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Welcome back to False Flag! Today we take a look at the nihilistic looksmaxxer “Clavicular,” who occupies a key place in a terribly confusing world where “mogging”—that is, dominating your opponents and peers—is all that matters.
If, like me, you’re addicted to the internet, you probably could not avoid seeing Clavicular-related content this weekend, for reasons I will get into in the newsletter. But I know that at least some of you are well-adjusted people with normal, healthy, offline-focused lives. I’ve written this deep dive for you guys, too—and, I promise, it will be weirdly fascinating whether or not you have had Clavicular content forced into your feeds. In writing this, I spent countless hours reading Clavicular’s old forum posts and watching his videos on, for example, the best way to administer DIY fat-dissolver injections into your cheeks.
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Meet Clavicular, the Looksmaxxing, Drugged-up Streamer Taking Over the Internet
He lives in a roided-out hell of his own devising. Now we’re stuck in it with him.
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HAVE YOU EVER BEEN MID-JESTERGOOD when a group of foids try to chadfish you? Have your cortisol levels spiked erratically as you munted with moids in the club? Do you have fever dreams at night about being frame-mogged?
Do any of these words make sense to you?
If not, that’s okay. But it’s probably still worth sitting down to read this piece. Because they’re likely where the discourse is heading.
Internet users this month have thrilled to the antics of “Clavicular,” a 20-year-old livestreamer who pals around with far-right figures like Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate. Clavicular (real name Braden Peters) is probably the country’s most famous “looksmaxxer,” the name for an online community of young men who will do anything to look hotter—or, to put it in their terms, “max” their “looks.”
Clavicular has gone to extremes in his pursuit of “ascending” to the level of an extremely handsome guy like his idol, White Collar actor Matt Bomer, whom he describes as the “true Adam” for his high “facial harmony” score.
He has said that he started taking enormous doses of steroids at 14, to the point that he claimed he no longer was able to naturally produce testosterone. He has likewise claimed to have smoked crystal meth as a “stimulant” to make himself leaner. He wears lifts in his shoes, then positions boxes discreetly around his home so that he can stand on them and prevent new “slays” from noticing his real height when he takes off his shoes. He often talks about saving up for a $30,000 double-jaw surgery, and pummels his cheeks with a hammer or his own fist in a (medically dubious) act known as “bonesmashing” to give himself heightened cheekbones.
For Clavicular and lesser looksmaxxers, all of this is justified by the rise of “hypergamy.” It’s an idea that online dating and other aspects of contemporary romance allow a small sliver of wealthy, handsome, or high-status men to maintain sexual relationships with multiple women at once, while every other man is left to be an “incel”—involuntarily celibate. As the looksmaxxers see it, their only choice is to go to extremes to improve their physical appearance so that they can ultimately land in that lucky slice of promiscuous men.
They depict this not just as a conquest but as a burden. In a rant aimed at his fans last year, Clavicular described his life as a “horror story” twisted by the unfair demands he claims women have placed on the men pursuing them.
“That’s led me to unreasonable things,” the then-teenager said. “That’s led me to usage of amphetamines to prolong my fasting.”
In a sea of fellow looksmaxxers, Clavicular has managed to stand out