Ep. 1818 - DEEP DIVE: The Complicated and Sordid History of Looksmaxxing (It’s Not What You Think)

Summary

The Matt Walsh Show – Ep. 1818

DEEP DIVE: The Complicated and Sordid History of Looksmaxxing (It’s Not What You Think)
Date: August 6, 2026
Host: Matt Walsh (Published by PlainTech)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Matt Walsh conducts a deep dive into the evolving and often troubling phenomenon of “looksmaxxing”—an internet-rooted obsession with physical self-improvement that has exploded in popularity, especially among young men. He examines its cultural, historical, and technological roots, the role of social media, and the psychological impact on Gen Z. Walsh connects the dots from ancient beauty practices to modern plastic surgery and internet-fueled narcissism, highlighting the uniquely modern cocktail of self-obsession, technology, and identity crisis.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Surge in Cosmetic Procedures Among Young Men

[00:00–06:00]

• Recent data shows a dramatic rise in cosmetic surgeries in both men and women, but especially among young men.

  • From 2019–2022, male cosmetic procedures increased by 200%, with minimally invasive procedures up 250% (per the American Society of Plastic Surgeons).
  • “In total, more than 1.3 million cosmetic procedures of some kind are now performed on men every single year. This includes ab implants, liposuctions, nose jobs, facelifts, and so on.” [02:00]
  • Cheek implants demand rose by 80%. Dermal fillers up 70%. Botox usage up 65% (400% since 2000).
  • Many of these are driven by young people: Gen Z (29 and under) account for a disproportionate share of facial surgeries.

• Walsh notes that while some surgeries address genuine medical conditions (e.g., gynecomastia and breast reductions), the shift is largely about cosmetic dissatisfaction—stemming from deeper psychological trends.

2. The Role of Social Media, Internet Culture, and Delayed Adulthood

[06:00–15:00]

• Today’s youth are simultaneously less likely to form families and more preoccupied with appearance.

  • Millennials and Gen Z are “waiting for families,” which, according to plastic surgeons, correlates with both higher incomes and more spending on self-image.

• Walsh challenges the explanation that affluence drives vanity, arguing the causal arrow points the other way:

  • “When young people become more narcissistic and self absorbed, as well as more socially isolated, they’re much less likely to start families in the first place.” [07:30]

• Social media and constant digital self-scrutiny exacerbate insecurity and self-obsession:

  • “Most humans through history grew up and live their lives hardly ever seeing what they looked like… Now, with lives dominated by screens, we see ourselves constantly.” [11:55]

3. Clavicular and the Viralization of Looksmaxxing

[08:00–17:00]

• Case Study: Braden Eric Peters, aka “Clavicular,” a gen-Z internet celebrity, rapidly gained notoriety after a viral video in which he appeared to run someone over in a Tesla Cybertruck.

  • Walsh notes the stunt is almost certainly staged but observes its power in instantly generating fame and followers.
  • “It's a very striking example of how easily people can be manipulated online and how social media stars are just generated out of thin air...” [09:06]

• Clavicular's philosophy—relentlessly optimizing appearance (“looksmaxxing”)—goes mainstream via TikTok and the “manosphere.”

  • Definition: Looksmaxxing = “The maximization of one’s appearance…according to a set of prescribed criteria, with particular importance given to jawlines, eyes and physique.” [BBC cited, 10:45]

• Walsh critiques the community: a healthy concern with appearance mutates into “a relentless, obsessive fixation… reminiscent of what the DSM calls dysphoria.” [12:33]

4. Darker Aspects: Bone Smashing, Dysmorphia, and Gender Parallels

[13:00–15:00]

• Walsh highlights dangerous pseudo-scientific trends like “bone smashing”—deliberately fracturing facial bones in pursuit of an ideal look.

  • “He’s also popularizing bone smashing… hitting facial or collar bone areas with a small hammer or hard object in a misguided attempt to trigger bone growth.” [13:30]

• He draws parallels between looksmaxxing and gender dysphoria communities, seeing in both a drive for radical, irreversible body alteration supported by internet echo chambers.

  • “It’s a preoccupation that echoes the behavior of many people who identify as transgender...affirming one another, even as they cause irreversible damage.” [14:10]

5. Tech, Cameras, Filters, and the Rise of “Selfie Dysmorphia”

[15:00–16:30]

• Cameras, AI filters, and social media warp the perception of self and beauty. Cites commentator @RawEggNationalist, who blames Asia-designed front-facing cameras for distorting Western facial features.
  • “We’re seeing a kind of mass psychosis, a fracturing of the self caused by a camera device…” [15:30]
• “Selfie dysmorphia,” “Snapchat dysmorphia,” and “Zoom dysmorphia” are real, research-backed consequences.

6. Media Critiques, Incels, and the Misrepresentation of Looksmaxxing

[17:00–19:00]

• Recaps an uneasy “60 Minutes Australia” interview with Clavicular, in which the media tries to paint looksmaxxing as an incel-adjacent, political movement—a framing both sides reject as superficial.

  • Clavicular: “Looks maxing is self improvement, right? So it’s about potentially even ascending out of that category [incel].” [17:43]

• Walsh finds both media and influencer responses wanting: “So talk about an interview where you just want everybody involved to be banished from the Earth and deported to Jupiter.” [19:04]

7. Historical Roots: Ancient Looksmaxxing and Social Cohesion

[19:00–23:00]

• Explores how ancient Egyptians, Spartans, and other cultures pursued beauty enhancements—makeup, skin treatments, hair-styling—not as pure vanity but for social, religious, and even functional reasons.

  • “Ancient Egyptian men…wore eyeliner…to reduce glare…and a tribute to the gods.” [20:21]
  • Spartan hair and grooming as a marker of discipline before battle.

• In contrast, early America focused on etiquette and manners (ex: George Washington’s “Rules of Civility”), with little emphasis on obsessive appearance.

8. Modern Mutation: Gym Culture, Narcissism, and Entertainment

[23:00–27:00]

• Rise of bodybuilding and gym culture post-industrialization, morphing over time from health to spectacle and vanity.

  • “When a healthy focus on strength and fitness turns into an obsessive, overwhelming preoccupation with appearance…it’s vanity.” [25:00]

• Television and Hollywood amplified vanity, but social media made everyone their own content—fostering universal narcissism.

  • “The narcissism and psychosis that used to be contained to people in media…has broken containment now. It’s everywhere.” [27:30]

9. Fatherlessness, Anti-Masculine Media, and Generational Isolation

[27:00–31:00]

• Argues that lack of strong father figures and positive male role models exacerbates the crisis for young men, leaving them to seek identity through influencers like Clavicular.
• Criticizes decades of media portraying fathers as buffoons, further eroding traditional masculine standards.

10. COVID Lockdowns and the Disconnection of a Generation

[31:00–34:30]

• The pandemic’s social isolation, especially for children, caused lasting damage, manifesting in identity crises, including the explosion of transgender identification and looksmaxxing.

  • Shares the example of Clavicular’s remote graduation during lockdown—“an extraordinarily sad piece of footage”—underscoring the depth of isolation.
  • “Many…never became functioning adults. Many began identifying as transgender, to the point that transgenderism became a social contagion.” [33:25]

• Walsh suggests this new self-obsession is “a kind of intra sex transgenderism…male to male, female to female,” born not of family or faith, but rootless modernity.

11. Final Reflections: Beyond “Trans”—Into a New Era of Disconnected Selves

[34:30–35:00]

• With the defeat of the “trans cult” in the political and legal arenas, Walsh suggests the underlying pathology—rooted in social media, isolation, and a lost sense of self—has dispersed into new, subtle disorders like looksmaxxing.
  • “It’s just one manifestation of a much deeper issue…most of them still undiscovered.” [34:45]
• Foresees this self-obsession only growing as the post-lockdown generation comes of age.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “There’s not a lot of time in your life to be vain about your appearance and to wallow in your own narcissism when you’re trying to raise kids.” [07:15]
• On Clavicular: “His rise to fame was completely contrived. Most everything about him is contrived. Even his face is now contrived.” [12:55]
• “There's something very unnatural and unhuman about it. Humans are not capable of coping with this level of self scrutiny.” [12:13]
• “Everyone has the out of body experience of viewing themselves as content, as a product to be consumed by others.” [27:20]
• “If you’re wondering why so many ‘content creators’ are lunatics, this is why.” [26:54]
• “A trans identified person is somebody who hates their God given body, fundamentally rejects their own selves, seeks instead to remake themselves…in the foggy, ever shifting image of some kind of ambiguous ideal they've concocted in their own heads. Well, Clavicular is doing the exact same thing.” [33:50]

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Key Timestamps

• [00:00–06:00] — Rise in Men’s Cosmetic Surgery, Stats, Cultural Shift
• [06:00–08:00] — Delayed Family Formation, Narcissism vs. Causation
• [08:00–13:00] — The Clavicular Phenomenon, Viral Fame, Looksmaxxing Goes Mainstream
• [13:00–15:00] — Bone Smashing and Parallels to Gender Dysphoria
• [15:00–16:30] — Tech Distortion, Selfie Dysmorphia, and the Camera’s Impact
• [17:00–19:00] — 60 Minutes Interview, Media Incels Narrative
• [19:00–23:00] — Historical Looksmaxxing: Ancient Egypt, Greece, Early America
• [23:00–27:00] — Modern Gym, Media, Universal Narcissism
• [27:00–31:00] — Fatherlessness, Masculinity in Media
• [31:00–34:00] — Lockdowns, Generational Trauma, and “Intra-Sex Transgenderism”
• [34:30–35:00] — The Spread of Pathology Beyond Gender

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Tone & Style

Matt Walsh’s tone is, as always, direct, sarcastic, occasionally acerbic, with a blend of social conservatism and cultural criticism. He mixes data and personal commentary with historical references and pointed, sometimes humorously dark, observations.

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Summary Takeaway

Walsh argues that the rise of looksmaxxing among young men is not merely a superficial trend, but a symptom of a much deeper cultural sickness: one generated by a toxic combination of social media, fatherlessness, lost traditions, and the psychological scarring of COVID lockdowns. What began as a pursuit of self-improvement has, in his view, spiraled into self-destructive obsession and body dysphoria—echoing, and even replacing, past youth crises tied to gender and identity. The phenomenon reveals a generation adrift in narcissism, searching for meaning in the mirror rather than in faith, family, or fulfilling roles in society.

Transcript

[Host]

Yeah.

[Commentator]

It wasn't too long ago that doctors made an alarming finding. Colon cancer among young adults is surging. In fact, since 1994, colon cancer has become 50% more common. And you've almost certainly heard this data by now. It's been covered by every major media organization. It's all over social media. Everyone has a theory as to why it's happening, from diet to environmental factors to the COVID shot or all the above. We all recognize that it's important to figure out what's going on here because it's having a catastrophic effect on many young lives, obviously. And by the same token, there's been a lot of discussion about the massive increase in the number of young adults who have been diagnosed with depression and ADHD and autism and a host of other alleged mental disorders. There's been a debate, which we're not winning, about whether it's a great idea to administer psychoactive drugs to treat any child who supposedly presents with one of these disorders. Answer. It's not a great idea. It's a horrifically awful idea, as it turns out. But there's one trend in the medical field that's just as stark and yet it's not discussed very often by anyone. I'm talking about a trend that's clearly relevant to the future of civilization and our ability to propagate the species, which is that men are seeking out cosmetic procedures, plastic surgery, to a degree that would have been unheard of and inconceivable just a decade ago. Women are also going under the knife for plastic surgery at unprecedented levels. And this is a surge that cuts across both sexes, no pun intended. But the massive uptick in plastic surgery for young men is especially interesting and especially troubling. According to the American Society of plastic surgeons, from 2019 to 2022, the total number of cosmetic procedures performed on men increased by more than 200%. Procedures that are characterized as minimally invasive increased by more than 250%. In total, more than 1.3 million cosmetic procedures of some kind are now performed on men every single year. This includes ab implants, liposuctions, nose jobs, facelifts, and so on. So if you combine the populations of San Francisco and Miami, you wouldn't have the number of men who are getting cosmetic surgery every year. Just to put things in perspective now, the biggest increase in this period was for cheek implants, where demand among men increased by 80% in this period. Then there's dermal fillers, which are gel, like medical substances injected beneath the skin to restore lost Volume and smooth wrinkles. Demand for these fillers increased by 70% among men from 2019 to 2022. Meanwhile, Botox injections went up by 65%. They're up 400% overall since 2000. Demand for sclerotherapy, which is used to treat varicose veins and spider veins, increased by 54% among men. Chin augmentations went up by 32%. Lower body lifts by 61%. And what's more, in addition to liposuction, which remains the single most popular male cosmetic surgery, men are now increasingly seeking out male breast reduction surgery. In fact, some medical practices report that demand for male breast reduction has increased by more than 35% in recent years. Now, in fairness, some of these procedures are treating actual medical conditions. You know, most men who get breast reduction are suffering from gynecomastia, which is an enlargement in breast tissue in men. Now, frankly, if I had that condition, I'd probably get the surgery, too. So the fact that there's an increase in those surgeries tells us probably there's an increase in those in that condition, which tells us something about, like, hormones and other things that are going on with men, which is also important. And then there are other procedures which might be called cosmetic that are, you know, meant to address medical conditions. I wouldn't put those in the same category as something like cheek implants or a nose job. Now, the most concerning part of the story is that this is a generational shift. Young people are driving a Gen Z. People who are 29 years old and younger account for 37% of rhinoplasties, which are nose jobs. They account for 25% of all cheek implants. This is a demographic that overall only accounts for around 6% of all cosmetic surgery. So young people are more preoccupied with their appearance, particularly the appearance of their face, to the point that they're undergoing surgery to correct the problem. And many, many more young people are considering surgery as well. A survey by the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery found that millennials account for 58% of men who are interested in getting a cosmetic procedure, while Gen z accounts for 35%. Now, to the extent that men were ever interested in these procedures in the past, at least in modern history, it was overwhelmingly because of older people who were unhappy with how they were aging. Older people tend to have the money to afford these surgeries. They're also aging. Their looks are changing. So the whole industry was marketed towards them for many years. But now we have a scenario where the demand curve has suddenly flipped. Young people are increasingly insecure about their own appearance and they're willing to stretch their budgets to do something about it. Now, if you ask the American Society for Plastic Surgeons, they'll tell you that the new demand for plastic surgery is closely related to the fact that young people aren't starting families anymore, which is actually close to a real explanation, although of course they try to put a positive spin on it. A new analysis of data by Pew Research center that shows millennials are taking a different path in forming or not forming families compared to their counterparts Gen X. The analysis concludes that millennials trail previous generations of the same age. I think a lot of these unique elements to this generation, coupled with the exposure to the Internet and the various facets of social media, will create this whole new generation of plastic surgery patients, said Dr. Ryan Neinstein. With the waiting for families that is a regular occurrence Amongst these ages 27 to 42 comes an increase in education and therefore a higher income. According to Ashley Amalfi, the affluence that this younger generation has allows them to feel like, I can afford to do this and I want to do this for myself, and they're taking that back and doing what it is that they need to do to feel well about themselves rather than waiting around until after they have kids like previous generations. Now, somewhere in that statement is an acknowledgment of the fact that when young people get married and start families, demand for cosmetic surgery tends to plummet among young people in particular. And indeed, even if you only look at this from a practical perspective, there's there's not a lot of time in your life to be vain about your appearance and to wallow in your own narcissism when you're trying to raise kids. There's not a lot of time for it, even if you want to. And yes, even if you're solely looking at the finances, yeah, it wouldn't make a lot of sense. You'd have to be a criminally negligent father to spend $10,000 on a nose job for yourself instead of saving for the future of your own children. But really, you know, they have the causation backwards here. It's not the fact that young people, when they have no kids, suddenly want to spend money on themselves in a narcissistic, self absorbed manner. As an explanation that doesn't really make sense, the actual issue is that when young people become more narcissistic and self absorbed, as well as more socially isolated, they're much less likely to start families in the first place. So how exactly did that happen? What caused this transformation? Well, to answer that question, we have to talk about a 20 year old Internet personality by the name of Braden Eric Peters, who's better known by his stage name of Clavicular. Now, if you have not heard of Clavicular, I can guarantee that your children have. He's pretty hard to miss if you spend any amount of time online. Clavicular shot to fame out of nowhere. He was a complete unknown as recently as like nine months ago. But then in late December of 2025, right around Christmas Eve, millions of people were talking about him, and the reason is that he ran somebody over with a cyber truck. Or at least that was the story and it was all caught on video. Clavicular was being harassed by some other social media character who jumped on his truck and Clavicular, as the narrative goes, calmly hit the accelerator and mowed him down. Watch.

[Actor/Voice Actor]

Oh my.

[Host]

Start driving with this guy.

[Actor/Voice Actor]

Drive.

[Interviewer]

Oh my.

[Commentator]

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.

[Host]

Oh.

[Commentator]

My God.

[Host]

Is he dead?

[Commentator]

I don't know.

[Interviewer]

Hopefully.

[Commentator]

Now, pretty much everyone took this particular stunt at face value. For some reason, nobody asked why the police didn't file charges or why we never actually see what happens to the guy he hit. Instead, he gained a legion of new fans, none of whom wondered whether they were being played by a guy who, until five minutes ago, they had never heard of. And conveniently enough, the video was uploaded at the end of December, well outside of any major news cycle. It's a very striking example of how easily people can be manipulated online and how social media stars are just generated out of thin air, out of nothing really. The PR operation, whoever was behind it could not have been more effective. And virtually overnight, Clavicular was famous. But more importantly, his whole philosophy the idea of looks maxing, which generally means that you should go to extreme or unusual lengths to optimize your physical appearance that also went mainstream. So here's how the BBC elaborates on the the meaning of looks maxing Quote Looks maxing claims to be about the maximization of one's appearance. The aim of looks maxing is becoming the most attractive one can possibly look according to a set of prescribed criteria, with particular importance given to jawlines, eyes and physique, including hunter eyes angled slightly upward toward the temple, a positive canthal tilt. The trend has existed for at least a decade, but has recently been popularized and redefined on TikTok, where it's reaching a widening demographic of teenage boys. Algorithmically predisposed to the manosphere subculture looks, Mack Singh attaches scores to aspects of male appearance, focusing particularly on jawline, muscularity and skin. Now, by itself, when it's defined like that, it's not hard to understand how looks maxing would be popular in some circles. It's a little over the top with the score system, yeah. But there's no question that society would be improved to a significant degree if more people put some basic effort into their physical appearance. You know, when you go to the airport or grocery store or some other public place and everybody's wearing sweatpants and smells like marijuana, it's obviously a demoralizing and tedious experience. So it's natural and appropriate to want to be around people who haven't visibly given up on themselves. Your physical appearance does matter. Like, we're not going to say it doesn't matter. And not just when you're single, either, but when you're married, too. It's not really fair to your spouse to lock them down and then immediately devolve into a fat, greasy slob. The problem is that, as the name implies, looks maxing is more about a relentless, obsessive fixation with your physical appearance and the appearance of others. It's an ongoing sense of profound discomfort with things that are completely normal, you know, reminiscent of what the DSM calls dysphoria. And it leads to all kinds of unnecessary procedures like the ones that clavicular has undergone. So here's just one, side by side of the transformation. He's been advertising on social media after multiple cosmetic surgeries. Obviously, there was nothing that needed to be corrected before. He probably looked better before, if we're being honest. His nose was arguably straighter. It's, it's, it just. When people do this to their face, they start to look uncanny, which is why almost everybody looks better before they start doing this. You look uncanny, look unnatural. There's something about it that isn't human. It isn't quite right. But the point is that with this mindset, he's obviously never going to be satisfied with his appearance. No matter how many surgeries he has, that's not ever going to happen. And he's, he's not just doing surgeries, by the way. He's also popularizing bone smashing. Smashing, which is defined as, quote, hitting facial or collar bone areas with a small hammer or hard object in a misguided attempt to trigger bone growth through micro fractures. Now, as with anything else concerning this guy, there's always the possibility that this is fake. Is he really sitting around when he's not on camera smashing himself in the face with a hammer. Who knows? You know, his rise to fame was completely contrived. Most everything about him is contrived. Even his face is now contrived. So there's no reason to take anything he does or says or claims to do at face value. But if he is doing this bone smashing thing, then again he's inflicting irreversible damage on his body in service of a delusion. And he's doing it with the support of a movement that's affirming those delusions every step of the way. Now, if that sounds strikingly familiar, it's because this is a preoccupation that in many ways echoes the behavior of many people who identify as transgender. There are entire online communities in which trans identified people talk about undergoing various surgeries and operations, constantly affirming one another, even as they cause very obvious irreversible damage to their bodies. Now, in response to Clavicular in particular, the commentator using the name raw egg nationalist offered this theory as to what's going on and I think this is interesting. Quote, one of my firm beliefs is that the spread of the front facing camera designed in Asia to flatter Asian facial features is responsible for the massive wave of disastrous facial treatments being undertaken by women and increasingly men in the West. We're seeing a kind of mass psychosis, a fracturing of the self caused by a camera device that by design distorts the facial features of European people. There's a lot of truth to that. And you'll find various names for this phenomenon in research papers. Selfie, Dysmorphia, Snapchat, Dysmorphia, zoom, Dysmorphia and so on. There's no question that with this, with the rise of smartphones and now AI filters combined with front facing cameras and social media, young people are seeing close up shots of their faces and the faces of other people more often than ever. And the problem clearly predates smartphones and AI. I mean, I often think about the fact that most humans through history grew up and live their lives hardly ever seeing what they looked like. They would have gone days, weeks, months, years and, and never seen themselves. Glass mirrors didn't become popular household items until the late 19th century. And now, with lives dominated by screens, we see ourselves constantly. We are spectators of our own selves in a way that would have been impossible and impossible to comprehend for most humans through history. This constant minute by minute physical, not to mention emotional, mental, with all the therapeutic nonsense, self Analysis is, I think, driving people insane. Spending every day scrutinizing what they look like and also scrutinizing how they feel and what they're thinking. Just this constant. The gaze constantly flipped around and focus back on the self in a way that, that again would have been totally alien to our ancestors. There's something very unnatural and unhuman about it. Humans are not capable of coping with this level of self scrutiny. That's why looks maxing is, is rooted in a very deep sense of insecurity and inner frustration, which is related to the fact that, you know, clavicular is known for taking hard drugs, sometimes on camera. But if you watch corporate media outlets, they'll criticize clavicular from a different angle angle. In fact, they'll, they'll miss the point entirely, as they so often do. Instead of addressing looks maxing on its own terms, they, these outlets will try to smear clavicular by association. They'll make political attacks without admitting it. And that's what happened in his viral 60 Minutes interview. Rather it's a 60 Minutes Australia interview. For example, Watch was born out of

[Interviewer]

the incel community and movement. Do you identify with that group? How do you feel about being linked to that group of people?

[Host]

Do I identify as an incel? I mean, how could you ask me that question as a follow up after you asked me about my relationships to women? I mean, that's quite literally the worst sequence of questions I think I've ever heard.

[Interviewer]

Well, let me rephrase it then. Looksmaxing was obviously a term created by the incel community. How do you feel about being linked to that group?

[Host]

I'm not linked to that group in any way. Looks maxing is self improvement, right? So it's about potentially even ascending out of that category. So that's, that would be kind of one of the goals is to disassociate from being a Hensell and overcome that. So that doesn't make sense.

[Interviewer]

You've obviously shared company with Andrew Tate and other, dare I say, rather controversial figures. Why do you spend time with people like that?

[Host]

Are you trying to. I see. You want to make this political.

[Interviewer]

Not at all, not at all. I'm just curious.

[Host]

No, that's what you want to do is, you know, you have to. Don't try to go down that line of questioning with me, all right? Because I'm not doing any political, I'm not married.

[Interviewer]

But I was simply only asking because obviously you've been filming with these people

[Host]

so I could teach you about Luxmax and Then maybe you could switch that up. But thanks for, thanks for the time. Appreciate the interview.

[Interviewer]

All right,

[Actor/Voice Actor]

All right.

[Host]

Let that done.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Host]

Thank you guys.

[Commentator]

So talk about an interview where you just want everybody involved to be banished from the Earth and deported to Jupiter. There are just no winners, nobody to root for very bleak, extraordinarily extra bleak content there. And it overlooks something important, which is that if you go back far enough in history, so called looks maxing doesn't have anything to do with Andrew Tate or incels or whatever. Look smacking actually does go back to the ancients, they wouldn't have called it that, obviously, but you know, it wasn't always rooted just in narcissism because again, people weren't constantly looking at themselves in the way that they do now. So to give just one example, ancient Egyptian men, everybody from laborers to the pharaohs, wore eyeliner. They called it coal. And it was made from ground minerals and suit. And as you can see, it gave people kind of a cat eye look, which was very distinctive among Egyptians who worshiped cats. But it wasn't just for decoration, like any good looks maxing technique. It was also a biohack as well, although again, they would not have called it that. It served multiple purposes, reducing glare from the sun, repelling flies, and even supposedly safeguarding the eyes from inflammation, particularly when the Nile was flooding. And there was a religious component to it of course too, in that the cat eye look was seen as kind of a tribute to the gods. Now, the ancient Egyptians had elaborate skincare routines as well. As the legend goes, Cleopatra bathed in donkey milk. They created paste with clay or ash mixed with olive oil, rubbed it all over their bodies. Archaeologists found papyrus records dating back to the 1500 BC that described how they would use a mixture of animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts to cleanse their skin. And there are also more militaristic examples from ancient times, like Herodotus describing Spartan warriors combing their hair before battle, while there were others who were working out naked. This is from Herodotus history when he described the lead up to the battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. And later, Plutarch offered this explanation for the Spartans custom quote. In time of war, too, they relaxed the severity of the young men's discipline and permitted them to beautify their hair and ornament their arms and clothing, rejoicing to see them like horses, prance and neigh for the contest. Therefore, they wore their hair long. As soon as they ceased to be youths, and especially in times of danger, they took pains to have it glossy and well combed, remembering a certain saying that a fine head of hair made the handsome more comely still and the ugly more terrible. So the ancients, if we're being honest, could be a little effeminate by modern standards, which of course we can't apply retroactively to ancient times. But none of these behaviors were disordered in the manner of modern looks maxing, because for one thing, in many cases at least, they weren't causing self harm. And for another, the so called looks maxing back in those days tended by, you know, tended to be about maintaining customs and traditions and building social cohesion. It wasn't solely about improving individual attractiveness as part of a competition. And thousands of years later, along came the Americans. And while early Americans had some standards for looks and dress, once again it was more about customs and manners and etiquette than being seen as highly attractive. As a boy, George Washington famously hand copied a document called the Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation, which contained dozens of rules covering everything from posture to dress to manners. It didn't say anything about smashing your bones with a hammer, but you know, maybe that, maybe that part of it was lost to time. Who knows? The slap, the slippery slope into modern looks maxing began with TV and bodybuilding culture, which was born out of modernity and boredom. After all, people who work on the farm all day, you know, if you have reasons in your everyday life to lift heavy things, you have no reason to go to a gym. And they wouldn't have had time even if they wanted to. But beginning in the early 20th century, in a post industrial society that started to change. Vince Garanda, the Iron guru, opened up a gym in North Hollywood in the 1940s. Decades later, he famously told Arnold Schwarzenegger that he was too fat and needed to lose about 30 pounds. Schwarzenegger, as we all know, then leveraged his bodybuilding career into Hollywood stardom. Bodybuilders, men with Frankishly, frankly cartoonish physiques, played well on television and in theaters. They were bankable because millions of people looked up to them, along with professional athletes. As part of the reason why in the 1980s, steroids exploded in popularity. By 1988, 1 in 15 male high school seniors reported using steroids at one point. You know, gym culture, which obviously is still exists today and is, you know, arguably bigger than ever today, can become narcissistic and effeminate after a certain point. Now there's nothing wrong with going to the gym, that's a positive habit, or it should be. Men should be getting physical exercise. They should have visible muscles rather than being weak and flabby. You know, I'm in the gym myself multiple times a week, so I'm not going to judge anybody for that. But when a healthy focus on strength and fitness turns into an obsessive, overwhelming preoccupation with appearance, like when a man is spending multiple hours a day, every day, trying to maintain or improve his physical appearance, and when it's the appearance that motivates him far more than a desire to be strong and fit, then a healthy habit has mutated into an expression of vanity. But whether you go to the gym or not, it's hard to not lapse into vanity in our culture. As a culture, you know, it seems that we, that we are living in a society designed to make people as vain as humanly possible. Social media and the Internet took what TV started and made it much, much worse. We have a generation raised on social media and smartphones that seem to have developed this kind of disconnected, disembodied sense of self. You know, for my job, I'm obviously on camera every day. I see myself on video a lot. I've even sat in a movie theater when MI races came out and watched myself on a giant movie screen for an hour and a half, which is very disconcerting, especially when you're ugly like me. But I'm in the business of, you know, quote, content creation, as much as I hate that term. And, and, you know, when you're in this business, you are the content, or at least you're the person presenting the content. So it's very easy in this line of work for people to become absolutely psychotically narcissistic and egomaniacal at the same time. It's very easy to become disconnected from yourself as you begin to see yourself as content or worse, as a brand rather than a human. And this combination of feeling disconnected within yourself, while also narcissistic and self obsessed, drives a lot of people in this space insane. So if you're wondering why so many, quote, content creators are lunatics, this is why. And yet it's occurred to me more and more recently that this entire experience I'm describing, maybe aside from the movie, the movie theater part of it is not really all that unique to, quote, content creators or people in media or people in Hollywood anymore. I mean, the fact is that everybody is on social media. Everybody takes videos and pictures of themselves all the time. Everyone has made themselves into a public spectacle to some extent. And young people have been doing that, or when they were very young, it was done to them practically since birth. Everyone has the out of body experience of viewing themselves as content, as a product to be consumed by others. And so the narcissism and psychosis that used to be contained to people in media and the entertainment industry has broken containment now. It's, it's everywhere. And that is just one aspect of the problem. You know, also, young men today often lack, and sometimes completely lack masculine male role models. The fatherlessness epidemic is obviously the core of this problem. And if a young man doesn't have a father to model himself after, or if he does have a father but his father is weak and absent and unimpressive or some combination of those, then where else is he going to look for guidance on how to live and conduct himself? There are very few masculine figures on tv, not even cartoonish ones, at least in the important category of white male fathers. You know, for many years now, Hollywood and the networks have, have cast total buffoons into these roles that would have been masculine a generation ago. And consider the common, often cited example of sitcom fathers. The character who, in basically every sitcom for 30 years never does anything right, it's completely outshined by his comparatively impressive wife. And this, in case it's not obvious, is a form of propaganda, but it's also a reflection of our current situation. And of course, young men today aren't generally watching network sitcoms. I don't know who's watching sitcoms anymore. Instead, they're watching influencers like Clavicular, who makes the oafish sitcom dad look like a paragon of masculine virtue. By comparison, the result of all these factors has been not just narcissism and self obsession and a collective feeling of being alienated in your own body, but also despondency on a large scale. And nothing exacerbated this despondency and this isolation more than the COVID lockdowns. More than any other modern development, the COVID lockdowns permanently warped the perspectives and goals and social development of young people. They did so much damage that we'll, we will never be able to fully assess the extent of it. One of the causalities of these lockdowns was Clavicular himself. Recently, footage of Clavicular's graduation from middle school surfaced online. This was a remote graduation because children weren't allowed to interact with, with one another or go outside, all to protect them, quote, unquote, from a virus that posed zero risk to them. Teachers and parents tried to pretend that children wouldn't be harmed by these lockdowns. They obeyed the marching orders from the criminals in the teachers union who just wanted a vacation, as well as the marching orders from the criminals in the federal government, like Tony Fauci. And through it all, parents and teachers pretended that they were doing the right thing. So here's what Clavicular's graduation looked like. And you can see his demeanor, and then also his parents. Watch. Our next graduate is Brayden Peters. Congratulations. So it's an extraordinarily sad piece of footage because we know that millions of other children experience the same profound lack of social connection with anyone, the same frustration with how fake and sterile everything was. Many of these children, after being forced to endure isolation for so long, never recovered. They never became functioning adults. Many of them began identifying as transgender, to the point that transgenderism became a social contagion. But even the children who didn't deny the reality of their sex nevertheless found other biological realities to deny. What's happening today, what we're seeing with Clavicular and the millions of young men getting nose jobs and cheek implants and everything else, and the millions of women, young and old, injecting themselves with botox and lip fillers and everything else is, you might say, a kind of intra sex transgenderism. Male to male, female to female. That's the best way to describe it. You know, a trans identified person is somebody who hates their God given body, fundamentally rejects their own selves, seeks instead to remake themselves not in the image of God, but in the foggy, ever shifting image of some kind of ambiguous ideal they've concocted in their own heads. Well, Clavicular is doing the exact same thing. Many people, young and old, but especially young, are doing the exact same thing. Everybody loves small business until they ask for a loan. Then suddenly the people who are always talking about supporting entrepreneurs become a lot harder to find. Well, if you've ever try to get financing through a traditional bank, you know, the routine paperwork waiting around, followed by more paperwork, and then maybe you'll get an answer, just maybe. Meanwhile, you're trying to run a business, not spend your week chasing signatures and checking your inbox. That's why I want to tell you about Cardiff. 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Again, that's Cardiff Co Walsh Real growth fast funding Cardiff Borrow better Most books are forgotten, and only a few survive for a generation. Very, very few are still being read nearly 3,000 years after they were written. Doesn't happen by accident. It happens because those books understand something, something permanent about human nature. And that's why people still read Homer's Odyssey. It's more than an adventure story. It's about courage, leadership, temptation, perseverance, and ultimately, why home and family are worth more than comfort or glory. Those questions haven't changed. Neither have the answers. That's why Hillsdale College is offering a free online course on the Odyssey. Taught by Professor Benedict Whelan. The course explores one of the greatest works in the Western tradition and explains why it continues to shape the way we think nearly three millennia later. Enrollment is completely free, and you can work through the lectures at your own pace. Go to Hillsdale. Edu Walsh to enroll. It's totally free. Start reading. Learn the classics. Rediscover the West. Start right now at Hillsdale. Edu Walsh. In that light, the trans phenomenon has not disappeared, really, although the trans cult has obviously been defeated at almost every level politically, legally, culturally. Instead, in truth, the trans phenomenon has dispersed widely. It's. It's taken new forms. And really, we should have expected that to happen. A generation raised on social media and smartphones, which spent more than a year locked down at home for no reason, was invariably going to develop this very disconnected, disembodied sense of self that we've discussed. What's now becoming clear is that gender confusion is only one aspect of this disconnect. It's just one manifestation of a much deeper issue, one pathology among many, most of them still undiscovered. But as the children of the lockdown era become the leaders of this country, which won't be very long from now, God help us, those pathologies won't remain undiscovered for long. Well, thanks for watching today. And before I go I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Daily Wire is coming out with a new movie. It's called Run, Hide, Fight Infidels. It streams next month and we have a first look at the trailer. Here it is. Check it out.

[Actor/Voice Actor]

Your country is beneath contempt. We who love and serve Allah fought back against the Americans and the Zionists from the scourge of secularism and the lands of unbelief.

[Commentator]

Anyone gonna listen to Captain Saunders tomorrow? The retired Delta Force soldier with a new book out? He's the polar opposite of those brain dead protesters. Given the current climate, should Clay Saunders even be allowed on campus? Mr. Saunders is a close personal friend of Chancellor Friedman. This is a decision I cannot flank.

[Actor/Voice Actor]

There are three ways Islam will conquer the West. Through immigration, through the wombs of our women, and by using our nation's freedoms against us. Are you paying attention? Listen carefully. The Great Satan. America will fall. You are infidels. The bodies of women are not pure and the men's souls are unclean. What makes them so dangerous? Their goals are not in this life, but the next. Anyone? I got friends here.

[Commentator]

I can't just leave.

[Actor/Voice Actor]

Listen to me. In the law, we cannot run or hide from what is coming. We have to fight. I will be rewarded 10,000 times in the next life. When you die, you're nothing.

[Commentator]

Only one way to find out.

[Actor/Voice Actor]

That's the American way.

[Commentator]

So there's the trailer. And look, it looks. I haven't seen the movie yet, I'll tell you. But just based on the trailer alone, it looks kind of psychotic in the best way and like a fun action movie, which, you know, I think we need a lot more of those. So stay tuned for that. And speaking of staying tuned, we also have some bonus content this weekend that you don't want to miss. The daily cancellation is coming back in a new and improved form. Or maybe just new. I don't know about improved. It can't be improved. It was already perfect. And plus, I watched the new Spider man movie for some ungodly reason and I have some opinions about it that I will share. You'll never guess if I liked it or not. You'll never. You'll never guess what my opinion was. All that coming up this weekend. Until then, Godspeed. Once upon a time, there was a country. Not just a country, but a big one. An empire. In that empire, there was an upper middle class family where two boys were raised by their mother. Loved books, Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Box. Their father admired the country's leaders patriotic and happy. Both sons went to universities where they were radicalized. One of the brothers read a book and convinced him to try to shoot the country's leader. He was hanged. The other brother read the same books but decided to lead a movement. First they came from universities and no one seemed to care. Then they took over the unions and again no one seemed to care. Then they created their own media organization organizations and took over the cities and again most people just ignored it. Change, after all, was something they could believe in until it was too late. Sound familiar? This is the real history of communism. The Russian Revolution.