogt]

So this Idea of a Chad. This jokey meme about a hyper masculine jock who women love. It kicks around on the Internet for about a decade. Sometimes Chad's drawn as a guy with a mohawk. Sometimes Chad is represented by this one picture of this one high school football player in 2017. A new meme circulates of a bearded, high cheekboned, absurdly roided out muscle man. These are black and white photos that border on the uncanny almost AI generated. And people start referring to this image as the Gigachad, like the Chad to rule all chads. This is the Gigachad music. Of course, there's theme music and there are tutorials. These videos of scrawny young teenage boys teaching each other to imitate the Gigachad's bizarre facial expression. Eyebrows raised, cheeks sucked in, and a distinctive smirk. It's like a goofier version of how you might flex your biceps and pretend to be Superman. If you've been around teenage boys in the past couple years, the Gigachad face, like the Sigma face, is just something you see them pulling at each other and then cracking up. We had Jim Carrey. They have this. But again, as Ryan says, the Gigachad is both a joke and a not joke at the same time.

[Ryan Broderick]

So Gigachad was definitely supposed to be kind of a parody, but it doesn't really matter.

[PJ Vogt]

But what you mean is that in certain kinds of subcultures where people are intentionally provoking each other, but also everyone has a tendency to take their own ideas seriously. Again, this idea, like, is this a bit or not? Is kind of a useless question. It's like, because there's.

[Ryan Broderick]

There's profound power, I think, in not defining if it's a bit or not. I mean, Trump is very good at this where, like, he really understands that if you never tell people if you're lying or joking or not, you can just wait for them to react and then decide if you were lying or joking later. And I think 4chan logic kind of operates the same way, which is like, you make a bit. If it's popular, all of a sudden, it's not a bit anymore, is it?

[PJ Vogt]

So these jokey, not jokey images of the Gigachad, they have now been floating around for almost eight years. JawMaxing actually predates the Gigachad, but it bangs around the same parts of the Internet. And for similar reasons, men, mostly young men online, are joking about wanting to be more masculine. At the same time, some young men online are really wishing they were more masculine. The place where one faction of these men mostly men starts to behave in a bizarre way under the spell of trying to become more Chad. Like this is where jaw maxing comes in.

[Ryan Broderick]

So jaw maxing is the act of trying to make your jaw look more masculine. The term jaw maxing comes from another term looks maxing. They're kind of related. The idea of like blank maxing is 4chan Reddit speak for like you want to do it a lot.

[PJ Vogt]

I see. So wait, so where does the story of jaw maxing start?

[Ryan Broderick]

Jaw maxing starts in the 1960s. Actually.

[PJ Vogt]

This is. Can I tell you it's a perfect podcast because it's only backstory.

[Ryan Broderick]

Yeah, it's just nothing but lore here.

[PJ Vogt]

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[Ryan Broderick]

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[PJ Vogt]

Welcome back to the show. So before the break, we were about to get into the lore of jawmaxing. Ryan says that story actually starts many decades earlier.

[Ryan Broderick]

In the 1960s, a British orthodontist named Dr. John Mew comes up with an idea that he's calling orthotropics. So to simplify orthotropics is that your teeth and your jaw and all that stuff is not fucked up from genetics, it's fucked up from your environment. So John Mew, he sets up a dentistry practice in the 70s in the London suburbs, and he starts testing his idea of orthotropics on his own children.

[PJ Vogt]

The details of Mew experimenting on his own children, some of them are in a 2020 New York Times Magazine profile of him. According to Dr. John Mew, his three kids were treated almost like an in home medical trial. He fed his daughter only soft foods until the age of four. He fed his two boys hard foods and tried to ensure they would breathe through their noses so they could keep their mouths shut as often as possible. He even claims that he made a head strap with a spike in it for one of his sons to try to force him into a correct mouth posture, though his son disputes this. This profile may have been John Mew's introduction to a mainstream audience, but he'd been at it for quite a while. The first time Mew's ideas were shared in public life was actually a 1981 article in the British Dental Journal.

[Ryan Broderick]

It is roundly condemned and laughed away by the dentistry establishment.

[PJ Vogt]

And so this is basically like the same way. There's people who would tell you, like, you don't need vaccines, you just need like fresh air or whatever. Like, this guy is anti establishment, but for braces. Like, this guy is like, there's a better, more natural, more holistic way to have straight teeth.

[Ryan Broderick]

Yeah. So this is from the orthotropics.com website, all about this idea. So soft food weakened our jaw muscles. The indoor living encouraged allergies, while early weaning created abnormal tongue habits. And orthotropists believe that these distort the jaws and teeth. Orthodontists, on the other hand, believe that badly shaped jaws are inherited and Concentrate on straightening the teeth by mechanical means, using wires and brackets. They often extract some teeth to make room for others and use surgery to reposition jaws. Orthotropists believe that malocclusion is a biological problem which should be treated naturally, not by mechanics and surgery.

[PJ Vogt]

I should say. We reached out to the Muse Clinic for comment. We didn't hear back. As always, when I encounter an idea that's strange to me, I find myself wondering why it speaks to so many other people. The Muse family. Alternative theories of dentistry I want to acknowledge. A lot of it sounds very strange. Parts of it sound cruel. I'm certainly not here to suggest you ask your dentist for advice about which hard foods to feed your toddler or where to source a head strap with a spike in it. But some fringe ideas take hold because mainstream science refuses to entertain tricky questions that ordinary people really wonder about. And here's a genuinely good question the orthotropists love to ask. It goes like. In the past, mankind had straighter teeth and more chiseled chins. Today, we have more crooked teeth and softer chins. Why is that happening? Could we stop it from happening? A mainstream dentist will offer you braces or Invisalign and say your jaw shape is mostly genetic. There's not much else to be done here. And also, did you remember to floss? An orthotropist has a much more exciting story to tell. They believe this change to our jaws, which is really observable. They think it's being caused by some change in our environment as recent as the Industrial Revolution. Okay, but here's where the Muse get beyond any good evidence and deeply into their own sales pitch. The Mew family says that we can change the shape of our jaws without surgery or braces if our kids just follow the right diet and maintain the right tongue posture, that, in effect, we can resist the way society seeks to deform us by following the mew's teaching. To Ryan, there's something familiar here, something he sees in a lot of esoteric movements.

[Ryan Broderick]

The thing that I find kind of links a lot of these is that it all sort of comes back to the solutions of the angst of modern life are found totally within yourself. And I'm going to sell you how to find it inside of you. And obviously, I'm not saying transcendental meditation is bad or whatever. It's produced a lot of great David lynch films or yoga is bad or whatever. I like yoga myself. But there is definitely a wave of grifters who sell people this idea that everything that is structurally against you in modern life can be solved by sort of stripping yourself down and finding it within you. And I think that's why a lot of conspiracy theories start there as well. And I think orthotropics is equally solipsistic because it's saying you can literally change the inside of your mouth if you work hard enough.

[PJ Vogt]

Right. It's like Americans are funny because we're both like, we're a paranoid, conspiracy loving country, but we're also a country that is very founded on the idea of self improvement. And so those things kind of twin in a funny way, where there's always a new person with a new diagnosis of what's wrong with society, but the promise is always the same. They're gonna sell you something that helps you change yourself in a way that resists it.

[Ryan Broderick]

Right.

[PJ Vogt]

Can I just pause for a second though and say, obviously you and I are talking on a podcast, but you and I are also like talking like, I can see your face. And there is something a little bit funny about like these two, like soft chin, round mouthed men just laughing at the idea that this is gonna ever be improved.

[Ryan Broderick]

Yeah. But like, you know, women like me. So, like, I don't need any of this stuff. I can be soft.

[PJ Vogt]

Just know that I know that somewhere there's a board of like triangle chinned gigachads who are like these losers. Like the scales could be dropped in their eyes if only they would follow the light in the way. Like I know how they see.

[Ryan Broderick]

Yeah. Sorry, boys, I can make eye contact, which means I can watch all the anime I want and still talk to girls.

[PJ Vogt]

So wait, so this starts in Britain? Yes. John Muse has this idea.

[Ryan Broderick]

Yes.

[PJ Vogt]

His idea is you're going to do like mouth sit ups to have straighter teeth.

[Ryan Broderick]

That's basically it. Yeah.

[PJ Vogt]

And what is it? Like, what does this actually mean? Like, what is he doing with this theory? Like, how is he testing it on people? Is he making money?

[Ryan Broderick]

He is testing it on people. In 1986, he leaves the traditional world of dentistry. He self publishes a book about his theories and he's just sort of doing his thing. It doesn't really sort of matter for our story until we jump back in in the 2000s, which is when little Mike, his son, joins his father's practice in the London suburbs, becomes an orthotropist. And in 2012, Mike Mew starts uploading videos to YouTube. Hello, welcome. Thank you very much for inviting me to your conference.

[PJ Vogt]

It's been an excellent conference so far. Mike Mew John's pride and joy is on stage at a conference at Harvard. From the waist up, Mike looks like an academic, just dressed with a suaveness that borders on inappropriate. Underneath his blazer, a pink button up, undone, one button too many. As your eyes drift up past his neck, you see what will so compel the Internet. Mike Mew nearly has the face of an academic, except, I must admit, for his jaw, a jaw you'd kill for. It's like he's managed to construct in real life the bottom third of the Gigachad's face, an upside down triangle adorned here with a soul patch that, as a reporter who tries to tell things straight, I have to admit, is totally working.

[Ryan Broderick]

I am better looking than I was seven years ago.

[PJ Vogt]

That is hard work and effort. I think it's probably more difficult than staying on a Paleolithic diet, but it's possible. If you look at someone like Stephen Hawkins, whose face went wrong at a.

[Ryan Broderick]

Late age, you should be able to.

[PJ Vogt]

Make your face grow right at a late age. Stephen Hawking, the late theoretical physicist with als. In Mike Mewes speech, Hawking serves as an example of someone famous for having a weak jaw. The gospel according to Mike, more or less the same ideas his dad offered in that original 1981 article, Diet and tongue posture. Presumably, the academics at this conference don't think much of these ideas now either. But they're not the audience that matters anymore. Their presence in this room is set decoration for the real audience. Eventually, the audience, even for just this one talk, will grow to the hundreds of thousands, because this is the 2010s, which means Mike's words are being recorded and uploaded to YouTube. Now my point of presenting to you.

[Ryan Broderick]

Here is to say, if you're scientists, if you believe in the truth, you.

[PJ Vogt]

Need to support me in this debate. That's how science moves forward.

[Ryan Broderick]

We are treating one third of the.

[PJ Vogt]

Population of all westernized civilizations with a method where we admit we don't know what causes it and we are avoiding open debate. So it's like fringe ideas plugged into Internet.

[Ryan Broderick]

And I think one thing that maybe has been memory hold or like normal people just like didn't experience is that around 2011, 2012, as these large social platforms started to flicker on at a scale that started to matter culturally, a lot of insane people who had been using them quietly for many years suddenly became very famous by accident. Like flat Earthers would be one. You know, a lot of these kind of like these people were using the Internet very quietly and then in 2012 algorithms started to mindlessly serve content to people. And that's probably the easiest way to view what happens here, because in June 2014, one of Mike's videos is shared to slut hate.com Jesus. Interestingly enough, it's shared by a user named the Orthodontist. Mike denies that he did it, okay, but suddenly, all of a sudden, there is a new orthotropist jaw exercise called mewing that is very popular in the world of inceldom.

[PJ Vogt]

To mew is to place your tongue on the roof of your mouth, close your lips, and lightly press your teeth together. If you do this in the mirror, you'll notice it gives your jaw a bit of a jut. But the argument that took hold online was that this was an exercise and that mewing over time would give you permanently a jettier jaw. Ryan says this notion was taking off in the world of inceldom. The world of Inceldom, in case you're not familiar, actually reported a story about the surprising origins of incel culture online years ago on Reply all, the podcast I used to help make. I'll put a link to that story in the show notes. But all you need to know today, if you're unfamiliar, incel refers to involuntarily celibate. For decades, people who couldn't find romantic partners have found community with each other online, and those communities over time have just gotten more and more rotten.

[Ryan Broderick]

So I think to really understand this, though, you kind of have to understand where the incel idea sort of exists on the timeline, because in the early 2000s, you have pickup artist culture to the point where, like that guy mystery has a VH1 reality show.

[PJ Vogt]

Yeah, I'm familiar with this moment.

[Ryan Broderick]

And so all these men are paying for these classes and they're trying to become pickup artists to help their confidence with meeting women in public. Those classes don't work, and a lot of the early boards for organizing those resources start to sour, and then they create splinter communities, one of which was pua hate. Another one was slut hate. And these were the guys who would become the first incels. And the very earliest conversations were guys who felt ripped off by the men that were trying to help them get laid. And that's where you start to see the idea of red pill theory, which is like this more aggressive reactionary movement against the self help kind of vibes of early pickup artistry. And then that's where you get the black pill stuff, which is like full on spree shooters. And it all sort of starts with this idea that the men that we paid to help us ripped us off.

[PJ Vogt]

So just to recap, in the early 2000s, there were the pickup artists who wanted audiences of young men to pay them to learn how to talk to women. But some of that audience turned against the pickup artists and became red pilled. The red pillars were committed misogynists who believed that women had too much power, that only through self optimization and manipulation could they convince women to have sex with them. The black pillars who came after didn't believe that was possible. They thought they'd lost a genetic lottery at birth and that the only reasonable response was nihilism. That's a dark story, one that's been told, one that many of us have at least an ambient awareness of. You still encounter these cultures online. But Ryan pointed out something additional, which is that fringe cultures are always welcoming in new converts, and that sometimes these new converts bring in new fringe ideas that then get added to the existing bonfire.

[Ryan Broderick]

I think every subculture has a certain predilection to pseudoscience and craziness. One of the best examples is the fascist occultism that starts to infect, like, the black metal scene in Europe in the 80s. This sort of idea that, like, because you've removed yourself from the mainstream, you're somewhat distrustful of everything mainstream. Like, these things happen. And it's not that, like, incels were like wholesome Little Angels in 2012, but I think they were becoming visible enough that a lot of strange people were like, I think I could make some money here.

[PJ Vogt]

I mean, it's also kind of like another way to think about it would be in a disorganized way. It's how algorithms work. It's like algorithms try to identify, if you like this, what else will you like? It tries to identify who else is like you, and then it puts you guys whose attention we're drawn to the same things in a category that can be advertised to. And then, like, advertisers show up with their products. And in this case, one of the advertisers who shows up with a product, it's not like he's buying ads on YouTube, but it's this strange orthotropic practice.

[Ryan Broderick]

I think that's exactly right.

[PJ Vogt]

Okay, so silly exercises created. How does this go to mainstream?

[Ryan Broderick]

So it starts to break containment around 2018, and that's why you're seeing a YouTube channel called Astro sky making videos about mewing.

[PJ Vogt]

So I'm here to tell you that the face you're born with is not.

[Ryan Broderick]

The face that you have to put up with.

[PJ Vogt]

There are things you can do to change your face, and it won't have.

[Ryan Broderick]

To cost you a penny.

[PJ Vogt]

Astro sky is this young man who. He's Chad like, although maybe a kind of emo Chad, pointy jaw with swoopy hair above. Astro sky has nearly 300,000 viewers on this video, which is entitled why Mewing is Important to All. All it took for me was a consciously not giving up on this tongue posture idea that I'm suggesting. Testing from Dr. Yu and John Yu. This. This area of study is new, so it's kind of like there's not a lot of information on it, but beautiful people tend to have good tongue posture. Now. It's just part of it. There's not really much you can deny on that. I know that these ideas transmitted via podcasts, don't sound persuasive, but the spell doesn't work in audio. It's visual. On YouTube, an audience of young men, boys who didn't like the look of their own faceswere looking at the conventionally attractive faces of people like Astro sky for guidance. And it wasn't just Astro sky promising that exercise could change not just your unlovely body, but your unlovely face. Jaw maxing was now spreading around the Internet these ideas from the Mew family pouring out of pointy jaw after pointy jaw.

[Ryan Broderick]

Do you know about the golden one?

[PJ Vogt]

No. Who's the golden one?

[Ryan Broderick]

The golden one, he's not really big anymore, but he was very important in this sort of moment.

[PJ Vogt]

While I'm licking, he's like a European.

[Ryan Broderick]

White nationalist that makes videos like, do White Men need to get tougher? Greetings, true friends. Today I want to talk a bit about Mewing. And before I begin to elaborate, I'm just gonna say that I will link Dr. Mike Mew's channel below, and I suggest that watch through all of his videos. I am about halfway through.

[PJ Vogt]

Okay, so this guy looks like a guy on the COVID of, like, a romance novel. Kind of like he's got the long center part hair and, like, the goatee mustache thing. But, like, this guy was both. White people are the best. Men are the best. You should Mew.

[Ryan Broderick]

Exactly. And I also wanted to say that I fully support Dr. Mike Mew in his battle against his adversaries.

[PJ Vogt]

The adversaries the golden one is referring to are normal orthodontists.

[Ryan Broderick]

His opponents, they do not want people.

[PJ Vogt]

To be able to change, perhaps by.

[Ryan Broderick]

Themselves, because then they can be out of a job, because then they won't have to fix people's teeth. And in fact, if you look at this video, it's not particularly popular. It's around 60,000 views. But in the sidebar are a bunch of videos by Mike Mew about orthotropics and mewing.

[PJ Vogt]

The whole time that these Chad influencers have been adopting mewing as one of their concerns, they've been sending some of their audiences back to Mike Mew. And so, over the years, Mike has become an influencer in his own right. His videos, over time, reflect that they now have proper YouTube thumbnails. He adds music. He begins to reach audiences in the millions. This is mewing. It's a postural technique that involves placing the tongue on the roof of the mouth to gain health and facial improvements. The aim is to align the teeth, accentuate your cheekbones, sharpen your jawline, and even straighten your nose naturally. All without invasive surgeries or expensive orthodontics. If one way to view the Internet is as an infinite number of cults with an infinite number of leaders, Mike Mew, the third generation of Mew men to proselytize orthotropics. He has finally found his flock. This theory is called orthotropics, orthophustrate tropos, meaning growth, which was inspired by my grandfather, who was a practitioner using expanded devices in the early 20th century. When he died, my father, Professor John Mew, the inventor of orthotropics, discovered his records, finding that it was indeed possible to grow the bone in people's faces without surgery. And now, building upon decades of knowledge and research that my father started and culminated in my family's dedication to holistic facial development, we have me, Dr. Mike Mew, the current expert of orthotropics and the inventor of mewing. By 2019, jaw maxing online had become such a thing that gum brands emerged that promise to hulk up your jaw so that it is more Chad like rock jaw gum jawliner. There's even a device for sale called jawser size.

[Ryan Broderick]

Do you want to see it?

[PJ Vogt]

Oh, my God.

[Ryan Broderick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[PJ Vogt]

Okay, so what's happening is, like, they're playing, like, wall, wall wall music, and these guys are chewing on little rubber balls that look like the ball gags that sexual fetishists would use.

[Ryan Broderick]

Yes, exactly.

[PJ Vogt]

But, like, the people are mostly sort of male and female jocks. It's a very, very strange mashup of cultural signifiers. It says you put it in your mouth. You put it in your mouth. Chew repeatedly.

[Ryan Broderick]

Chew repeatedly.

[PJ Vogt]

Oh, my God.

[Ryan Broderick]

And so, by 2019, according to Vice mewing is, like, big enough as a trend on YouTube that YouTube is aware of it. This is also when you start getting, like, a bunch of SEO spam stuff and also, like, genuine news outlets defining what mewing is by 2020. The New York Times is profiling the muse. Obviously, they gave them a nice big portrait. But the biggest moment in all of this, the sort of. I think you've been a little kind of fuzzy on how this all works.

[PJ Vogt]

Yeah.

[Ryan Broderick]

Because we're not at the exact point where it's all gonna come together.

[PJ Vogt]

So where does it all come together?

[Ryan Broderick]

The Joe Rogan Experience.

[PJ Vogt]

Train my day.

[Ryan Broderick]

Joe Rogan podcast by night.

[PJ Vogt]

All day. Yep.

[Ryan Broderick]

Okay, we're up. Hi. Good to see you guys. Hey, Joe.

[PJ Vogt]

Great to see you.

[Ryan Broderick]

Really good to see you.

[PJ Vogt]

Yeah. Welcome.

[Ryan Broderick]

Welcome back to the the land of the Healthy. September 2021. Brett Weinstein and Heather Haying go on a podcast called the Joe Rogan Experience.

[PJ Vogt]

Just as we are told that, you know, the epidemic of children's teeth not meeting correctly in their jaws and needing to be moved around by orthodontists is.

[Ryan Broderick]

The result of bad genes.

[PJ Vogt]

That's nonsense. That doesn't make any. That doesn't make a whit of sense.

[Ryan Broderick]

Right.

[PJ Vogt]

It can't be bad genes. Right. It's too rapidly progressing something else. And look at skulls of people from pre industrial revolution.

[Ryan Broderick]

And you don't have male exclusion.

[PJ Vogt]

You don't have people with jaws and teeth that look like our modern jaws.

[Ryan Broderick]

They think it has something to do with soft food.

[PJ Vogt]

Right, Right, exactly. I believe Mike Mew, who I actually had on my podcast. Yeah, mewing, exactly. Mike Mew, I think, has cracked the case. But this moment on the Joe rogan experience, fall 2021, Weinstein and Haying married medical establishment skeptics. They are there to tell Rogen and his audience about mewing. But you can hear Rogan's already kind of familiar with it. They're telling him the same story Ryan is telling me, and I am telling you, they just feel differently about its principal characters. Mike Mew has done an excellent job not only figuring out what's causing this and how to treat it, but he's also done the work anthropologically. He's gone through the anthropological record and made the case, and it is rock solid. It is evolutionarily totally coherent. And he has looked at comparison with other animals also. His argument is evolutionarily coherent. So with the evolutionary toolkit, you can look and you can say, look, I don't care how many orthodontists are saying that Mike Mew is crazy. He's saying something coherent and they aren't exactly.

[Ryan Broderick]

Science is not done by consensus.

[PJ Vogt]

It's not a democracy. It's not majority rule. Right. This is all true. Science isn't a democracy or a majority rule. In science, your ideas need to be provable, not popular. The Mew family has not proven their ideas. Mike Mew this month was struck off England's dentist register for malpractice. To someone like me, that suggests his ideas are wrong. To someone like Joe Rogan, all that really tells us is that the establishment finds him dangerous. The punchline of the story is that Mike Mew is in danger of being driven out of orthodontia because his heterodox view of malocclusion is at odds with the central narrative around which all of orthodontia is based.

[Ryan Broderick]

Does he have clear evidence that his methods work? I've only seen it discussed online. I'm pretty ignorant about the method. It has to do with something like pressing your tongue against your palate and eating, like, beef jerky or something.

[PJ Vogt]

Well, there are two things. One, chewing gum.

[Ryan Broderick]

Okay, here. Young Jamie on the ball as always. Here he goes. Keep your mouth closed and your teeth gently touching and move your tongue to the roof of your mouth and lightly press. Your tongue is resting.

[PJ Vogt]

And then just two months later, Rogan has a hunter named Ben O'Brien on his show. And now Rogan's telling the story of mewing. Just one more interesting fact Rogan has picked up making his show.

[Ryan Broderick]

There's a. I believe his name. His name is John Mew. There's a guy who has a theory about this who created this technique called mewing. And it literally changes the structure of your jaw. And it's like a stress technique. You're doing things to stress your jaw. I think you put your tongue in your palate and you strut. And in that episode, he reveals that he's been jaws or sizing.

[PJ Vogt]

Oh, no.

[Ryan Broderick]

That's right. That's right, baby. I have a device that I use. I forget what it's called, but it's basically like a half of a rubber ball that I put in my mouth and I bite down on and I do reps with my jaw. Reps. Yeah, yeah. Where do you do this at? Do you do it in the dry house? Okay. Like in my office? It sits in my office. I put it in there. And sometimes when I'm scrolling things online, I go, yeah, I'm crazy. No, you're not crazy. I got problems.

[PJ Vogt]

Well, you got problems.

[Ryan Broderick]

Yeah, that's true. That's my problem. It's like I try all kinds of other things.

[PJ Vogt]

Oh, your problem is you're always trying to better yourself.

[Ryan Broderick]

Yes. And that's annoying for people. So I try to better my face. I've tried. Literally, like my jaw has gotten stronger because of this. I've been doing it for years.

[PJ Vogt]

Joe Rogan is a jaw maxer. Or I mean, maybe Joe Rogan is a jaw maxer. I honestly can't even tell. Is it a bit or is it not? The question we started with today, the question Ryan pointed out doesn't always matter. Mike Mew is clearly not joking about mewing, but Joe Rogan. Look, for various reasons, he will be interpreted among my tribe in the least charitable way possible. Whenever possible, the incentives encourage it. But here I honestly can't tell when he says he's chewing on a rubber ball all the time if he's not joking a little bit. Like I believe he owns the ball. But I also hear a person who does nutty things because that's what he does and who knows, he's a little bit ridiculous who is in on the self optimizing joke of himself. Some boys are taking mewing seriously, but I wonder if it's not reached as big a stage as it has because of all the people who just find it funny. When I asked my step kids about it, they thought it was cringe. Search engine was covering this at such a late date they knew it didn't actually work and they immediately started making gigachad faces and giggling. To them this was a bit brain rot. I was told, quote only a discord mod would take any of this seriously. And yet I did spend some time on the orthotropics subreddit where more credulous teenagers do end up reading their posts where they lament the state of their jaws. Mainly it reminded me of how I felt when I was 16, looking in the mirror at my overbite and persistent unibrow, thinking wondering is there anything I could do to this face that would make a girl want to look at it? Of course, at the time the mirror was not providing answers. Today the Internet can. On the subreddit A 17 year old makes a post titled Guys what do I do? He shares his X ray scans, telling the board his orthodontist wants to remove his wisdom teeth the normal way, but he's wondering if there's a way to handle those teeth with mewing. Instead, a 16 year old posts a photo of his face in silhouette Very upset about his round chin. Somebody offers pseudoscientifically. Quote, if the tongue keeps dropping during sleep, mouth tape may be needed to stop oronasal breathing or mandibular jaw drop in NREM and rem. The question these boys are actually asking is some version of am I too unattractive to be loved? Of course they're not. But what gets offered here in lieu of encouragement are all these sorts of questionable scientific acronyms. The conversation gets very nuts. Quote, look, what's your IMW pallet with? There are DIY ways to measure your intermolar width at home, outside of straight up getting blasted with ct, CBCT radiation at a center jaw surgery if jaw length is short and recessed palatal expansion if IMW pallet width is narrow. These answers, one suspects, are not really helping anybody.

[Ryan Broderick]

I was trying to think if this had ever happened before as an exercise just to like gut check myself and not become like a crank. I am always like, okay, this thing that like is confusing to me and strange right now. Is there a corollary to the MySpace age, which is when I was 15 and I was trying to think about it and obviously there were kind of memetic social diseases of the MySpace age, like eating disorders or cutting yourself. There were these sort of fringe harmful ideas that were bouncing around Internet subcultures at the time. I think the difference was that we still had a monoculture to kind of gut check against. And so the thing that really freaks me out about a 15 year old boy now is that there is no center. There's nothing to like be like. Okay, so that's normal and I'm not normal.

[PJ Vogt]

Right.

[Ryan Broderick]

There's no concept. So you're, you're just sort of like free to pick and choose whatever you see online that you like, which I have to imagine is probably exhilarating, but gotta be confusing. And I think it's gonna be really harmful in a certain way for when they're forced to interact with like, especially members of the opposite sex, which is fraught enough for young men. I, I don't wish to be them. It seems really hard.

[PJ Vogt]

No, I really feel for them. Even men's magazines, which were never great and Maxim was pretty terrible, it's basically, it's very confusing to be a young man and anyone who's ever culturally cared to show up enough to help with that, at best they're trying to sell you questionable deodorant, and at worst they're trying to push you in a really bad direction. And it just seems like there's no way to talk about this stuff without sounding like an insane person. But I look at it, I'm like, it's really hard and it just makes me a little bit like it makes me feel for them.

[Ryan Broderick]

You know what we should do?

[PJ Vogt]

Start a men's podcast.

[Ryan Broderick]

We should get every American boy and young man between the ages of 13 and 23.

[PJ Vogt]

Yeah.

[Ryan Broderick]

Sit them all down and make them watch Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.

[PJ Vogt]

You think that would be the best totem of non toxic masculinity?

[Ryan Broderick]

I think it actually has the full canon of like, kinds of men that exist in a civilized society. Like, you want to be a stoner? Do you want to be like a cool guy? Do you want to be a cop? You know, like, you know all the kinds of men that exist and you can pick one. I think it's not. I don't remember being particularly toxic. I bet it's horrible. I bet it's like unwatchable by today's standards. We had that, that we had constant barrages of pop culture being like, these are the men you can be.

[PJ Vogt]

Yeah.

[Ryan Broderick]

And we don't really have that now.

[PJ Vogt]

Ryan Broderick, the kind of man you could be if you like the way he tells stories about the Internet. He does this every week on his new podcast, Panic World and on his very excellent newsletter, it's called Garbage Day. We will have links to both in the show notes. Go subscribe. I do. Ryan, thank you for this.

[Ryan Broderick]

Thank you. This was really fun. My jaws are size is arriving in a couple week, so I will let you know how it works. Sa nourishment.

[PJ Vogt]

If you have health insurance, you might.

[Ryan Broderick]

Be able to see a personal dietitian.

[PJ Vogt]

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[Ryan Broderick]

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[PJ Vogt]

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[Ryan Broderick]

With hundreds of five star reviews from.

[PJ Vogt]

Real patients, you know you're in good hands. Find your [e-mail] that's usenourish.com Where'd you get those shoes?

[Ryan Broderick]

Easy.

[PJ Vogt]

They're from DSW. Because DSW has the exact right shoes.

[Ryan Broderick]

For whatever you're into right now. You know, like the sneakers that make.

[PJ Vogt]

Office hours feel like happy hour, the boots that turn grocery aisles into runways, and all the styles that show off.

[Ryan Broderick]

The many sides of you, from daydreamer to multitasker.

[PJ Vogt]

And everything in between because you do.

[Ryan Broderick]

It all in really great shoes. Find a shoe for every you at your DSW store or dsw.com the Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your.

[PJ Vogt]

Wrist whether you're running, swimming or sleeping.

[Ryan Broderick]

And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black.

[PJ Vogt]

Aluminum compared to previous generations.

[Ryan Broderick]

IPhone XS are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.

[PJ Vogt]

That's our show this week. We actually have another paid subscriber announcement. What Our board meeting is coming up. That is a Zoom meeting for paid incognito mode subscribers. Basically, if you pay to support the show, we're all going to jump on an enormous, I mean enormous zoom meeting. And I will take questions with the Search Engine team. We will share internal metrics and minute details about the way this functions and doesn't function as a business. That's going to be on December 6th. If you haven't signed up yet, what are you waiting for? Search Engine Joe and again, we need your questions for Alison Roman. You can also submit those at Search Engine. Show that segment with her. We're going to drop it next week. Our show is a presentation of Odyssey and Jigsaw Productions. It was created by Me, PJ Vogt and Shruti Pinamani and is produced by Garrett Graham and Noah John. Fact checking by Mary Mathis. Theme, original composition and mixing by Armin Bazarian. Additional production support from Shawn Merchant. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss Berman and Leah Rhys Dennis. Thank you to the team at Jigsaw, Alex Gibney, Rich Perillo and John Schmidt. And to the team at Odyssey, JD Crowley, Rob Mirandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gaynor, Matt Casey, Maura Curran, Josefina Francis, Kirk, Courtney and Hilary Schaff. Our agent is oren Rosenbaum at UTA. Follow and listen to Search Engine with PJVote now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. Enjoy your Thanksgiving. We'll see you in two weeks.