Charlie Warzel (2:29)

He started posting on the Internet as a teenager around when he was about 15 years old on these looks maxing forums, which are forums that are dedicated to making yourself as esthetically perfect as humanly possible. Body modification.

Brayden (Clavicular) (2:45)

I'm getting otoplasty and rhinoplasty during the surgery, so they'll pin the ears back, do the mastoid tie. So I'm already getting that it's all included.

Charlie Warzel (2:54)

And so he started posting there. His real name's Brayden and He basically toiled in obscurity for a really long time until he allegedly hit someone with his cybertruck while he was livestreaming on Christmas Eve of this past year.

Noel King (3:11)

Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Brayden (Clavicular) (3:13)

Is he dead?

Noel King (3:14)

I don't know.

Today Explained Host (3:16)

Hopefully.

Noel King (3:19)

Tell me about the looksmaxers. What is their deal?

Charlie Warzel (3:23)

The Looks Maxers are complicated because they are in an overlap with lots of other communities online. Right. There's the involuntarily celibate community known as Incels, right. That have links to violent extremism. But really, there's this core feeling in looksmaxing that the only thing that matters in all of life is how good you look, that that is tied to your self worth in every way, and that what you should be doing is trying, by all means necessary, whether that is breaking bones in your body, whether that is chewing on a rubber ball for hours a day to get your jawline to be straighter, whether that's steroids or drugs or anything to get a leg up. You need to do that, because the best thing that you can do is go out in the world and look better than everyone else and document the heck out of it.

Noel King (4:26)

Those examples sound extreme, but I suspect you're gonna tell me they're not. What do we know about what Clavicular has done to himself?

Charlie Warzel (4:33)

Well, we only know what he tells us, right? So, you know, unreliable narrator, perhaps, but he has said on various podcasts, etcetera, that he has smashed his face with a hammer. The theory there is that when your bones break, they grow back stronger. I'm saying that's his theory, not my theory. I'm certainly not endorsing this.

Today Explained Host (4:59)

How does it work?

Brayden (Clavicular) (5:00)

So you're bracing yourself. You don't have to do it, and then you're hitting real hard. And what this is doing is this is creating micro fractures. And according to Wolff's law, the bone is going to grow back straight, stronger. And not only that, but you're also getting a lot of inflammation and swelling, so it makes your cheekbones look a lot bigger.

Charlie Warzel (5:18)

And so he has smashed his face, his jawline, in order to strengthen it to make it look better. He started, according to him, taking testosterone when he was around 14 or 15 years old.

Brayden (Clavicular) (5:30)

I started taking exogenous hormones, testosterone, when I was 14. I thought, why would I work out as a natural, take years to make the progress that I can make in months? It didn't make sense to me at all.

Charlie Warzel (5:42)

Which is also not recommended by. By medical professionals. And that is in order to, you know, speed up his, his, his puberty and get his, get his body, you know, looking like an adult man's. He's said he's taken methamphetamines in order to hollow out his cheeks. For three days.

Brayden (Clavicular) (6:05)

I spammed a combination of Adderall and methamphetamine for appetite suppression, and I didn't. I literally went on a three day fast and stayed awake the entire time.

Charlie Warzel (6:20)

Which is a, it's certainly a choice.

Noel King (6:23)

Yeah.

Brayden (Clavicular) (6:24)

Like I said, guys, I'm not gonna sit here and act like I'm some good influence. Don't do that. Don't do that. That's what I did. I'm crazy, right?

Charlie Warzel (6:31)

I'm the crazy guy and all sorts of things. This thing again, chewing on a rubber ball, it's called mewing is the phrase, and helps structure your jaw, sort of like curling your biceps or something like that. So there's all kinds of things that he has done, supposedly that are extremely extreme.

Noel King (6:55)

One thing that I find so fascinating is this is like a society in a way. And so the looksmaxers have their own language, which I think is very compelling. Can you define a couple of the terms?

Charlie Warzel (7:09)

The white nationalist streamer. Nick Fuentes made fun of me recently for using like this language as like a, you know, a loser millennial guy reporter. Because I'm just like. And it's true. And I think that's actually part of it. Like every generation has their own language. And, you know, this language is very influenced by online message board communities and places like 4chan, etc. But part of it is, as it always is, right? Is to make the older people have to say it and look like true losers. So that's. Yeah, okay, so there's, there's stuff like, I mean, looks maxing is its own, right? MOGGING is like, you know, looking better than someone looking, Looking hot. And it actually, I, what I found is it comes from. It's like a sort of an acronym, but it stands for, like alpha male of the group and then male of the group. Mog. Mogging.

Brayden (Clavicular) (8:06)

So MOGGING is essentially just, you know, outperforming them, looking better than them, and just sort of dominating, right?

Charlie Warzel (8:12)

So there's this like, you know, alpha beta, dominance, go back to the jungle, you know, Darwinian kind of thing going on.

Brayden (Clavicular) (8:21)

They could money MOG you. They could status MOG you.

Charlie Warzel (8:24)

There's all kinds of words that they're just making up on the spot too, right? Like, like jester maxing.

Brayden (Clavicular) (8:31)

I think of it like you're this big jester like, doing these silly, like, activities. Don't be jester. Maxing at the club, getting mono for six months, getting aids. Just lock in.

Noel King (8:42)

If the point of looks maxing is to be as hot as possible, I get it. It's understandable. You're young. What is the objective of being hot? What is the purpose of all this?

Charlie Warzel (8:56)

It is social dominance, really? Or just dominance in general, right? This. This idea of mogging coming from this alpha male of group acronym, the alpha part of that and the male part of that are both extremely important. And so going out in public as an extremely hot person is not just to show how beautiful you are, but it's to be dominant over other people. Right? You want to make other people look bad. You want them to feel bad about themselves based off of how unbelievably attractive you are. And you also want to basically conquer women. It is about, you know, how many quote unquote chicks can you pull, Right? But all of it is in this sense of. Of conquest, of domination, of making everyone else subordinate to you.

Noel King (9:57)

All right, so I read your pieces and I listened to your podcast and there's a thing that I think you both say directly and kind of dance around, which is clavicular. And the gang seem stupid. This seems stupid, but it isn't actually stupid. Explain what you mean.

Charlie Warzel (10:16)

Well, I think it's stupid on the content level, right? It is. It's pretty. Gosh, it's lacking in substance is how I would put it. There's the clip of Clavicular. I believe he's in Miami. He's with this streamer Sneako who's very popular, and Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist griper leader, also streamer.

Brayden (Clavicular) (10:46)

Is it white guy? Is he 5, 8? Does he have aura? That's Nick Fuentes.

Charlie Warzel (10:51)

And they are in a living room somewhere in an apartment. There's like people walking around in the background. They are just like, pulling up old computer chairs and sitting awkwardly in front of this camera and having a conversation that is, like, incredibly stilted, just incredibly vapid.

Brayden (Clavicular) (11:13)

Saw our section last night. And the way that me and Sneako do it, like, it's impossible to not, like, mock, you know, we mocked every single dude.

Charlie Warzel (11:20)

Yeah, for you guys.

Brayden (Clavicular) (11:21)

Dude, what are you talking about?

Charlie Warzel (11:22)

There's just, like, not a lot being exchanged there. Clavicular seems to react with just like, he has sort of like one of those, you know, wind up dolls. Like, you pull the string and there's like five different reactions, right? So like, one of them's like, oh, dude, that's so based. So based. Sick.

Brayden (Clavicular) (11:39)

I have a wiki page. Wiki page. Based. That was based last night.

Lifelock Advertiser (11:43)

All.

Today Explained Host (11:44)

All right.

Noel King (11:45)

Based.

Brayden (Clavicular) (11:45)

Next segment. Yeah, Based.

Charlie Warzel (11:47)

Based.

Brayden (Clavicular) (11:48)

Let's call a girl.

Charlie Warzel (11:50)

And so. So on the, on the substance level, there's that.

Noel King (11:54)

Yeah.

Charlie Warzel (11:54)

Then there's the element of what he means, what that vapid content means, what the popularity of someone like clavicular means. And I think that that is is not stupid. Like the fact that I'm wr about him in the Atlantic because he's hanging out with these people. The fact that he was able to leverage his popularity into this situation where he is meeting with Andrew Tate, the manosphere influencer.

Brayden (Clavicular) (12:28)

All right, well, fellas, I think we should probably start heading over to Tate's facts. It's about time. But dude, that was a good sit down segment. I thought we talked about some interesting topics.

Charlie Warzel (12:38)

W yeah, yeah.

Brayden (Clavicular) (12:39)

W's in the chat for that.

Charlie Warzel (12:41)

How many people we got Fuentes, who is influential enough that he's trying to force the MAGA coalition further towards white nationalism that he's able to go into a club with these guys and get them to play the ye song Heil Hitler. And turn that into this viral moment that then gets the mayor of Miami to have to react to it, to, you know, condemn it. You know, basically apologize on behalf of the city for letting this happen. These guys are extremely effective. Attention hijackers. And that's that is important.

Noel King (13:33)

The Atlantic's Charlie Warzell ahead. Charlie comes back to tell us how the looks maxers are taking over the real world. Foreign. Comes from Chime. When you're checking your finances, the last thing you want to see is a bank fee. But with Chime, you don't have to let bank fees ruin your day. Chime says Chime is not just another banking app. Chime wants to unlock banking for everyday people by getting rid of overdraft fees, minimum fees and monthly fees. Chime says they make your everyday spending work harder with tangible rewards and clear finance financial progress. Chime says they can help you build your credit history stress free. Plus they say you can earn up to 3% APY on savings. And if you need help. Chime is also rated five stars by USA Today for customer service with real humans they say 24. 7. Chime says it's not just smarter banking. It is the most rewarding way to bank. You can join the millions who are already banking fee free. Today you can head to chime.com explained that is chime.com explained it only takes few minutes to sign up and Today Explained listeners can earn up to an extra $350.

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Noel King (16:23)

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Brayden (Clavicular) (17:32)

Next segment. Yeah.

Charlie Warzel (17:33)

Today explained.

Brayden (Clavicular) (17:34)

Based.

Noel King (17:34)

Based.

Brayden (Clavicular) (17:36)

Let's call a girl.

Noel King (17:38)

I'm Noel King. We're back with the Atlantic's Charlie Warzel. Okay, Charlie, there's a world in which this is just kids being kids. You call it nihilism in your piece, but then you point out, others have pointed out it is not just kids being kids because it is. Influen and Singh really are political leaders. Tell me what you've seen of this bleeding into politics.

Charlie Warzel (18:02)

Yeah, I think that we are in the middle of a crisis of nihilism and it's a very online phenomenon to some degree. But some of the original message board spaces. 4chan is probably the most popular one which came out of this other for something awful. It was populated by a lot of kids and young men who felt really disaffected, who were bored, who felt like they weren't living up to their potential. They gathered, they found community here. And one thing that they developed was this incredibly robust, ironic culture, right? It was this idea that given their own insecurities, if they could believe in nothing, if they could hold nothing in their hearts, then they were invincible, right? You couldn't hurt them, you couldn't insult them, you couldn't make fun of them for living in their parents basement, right? And so there became this way of, you know, trolling people, of really having no ideology other than chaos that really has bled into all kinds of culture over the last two decades. And the Trump movement in 2016 was a huge leap forward for these people, feeling like they had representation, but also that their culture was fusing with a type of politics. And that has grown and grown and grown year over year over year. And what you see now in the second Trump administration are a lot of these people or people who are fluent in this, in the language of those places now occupy positions in government. The person who is controlling the Department of Homeland Security's account on X or the White House's account on X, the person who's doing the day to day posting is posting in a way that is indistinguishable from how someone was posting on 4chan in 2014. And I'm not like actually genuinely indistinguishable. It is trolling. It is dog whistling to white nationalists and other bigots. It is trying to make one's political enemies feel absolutely terrible. But also there is this feeling that there are no rules Anymore. There are no adults in the room and we are in charge.

Noel King (20:55)

Let me ask you about something that surprised me. So I think of these guys and again, I had a shallow knowledge two weeks ago, but I think of these guys as having right wing politics. And then I go online one day and I see that Clavicular has said JD Vance could not win an election, a presidential election, against Gavin Newsom because Gavin Newsom mogs J.D. vance. He's hotter.

Brayden (Clavicular) (21:19)

Yeah, but I mean like this next election cycle, who's going to win? It's going to be Gavin Newsom against J.D. vance because J.D. vance is subhuman and Gavin Newsom mugs. They know that I literally sent his fucking campaign down the shitter, like quite literally. Now he's just noticed like this loser fat guy because it went everywhere, like.

Noel King (21:38)

On Twitter and then, and that might have been nothing, but then I saw people who I take seriously saying, oh, this is really actually a problem for JD Vance that, that this influential young guy is calling him like fat and ugly. Forgive me for saying it, but that was what was happening. And it made me wonder whether. Does Clavicular actually have right wing politics? Like what, what is this brand of commentary? What is he doing?

Charlie Warzel (22:03)

You know, there's a way in which if you say he doesn't, right? And then he pals around with Nick Fuentes, there's a way in which that sounds like that's excusing him, right. Or saying he doesn't have any agency. I think it's really important to say these guys are making choices, they have full agency. They should be taking full responsibility for the fact that like Cliff Keeler says the N word a lot on stream. Like he is doing things that are racist, that are bigoted. He's palling around with people who are racist and bigoted. But as far as his actual ideology, I think it's politically, I think it's completely incoherent.

Noel King (22:46)

Huh.

Charlie Warzel (22:47)

And I think that this is something that a lot of people are having trouble dealing with and this is a bit of that nihilism as it relates to our political moment.

Brayden (Clavicular) (22:55)

I'm really just trying to diminish any political movement, any like populist like movement whatsoever just by having men try to self improve. There's a million things I could name that are a better use of time to accelerate yourself as a male than anything to do with politics.

Charlie Warzel (23:16)

Clavicular's politics, in so much as that they exist, are about attention. Right. And I think that you see this in so many different varieties. Right. I'M not linking Clavicular to. Directly to the types of mass shooters that we have seen, but there is a similarity. There's a similar flavor in the sense of you see some of these mass shooters going into places, doing these. These big manifestos, right? Some of these manifestos contain a whole bunch of anti semitic and white nationalist screeds. But then they also have a bunch of stuff, you know, making fun of Donald Trump. They write stuff on their bullets that the whole point of it is to get attention, to get people to go on a wild goose chase, to understand who they are, to hack the media, to hack the attention. And at the end of it, that is what matters to them, that is why they are doing this. And I think you can kind of tie that to this guy. The reason he's doing it is because it gets him the attention that he wants. It's helpful to his project, which is to be the, you know, the guy who goes in and, you know, quote, unquote, mogs people on stream.

Noel King (24:33)

Everyone who I've talked to about Clavicular, who knows who he is, who has a son or a nephew, really wants to know if it is too late. Like if Internet nihilism has gotten to the point of no return and this is just where we are now. Do you think this is our future?

Charlie Warzel (24:56)

I don't. I mean, when I wrote that piece, a lot of people reached out to me very despondently. And one thing that I feel like saying about my job writing about technology and the Internet is it feels a lot like being like a foreign correspondent to me. Right? Like I am reporting from a place and in the sense of the manosphere or, you know, whatever we're calling where Clavicular hangs out all the time, that's kind of a dark place. That's a place where there is, I think, this, like, this nihilistic crisis that is. That is happening. I don't think that's. That's everything, right? I mean, if you look at what's happened in the Twin Cities in the last month or so and the way that the citizens of that city have responded to what's been going on and banding together and sort of the neighborliness and solidarity, it is the exact opposite of this, right? It is the exact opposite of like, lol, nothing matters. It is. No, we are, like, we are, you know, all cohabitating on, you know, in this place together. And we're gonna look out for one another and we're gonna build these networks of resiliency. It's showing up. It's going to the local community center and sorting groceries and then delivering them to people. Right. It's like it requires that physical effort in the real world. And so I really think that people can fall into these spaces. But there is actually this very rich world around us that sort of has the. The more you spend time in it and are present in it, it actually has the exact opposite effect of. All of these streamers are messaging. What all of this online community is messaging that's trying to keep you further isolated and alienated. Whereas community, I think is the antidote. It's actually invigorating in a different way.

Noel King (27:09)

Yeah. Living in the world is good.

Charlie Warzel (27:11)

It is. It is. 10 out of 10 experience would live in the world again. No, I think it is. And I think you're a participant.

Noel King (27:26)

In.

Charlie Warzel (27:26)

This whole experiment with everyone else. And I think there's a solidarity that builds there that is pretty hard to build on the Internet.

Noel King (27:40)

Charlie Warzell, you can read him at the Atlantic and you can listen to him at Galaxy Brain. Thanks to the Bulwarks. Will Sommer as well. Dustin DeSoto, Audiomax Today's show Amina El Saadi is our editored respectful. David Tadashore and Patrick Boyd engineered and Andrea Lopez Cruzado is our fact checker. I'm Noel King. It's today expl.

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