Misinformation and the manosphere: The tax of looksmaxxing

Quick, take a look at yourself. Look in the mirror, and really degrade yourself. Hold up a picture of your lord and saviour, Clavicular, and remind yourself that you could only dream of looking like him. But hey, at least you’re better than the people who aren’t even aware they’re ugly, right? You’re still better than an Indian or – God forbid – a woman, right? After hours of combing through related forums and Discord channels, it is evident that this might actually be what so many young boys, who are becoming increasingly affiliated with the ‘Looksmaxxing’ subculture, tell themselves. And that’s probably the most tame version of it. 

Looksmaxxing masquerades as a self-help community, intended to help its members (primarily boys and young men under the age of 25) reach goals related to their appearance. However, its consequences are very far from that alleged intent. First of all, ‘looksmaxxers’ have a very limited view of attractiveness. They believe the most attractive men possess certain characteristics: an extremely defined jawline, high and defined cheekbones with hollowed lower cheeks, full lips, and eyes with the outer corner positioned higher than the inner one (aka ‘hunter eyes’). And these boys will go to extreme measures to achieve these features. Although in most cases this looksmaxxing manifests itself in things like a skincare routine or going to the gym consistently (termed ‘softmaxxing’ by the community), there exist the more extreme methods, or ‘hardmaxxing’. The ridiculous name hides its sinister reality. Surgery, because your natural face just won’t do. Peptides, to give your workout results an unnatural boost. ‘Bonesmashing,’ meaning exactly what it sounds like.  
 
“Bonesmashing” was first popularised by a highly influential figure in the Looksmaxxing community: Braden Peters, commonly known as ‘Clavicular,’ who claimed that the technique helped shape his face. While this practice has been highly sensationalised and Clavicular is often laughed at in mainstream social media, there are forums in the community that follow such dangerous techniques to an almost religious extent.  Their justification usually relies on misinterpreted research findings, and in the case of bonesmashing, this is Wolff’s law. This research basically states that bones aren’t inert structures within the body, and can change over time based on the stresses they experience. Somewhere along the line, this logic morphed into taking a hammer and forcing these ‘stresses’ upon your own face. Naturally, this misinterpretation of Wolff’s law has led to great unrest in the medical community, especially among cosmetic doctors.  

It’s a slippery slope from wanting to look and feel better about your body, to taking extreme measures to fix faults you didn’t even know existed until the internet told you so

Cosmetic clinics have been trying to combat this phenomenon in their own ways, like myth-busting and advisory notices on their websites. However, this can only do so much, especially if the target demographic spends most of their time shut away in certain forums and echo chambers on the internet taking other looksmaxxers’ words as gospel. It seems ironic that plastic surgeons and the medical cosmetics industry, a field that has always profited off of people beset with insecurity, are now surprised to find that after pricing their ordinary customer out of the market, they would resort to tactics such as bonesmashing as a cheaper substitute. Cosmetic surgery, after all, is only really a more expensive and controlled version of bonesmashing. It is only a slightly safer alternative that does nothing to mitigate the harms of the underlying problem. 
 
The fundamental issue is the manner in which the online sphere thrives off an unholy triad of self-hatred, vulnerability, and misinformation. It’s a slippery slope from wanting to look and feel better about your body to taking extreme measures to fix faults you didn’t even know existed until the internet told you so. “I was learning about problems I hadn’t even noticed,” said an anonymous member of the community in an interview with The Guardian. This same person has now spent around £10,000 pounds on cosmetic surgery for his face.  His story, like so many others, lies in a fear of romantic rejection, one of the most common ways in which the ‘community’ indoctrinates teen boys and young men into hating themselves and the people around them. Looking into these forums, the extent to which these forums and influencers thrive off misinformation and prejudicial attitudes towards women and minorities becomes terrifyingly clear. 

They create hierarchies of attractiveness of their own, placing white men and women on a pedestal and deeming them to be the most desirable

They rely on citing ‘reliable’ studies with highly misrepresentative data through the typical fallacies of overgeneralisation and mistaking correlation for causation. They place heavy emphasis on what women declared their relationship and dating preferences to be, viewing them through nothing but a sexual lens.  They create hierarchies of attractiveness of their own, placing white men and women on a pedestal and deeming them to be the most desirable. And, of course, disturbingly and unsurprisingly, deeming Indians to be the least. Once again, we need to remember that looksmaxxing is nothing but a symptom of the broader problem.

The misogyny and racism looksmaxxing perpetuates can never be looked at in isolation, because it all ultimately leads back to the manosphere. You have most likely encountered this term before, and you will doubtless have your own understanding as to what it entails. In its most rudimentary terms, the manosphere is a corner of the internet for men, by men. It parades around under an innocent guise, but with its layers peeled back, it is actually exposed as a dangerous community that emphasises taking advantage of patriarchal norms and exploiting young men’s need for a male role model. 
 
This has been recently illustrated in Louis Theroux’s latest documentary: Inside the Manosphere. In it, Theroux speaks to major voices within the Manosphere about the views they express, and he manages to extract a surprising level of self-awareness as to the danger of the ideas that they advocate for. Key themes include toxic masculinity, get-rich-quick schemes, invalidating the existence of any mental health issues, and the need for women to be domesticated. While Theroux shows the shamelessly capitalistic and misogynistic mindset of these influencers, he does little to illustrate the impact of their words in real life – the real lives of young men and boys being exposed to this content day in, day out. 

There has been increasing amounts of data that point to a link between online misogyny and real-life acts of violence. This can be seen in statistics in the UK, with several crimes being linked to such messaging. An example of such violence could be in the case of Amy Hunt, whose sisters and mother were killed by the former partner of one of her sisters. His attack was, as Hunt said, “rooted in misogyny” and inextricably linked to the rise of online misogyny. Aside from extremities like murder, the misinformation propagated by the Manosphere cult continues to permeate into the actions and attitudes of all of our lives – even students roaming our very campus.

In an interview with a Warwick student who prefers to remain anonymous, she spoke of a guy she went on a date with who acted in a way “definitely influenced by the manosphere”. She said that he claimed to be very interested in “studying male hormones”. When asked about it further, he talked about the importance of drinking “unpasteurised milk” in order to preserve male hormones, something that the manosphere has tied to a perception of “real masculinity”.  “He ignored me when I asked him for sources for his data,” she said, and it’s no surprise. It’s been consistently established that the entire manosphere thrives on misinformation.  

 There is a tendency present in these young men to notice the problematic status quo, but instead of questioning it, they cannot help but conform. A look through these forums reveals a shocking culture in which behaviours, like expressing racial prejudices in regard to dating, weren’t criticised or questioned, but rather treated as a rulebook. “He was cautious of big industries, but instead of looking at institutional failures, he would focus on the easier thing to blame,” my interviewee recounted. And that adds up, because toxicity, insecurity, and exploitation are exactly the basis of the entire subculture of looksmaxing and the wider manosphere.

Reinforcing dangerous everyday habits, whether it be drinking unpasteurised milk or hammering your face in to meet a beauty standard, is just the tip of the iceberg

It’s devastating what young men have been exposed to through these echo chambers. Reinforcing dangerous everyday habits, whether it be drinking unpasteurised milk or hammering your face in to meet a beauty standard, is just the tip of the iceberg. These ideas affect society much more widely; these men are not just subjecting themselves to this harm by promoting such misogynistic ideals and deeming some races better than others; everyone is implicated. It all thrives off a lack of critical thinking, as well as self-hatred and misinformation – all of which only profit a few influencers who do not care about anything but the money flying into their bank accounts. Looksmaxing can never exist in isolation, but will forever be an extension of the manosphere, merely one presented in a more digestible way. 
 
Looksmaxxing might appear as a sly businessman with ‘perfect’ bone structure and a symmetrical smile, all about self-improvement and personal growth, but beneath it there is an entire generation of young men being thrown into an abyss of misinformation and hatred. And no matter who you are, you should be very, very scared of it.