It’s been an intense news week, with the sudden commencement of a war in the Middle East. Despite everything going on, my recent Times Opinion guest essay on Gen Z dating — as understood through the newly viral subculture of “looksmaxxers”— seemed to strike a chord. When the Gen Z influencer known as Clavicular started making his way onto my social media feeds earlier this year, I found that I couldn’t look away. If you haven’t yet heard of him, Clavicular is the avatar for a subculture of mostly Gen Z men who believe that personal appearance is the only thing that matters in the unforgiving reality of dating (and also in life more broadly), and who are single-mindedly determined to maximize their own looks. For years as a journalist and researcher, I’ve been chronicling how young adults are navigating sex, dating and relationships as old norms lose their power and new technologies change the way men and women interact. Interviews I conducted with millennial daters for my book “Rethinking Sex: A Provocation” revealed a broad sense of confusion and wariness around how to relate to the opposite sex. Only a few years later, I’m watching with fascination as Gen Z men who grew up without any fixed social script for how to be men are using the internet to start writing their own. Looksmaxxers like Clavicular aren’t representative of the average young American man. But the most extreme manifestations of a particular trend often throw their essential qualities into sharp relief. It’s no coincidence that looksmaxxing shot to relevance in a generation where social media and dating apps incentivize obsession with one’s own image and foster the illusion that likability can be quantified with metrics, where a toxic political atmosphere has encouraged nihilistic attitudes and deepened gender divides, and where there has been a sharp decline in the real-world interactions that tend to temper rather than encourage self-obsession. We all want to be loved and admired. But like most trends of the very online, looksmaxxing leads to a further turning inward, not an increased connection to others. I worry that what many young adults are maximizing is their own loneliness.
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