Episode 5 - Clavicular and Looksmaxxing (Ft. Liv Agar) | Part 1

Join us as we dive into one of the most Zoomer-coded reactionary fever dreams out there — Clavicular and the wild world of the Looksmaxing community.

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Check out Liv's work here:

• Podcast - https://open.spotify.com/show/6qAmVJsQW0k51ZJ9bDZyZd
• Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/livagar
• Twitter - https://x.com/Liv_Agar

Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:00

The guests that we have on today, like I found in the weirdest way possible. Like this is this is a person that literally hundreds of thousands of people know based on the actual work that she does. But uh I was just it was usually like me multiple instances of me browsing Twitter and then seeing uh somebody call uh our dear guest uh a Janissary or a Serb nationalist or the hottest Serb. And as a Balkan person, I was like, what the fuck is going on? Who is this? And then complete insane rabbit hole of like this uh very, very this point uh for such a young person, long career. But the reason I'm bringing that up is like you just post, post, post, post because you never know what will make you discoverable. And for Liv, I'm pretty sure that uh a very big part of uh her audience is just random Bulgan dudes that have found her due to the shit posting. You know, that's where most of the Patreon money comes from. Well, also those like cars jumping into her mouth.

SPEAKER_08 1:04

That doesn't sound as good as you probably intended it to.

SPEAKER_03 1:09

What? What why? What yeah, no, definitely I definitely feel like I have a very Zoomer perspective, which allows me to understand a lot of the other insane Zoomer people. I feel like I'm like the opposite anti-version of a lot of the right wing versions. It's like, what if they were like a communist as a teenager instead of becoming like a Nick Fuentes viewer?

SPEAKER_08 1:30

So true. Also, you're a lot more intelligent than them. Thank you. Like, you know what? If you watch Live or you listen to Liv, you're like, this is someone that you learn something new from who's an intelligent, well-spoken person. Whereas if you watch the right wing shit we watch in order to prepare for this podcast, your brain is melting. Yeah, you become less intelligent. Yes, and we are about to get a lot less intelligent today, I can tell you that.

SPEAKER_06 2:42

But will nonetheless end up accidentally becoming very deep because our guests cannot help but not have base stakes. Uh and speaking of our guests, let me properly introduce. Welcome back to the reaction pod, everyone. Today we have a very special guest in store for you: a multi-decade veteran frontliner in the anti-Chudd Wars, the second most famous Serbian on the internet, professional frame mogger, co-host of the brilliant QAA podcast, and a, I think, chaotic, good Twitch streamer, Liv Agar. She is a writer, philosopher, and political commentator whose work tackles everything from conspiracy extremism to the weird pathologies of life under late capitalism. Welcome, Liv. Thank you for taking the time. Now, how about you introduce yourself to those in the audience who might not have had the pleasure of learning about you?

SPEAKER_03 3:39

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, very August introduction. I appreciate it. Um happy to be on the podcast. Very, very exciting. New new thing you guys are starting. Yeah, I'm a Twitch streamer slash uh podcaster. I've been doing this, doing this for a while. I've been posting. Yeah, I think it I think it's been is it multi-decade, maybe.

SPEAKER_06 3:57

Yeah. On the internet, everything feels multi-decade. Even if you were doing this for three months, it's like, oh my god. Do you remember the era of the moging?

SPEAKER_03 4:05

Like it does. Yeah. I'm happy to be on.

SPEAKER_08 4:10

Well, I can tell you I've been there since the beginning. I am a day one Live Agar supporter. This is Mike. I am a mod. It's true. I got the founder badge on the Twitch stream. So I was there from the beginning, and honestly, you have Wait, what? You were a mod for Liv? Was am. It's true.

SPEAKER_05 4:29

What? That's crazy. What? Dude, this space is so incestuous. This space is so incestuous. Oh my everybody knows. How did I end up?

SPEAKER_03 4:40

We have Serbian nepotism.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

We have Twitch connections. Yeah, it's true. It's a small world. The Twitch mafia is taking over the left of the world. It's true. Yeah, we're taking over.

SPEAKER_08 4:53

I don't know if you guys saw, like, our first guest, Hassan, is now going to be campaigning with a senator for Michigan or campaign for a candidate for Senate in Michigan. The Twitch streamer space is literally taking over world politics.

SPEAKER_03 5:08

It's true, yeah. Accept it. It's funny that Hassan is kind of becoming this like a progressive candidate has to go on a stream. Like, it is Joe Ogre to the left. Yeah, it's part of the circuit. It's part of the circuit. Yeah, it's very funny.

SPEAKER_06 5:22

You should unironically, like, uh, if you want to get on his platform, which has so many viewers, you have to, I don't know, read Lennon for one hour with him before he actually asks you any questions. I mean, that that would make for a great bit. Unfortunately, they probably co-opted that as well. Yeah. One hour struggle session for every like Democrat.

SPEAKER_09 5:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_08 5:43

Yeah. Oh, bro. Can I I would just want to put Dunce caps on everyone? Yes. Sir, do you know what class consciousness is?

SPEAKER_06 5:51

Uh, it's when you know how to use a spoon. I'm classy.

SPEAKER_03 5:56

It is very fitting in like the Trump to like I feel like it is like a podcaster, Twitch streamer presidency. You know, like was it Trump like shouting out Aiden Ross or whatever for helping him get elected? It's only fair that that also reflects on the left.

SPEAKER_08 6:09

Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, not to get off topic too much, but you could see down in Mexico with AMLO, like this kind of populist left is really the only path forward, right? Where you stream a lot, like Claudia Scheinbaum streams every day. Like uh it is legitimately the way politics is going. So I'm glad that we have one of the originals of the fight back, the pushback against the right with uh Liv. Thank you for coming on.

SPEAKER_03 6:36

Of course, yeah. And I'm very happy to be on.

SPEAKER_06 6:38

Absolutely. And let's start out by talking about a lot of different flavors of uh reactionary and specifically a passion of yours is somewhere where we should uh lift off from clavicular. I struggle saying that name in the first place. Not only him, but his, you know, adjacent so-called movement. Before we begin frame bogging him violently, I think we should uh gesture max first, mom stop listening. Mom, I hope you're not listening to this. Mom, please tune the fuck out. Tune the fuck out now. Right, stop listening right now. So let's prepare the ground. I have a list of seven words here from the looks maxing glossary. That's literally I found a GQ article that you need to explain to us as a means of proving your ability to tackle this incredibly complex topic. I see.

SPEAKER_03 7:30

Are you ready, Liv? I'm ready. I'm born ready. Talk about looks maxing.

SPEAKER_06 7:36

Number one. Uh producer Mick like like epic rock music in the background. Like very cringe. Number one, mewing.

SPEAKER_03 7:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 7:46

Mewing.

SPEAKER_03 7:46

Mewing is an interesting one because I feel like it became like a pretty popular meme like maybe two or three years ago. It was like kind of the earth the the early like boost in looks maxing. Back when I think I was looking into it initially for QAA. And it's you know, it's the Virgin Chad thing of like if you're mewing, the one who's mewing is cool, common, collected, and then the one who's like, you know, angry and soy and is owned is like not mewing. I'm mewing right now. Exactly, yeah. See. And yeah. And it's interesting because it comes out of this pseudoscientific orthodontic practice invented by, and I thought this was a joke initially, a guy named John Mew.

SPEAKER_08 8:22

Oh, hell yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Yeah, it's so awesome.

SPEAKER_08 8:26

Um perfectly narcissistic for this movement. Oh, absolutely. It's incredible. Can we meet Dr. Jelk next?

SPEAKER_05 8:34

Whoa, whoa, niche. Niche. So fucking niche. Oh my god. I think that might be more niche than than mewing.

SPEAKER_08 8:42

You you not in the spaces in the internet we're all on. No, no, no. I think that joke landed. It was my impression.

SPEAKER_05 8:51

Mom, stop listening. Do not, mom, do not Google. Do not joke. Jing. Mom. Do not joke.

SPEAKER_09 8:57

Do not Google jalking right now. Mom, stay away.

SPEAKER_03 9:02

It's awesome because it was later popularized by his son, Mike Mew. Oh, Mike Mew. So it's like this like monarchical, like he takes on the Mewing uh message. So what the fuck is it? Yeah, it's a mouth posture thing that that these pseudoscientific morthodontists who have like been, I think, fully discredited by you know the British board of teeth, whatever, whatever, whatever they call it.

SPEAKER_08 9:25

Not to throw it in too many jabs here, but I don't think the British dentist board is the one I'm listening to. I think mewing may be legitimate still. If they're mad at you, you really fucked up. I mean, I feel like they've got the best like experience, right? They got like the most work. The most experience of neglecting the teeth.

SPEAKER_03 9:43

Yeah. But it comes from this, like, it's a very trad uh idea that like modern diets are the things that are making us ugly because we chew too much. My understanding is there's like a hint of truth in this that like a lot of the times when someone's teeth come in and need to be corrected, it's partially because our diets are just way different than they used to be. But the Mew family has subsequently said, like, you don't need all of this like modern orthodontist stuff. You just need to tell kids to mew as much as possible to put their teeth in this specific pattern, and then their jaw will grow in better, which is not true. Is not not a replacement for like giving someone braces, but does kind of enforce, I think even just in the the beginning areas of mewing or where it comes from, does enforce this like trad idea that like we used to be all incredibly hot and like all about gleaness comes from modern degeneracy and like the fact that you know it's like John Ted Kaczynski, like we're we need to return to tradition.

SPEAKER_07 10:34

The old like tr aristocratic muers.

SPEAKER_03 10:37

Yeah, exactly. The aristocrats, the ancient Greek.

SPEAKER_08 10:40

So a Rousselian myth of like the perfect past, basically.

SPEAKER_03 10:44

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But then this was like oddly misappropriated by I think like incel adjacent, the kind of proto-lux maxing forms in like the mid to early 2010s. These people who are like insane about trying to get hot, they're like, well, we're in incels because we're ugly, and so we're gonna do literally whatever we can to become hotter, who seem to think that like this practice would also work with like fully developed jaws, which like doesn't even make sense according to the how mewing is described, because it's like, well, it's about growing the jaw incorrectly. If you're 20 years old, like even according to them, like mewing isn't gonna help.

SPEAKER_07 11:17

Like looks maxing theism or something.

SPEAKER_03 11:20

Yeah. But despite the fact that it doesn't even make sense according to John and later Mike Mew's ideas, Mike Mew saw that his pseudoscientific ideas were getting attention and then played into it completely.

SPEAKER_08 11:32

Gotta chase the algo.

SPEAKER_03 11:33

Yeah, of course. And he was chasing it in like 2013 when like a a forum called sluthate.com was paying attention to his ideas.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Sure, that place is pleasant. Yep.

SPEAKER_08 11:44

My favorite. I used to go all the time. Hugo was a founding member of Slut Hate.

SPEAKER_06 11:49

I was a f you know, but no, but no, no, but I I went for attention because I'm a slut, so I would go and yeah.

SPEAKER_09 11:56

Right. That's nasty, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:59

That's a much more innocent image of the board. It's just like we have the slut, they come on for attention, and then everyone throws tomatoes at them.

SPEAKER_07 12:06

It's like that Reddit where people post pictures to like rate them.

SPEAKER_06 12:09

Kink shaming kink. Like your kink is to be kink shamed. So you go on this slut-shaming site, then you just, you know, sit there and take it and leave.

SPEAKER_08 12:18

We're developing new fetishes live on stream.

SPEAKER_06 12:20

Yeah, yeah. If mom is still listening, I swear to god. Please still yeah. I'm stopping that bit. That's an awkward bit because she does listen. So that's going to be an awkward conversation. Please live. Apologies.

SPEAKER_03 12:31

But yeah, it I think it took uh root in the kind of proto-lux maxing community because it was people who were looking for anything to do to get hotter, and they couldn't afford the surgeries. They were kind of infeasible. And so it's like getting braces or something, or a much more exaggerated version, because it's how your jaw develops, but you don't have to pay for anything. It's just a practice that you do continually.

SPEAKER_08 12:52

This is related to like other stuff like mouth tape and other forms of like you know, and like bone smashing. Bone smashing.

SPEAKER_03 13:00

Bone smashing is another one. Yes.

SPEAKER_07 13:02

Wait, could you explain bone smashing? It's not uh on the list, but I I do want to know.

SPEAKER_03 13:06

Yes, bone smashing feels like the more insane older brother of Mewing. Because it's kind of the a similar idea of like someone who wants like plastic surgery. They want to change the structure of their bones, and they're like, the reason why like no one likes me, why women are talking to me is like my bone is structured in this way. And so, like, actually like the origin of it, it seems to have been semi-ironic on the looks maximum forum. It's just a guy who's like, wouldn't it be funny if I said that you could literally like fracture your bones and then real heal them in a way that like makes you look hotter? And then like it seems pretty early on someone did like start doing that. It's not even a pseudoscientific theory here. It's just someone made it up, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 13:44

I have a new name. This is the face jelk instead of bone smashing.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Yeah, and the face jelk.

SPEAKER_06 13:50

I like, yeah. It's always the same thing. Like, one guy randomly at some point probably said, Yo, bro, what if there was like a city under the water, under the sea, and like uh it was awesome and then it got flooded, and then 300 years later, we are the Nordic descendants of the Aryan subterranean humans, and we deserve to inherit the earth. It's the same with this, you know, looks maxing shit. Riffs has gone too far, yeah. Riffs has gone too far. It always is, it always is. And to make it even more meta, not to make it, you know, uh fake deep too deep, but the show is about fascist ideology at the end of the day. It's always the same thing. As Liv said, like you want something that you cannot afford, unfortunately, in the system. Like, for example, I don't know, getting face uh reconstruction surgery. Uh you cannot afford it because of the system that you find yourself in, but you do not have the ability to recognize systemic inequalities and you know that it fucking sucks because you don't think in terms of systems, so you start going down the semi-reactionary or in this case full reactionary pathway. A path which is uh, hey, you know, I need to defeat the eternal opponent who does not want to have sex with me by using these secret Aryan um tools at my disposal. Bone smashing techniques that yes, that Eastern hordes don't know enough about, which is smashing my face in with a fucking hammer.

SPEAKER_03 15:18

It's it's incredible. It's they would definitely like the Ariosophy 20s, like proto-Nazi movie, they would definitely have been bone smashing. Definitely. Definitely. You see Himmler's face, that's a bone smasher right there. That's a looks maxer. They find a hammer like in the ruins, like, oh shit.

SPEAKER_08 15:33

Yeah. I mean, I'm thinking of the proto-fascists and the fascists in Germany who would like do duels where they would get facial scars, the Prussians. Remember that? Where they would where they were like, say they were trying to make themselves hotter. The scars weren't from battle or anything real, they were from two fruity Prussian officers with no shirts scarring each other to make each other hot.

SPEAKER_03 15:57

Yeah. Academic fencing, is that what it's called? Yeah, like it is like the the bone smashing stuff, and like in terms of how like painful it is, kind of is a similar, like weird, like masochistic masculinity, a cultural you know, practice related to masculinity of like, look at how much I'm suffering for this. Like, isn't that cool? And then other members of the Lux Max Aboard are like, wow, that guy's suffering quite a bit for this. That that does make it pretty cool.

SPEAKER_08 16:21

That makes him cool, yeah. Yeah, which kind of dovetails the next one, which I think is what sexual market value. What the hell does that mean?

SPEAKER_03 16:30

Yeah, no, the SMV from the famous SMV Chad Fishing in the club from that tweet that everyone loved about LuxMaxing. The what? Sorry?

SPEAKER_06 16:39

Please say that in human live, please.

SPEAKER_03 16:42

Yes. There's a tweet that I do not remember verbatim anymore, unfortunately, from like a month ago, like early January, that everyone was making fun of. That was talking about Clavicular was just dragooning when a group of foids sparked his cortisol levels.

SPEAKER_08 16:54

Oh, yeah. You're gonna understand all this by the end of the section, we promise.

SPEAKER_03 16:58

No, I I do remember it verbatim. The rest of it is I remember it's back is munting and mocking Moids better than SMV chat fishing at the club, which is like so such a beautiful sentence that to be to be clear, it it is camp. Like it is like that one's ironic, and it came up with a bunch of terms. But one of the real terms that they use, yeah, is SMV or sexual market value. And it's this idea that like everyone is basically a commodity on the dating market. That is like your value, objective beauty is objectively determined. It's not beauty isn't the eye of the beholder. There's a like who's conventionally attractive is who is most attractive, and that is like an empirical thing. If you see like clavicular often reference like someone's like canthle chill to their lower third ratio and all these like ridiculous measurements, that is them attempting to use like some research into like what does conventional beauty look like, you know, academic studies or whatever. It's always gonna be pretty nebulous though. But they like misappropriate a lot of that to be like we can calculate what objective beauty actually is. Right. And so you can calculate your sexual market value and how it compares to other people. You can see how this is like a foreb like designed to just produce body dysmorphia. Right. Like among like young insecure people.

SPEAKER_07 18:11

Like general misery. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:13

Yeah, no. Yeah, it's like, well, I my sexual market value isn't isn't up. I need to like if I don't start bone smashing, if I don't start like suffering and doing insane shit, like clavicular is like in giving his face like was it peptide injections or something?

SPEAKER_08 18:26

Like he was he was on like a he was on trend for a while to like try to look more masculine, like just to just to clarify for my own boomer ass, so a sexual market value, does that include your looks plus like say status plus money plus you know your celebrity? Or is it more on the physical side? He's trying to calculate his own value right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 18:52

Woman no kill job, man have jobs, so yes, but please live. You can give more details as woman.

SPEAKER_03 18:58

Throughout, I think the history of like looks maxing and proto-lux maxing, kind of in cell adjacent forms, there's like a big debate about how much, like, is like everyone from those forums understands or agrees, like looks is the main thing. You gotta be hot. But then it's like the extent to which something like status or how funny you are, that's you know, where gesture maxing comes from, you know, it counts into your your sexual market. Although I believe sexual market value might generally just mean your physical attraction, and those things also add in a factor. What's interesting, like the logic of their obsession with looks is that it's like becoming hotter is the easiest to increase among like status, how charismatic you are, right how hot you are. Those are kind of the three main ones. Which I think is probably not true. I feel like jest or maxing, if you gotta go with one of them. Yeah, that's probably the easiest one, I think. Yeah, yeah. Especially given how much money it costs.

SPEAKER_08 19:45

Well, they are right wingers, so they're not very intelligent. So for them, the idea of coming up with humor seems impossible compared to smashing yourself with a hammer.

SPEAKER_03 19:54

Yes. And you can see that with clavicular because like he is quite an awkward person. I know he jokes about being autistic, like kind of half jokes. It seems like he could have some, you know, he he may be on the spectrum. And his his conclusion was just like, well, I'm never gonna be able to be charismatic here, so I just need to be psychotically attached to the idea of getting hotter and increasing my you know sexual market value.

SPEAKER_07 20:16

Yeah, I I watched the the Adam Friedland uh uh like show episode with him, and he's just like he's basically not there. Like he's not trying to have fun, he's not like trying to engage. It just seems like he's a prop, basically.

SPEAKER_03 20:28

Yeah. My favorite bit in that was when Adam was trying to convince him that like Stavros Halkeus has lots of sex. It's like, yeah, like guys who look like that in New York, you're great. And he's like, I don't believe that. That's impossible. Like, there's no way.

SPEAKER_04 20:40

Right, and women are just outrageously hypergamous. What does that mean? Um, it means that they're trying to date above their looks level to a ridiculous degree.

SPEAKER_02 20:50

You gotta move to New York, dude. You see some of the gargoyles with the just 11s, dude. It's we this is a different world.

SPEAKER_04 20:56

Well, that's because there's a lot of people in New York who are like gay, gay guys. Yeah. I was gonna say uh money maxers, like you know, finance as a whole, right? Yeah. What what is true about women is they are hypergamous, uh, they're dating above their looks level. And if they're not, if they're better looking than the guy, it can 99% of the time be attributed to either money or status.

SPEAKER_02 21:21

They're way better.

SPEAKER_04 21:23

That's that's why I don't really understand when people give like, you know, anecdotes on breaking these rules when it's like, yeah, as a whole, we're looking at a society here, not, you know, where are you able to get with a check who's hotter than you?

SPEAKER_10 21:37

I don't know. It's just like I it's they like it kind of a little bit if we're like a little ugly sometimes. No.

SPEAKER_03 21:47

Just Stav just completely flies in the face. It's like offensive to him. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 21:53

It's like Yeah, I no, Stavros completely refutes his entire theory.

SPEAKER_03 22:00

Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 22:00

Because he still doesn't know about balcon maxing. Absolutely. But it isn't it it it is not entirely physical, at least for men. They specifically also like, you know, just to max aesthetic, but also how much cash you make. Which again, the same thing I did with the previous category, borderline fake deep, but I still gotta say it. It is a meme that people that realize okay, they're not doing that well in the quote unquote dating market. That already sounds like a disgusting way of phrasing it, but let's go with it. It's crazy that in this particular system, they are more willing to go down the path of quasi-scientific ways of altering their face than believing that you can actually improve your economic state or even you know change the system you find yourself in to be one that benefits you more than you know, just a bunch of fucking billionaires out there, right? So it's it's to me, it's like a such an in-your face metaphor where you are more willing to physically harm yourself or believe in you know shit like humans are commodities, and I must increase my value as if I'm like uh BMW that's like a$50,000 package that's trying to get uh BMW that's a$70,000 package, and most other people are you know, ladders and opals. Like you can modify yourself to such an extent, dehumanize yourself and others, of course, to such an extent because you cannot handle just realizing that hey, all of us are kind of low-key fucked over by the greater systemic issues at hand. It just is so so vulgar the way it manifests that it's it's fascinating.

SPEAKER_03 23:37

Yeah, it's all really related to anxieties about scarcity in some way. And like I think, especially in these discourses, like how that scarcity relates to masculinity and what like the ideal image of what a man should be is, which is like you have to kind of carve out a kingdom for yourself with a nuclear family, and you know, this image of like the nine to five, you go to your like job at Ford and you you make enough money to sit, you know, support your entire family, then you come home to the wife. It's like that's the image of what you're supposed to have as a man, and there just like isn't enough space for that for everyone in society. And I think like that really important part of modern late capitalist masculine identity being just like completely antithetical to like how the world is structured will make a lot of people just go insane.

SPEAKER_08 24:21

The way you're describing these systems is giving me a cortisol spike, which I want to ask, what the fuck does that mean?

SPEAKER_03 24:29

Yeah. Cortisol spike is basically just a meme Lux Maxer way of talking about anxiety. I do believe your cortisol spike when you're anxious. And like my understanding is that having high cortisol levels like makes you look less hot. Like it's not good for your physical health and can have like negative effects on um how hot you are. So it's basically a memed way of for the looks maxing people to render like a negative feeling as actually bad. Right. Because they're so psychotic about becoming hot that you can't just say, like, well, being anxious is bad because it sucks to be anxious. It's like, well, does it like make me look less hot? Because if it doesn't, like, well, we're not gonna talk about it, we're not gonna consider it. And a part of that looks maxing ideology is hyperbolic because like everyone understands feeling bad isn't good, but like the way that they talk on the forums, you could see this a lot with like other far-right forums, is that like they start out a bit more ironic and then they kind of just all that irony is lost. My vague understanding, there's a bit of that going on with like poll, for instance, more than a decade, decade and a half, two decades ago. It's the same with this, I think, that it's like, well, it's it'd be funny to explain it in terms of like becoming hot or not. And then you get the more young and more impressionable people. Clavicular is a good example, because I think he started browsing the looks maxing form when he was like 14, who are like, oh, okay, well, I mean, clearly it only matters based on whether it makes me hot or not. So that's how we will consider anxiety.

SPEAKER_08 25:45

Yeah, and this I almost feel like, and maybe um this is a reach on my part, but I feel like it dovetails with the idea of like feelings of cringe or embarrassment results, you know, the kind of panopticon that Gen Z has grown up under, which is everything's on social media, anybody has a phone, you know, you could be clipped at any moment. So the moment that you feel embarrassed or you do something cringe, that creates these kind of feelings of anxiety and stress. And instead of addressing that, we're turning it into a physical manifestation. If you're cringe, it literally makes you ugly and permanently alters you in like a Lamarckian sense, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 26:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 26:27

Like it's how I'm like Tolkien and shit, where like people look ugly when they're evil or whatever, like that kind of thing. Yeah. But you look ugly if you're cringe, like it creates a feedback loop.

SPEAKER_08 26:37

Yeah, or or sad or you know, stressed.

SPEAKER_03 26:40

Yes, which is a big thing. Right.

SPEAKER_08 26:42

So you have to be permanently like aloof. You have to be permanently unbothered, you have to be permanently, you know, not care about shit. Because if you do, that spikes your cortisol and you become ugly.

SPEAKER_03 26:53

Yeah, there's a Gen Z meme about being like nonchalant. I saw that with like Alyssa Liu, I believe her name is the the figure skater lady that like when she's asked about like her hobby, she's like, Oh, it's just like not a big deal. Like, I'm just like that. Is I think how Gen Z the like Timothy Chalamet, I think I see what saw was contrasted as someone who's like, he's like, I'm in pursuit of greatness, I'm like psychotic about this thing. People don't receive that very well culturally now. It's like, oh, this guy's cortisol levels are spiky, he's trying a little bit too hard. Like, you need to be more relaxed and cool.

SPEAKER_08 27:22

Trying equals stress. Like to try is to be stressed, right?

SPEAKER_06 27:26

It's also just very bad advice, even if we all turn toxic for two seconds, because there's nothing more stressful than trying to not look stressful. There's nothing less cool than really proactively trying to look like you don't care about being cool.

SPEAKER_07 27:40

Yeah, it's like it's my cortisol spiking right now, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 27:43

Which I think clavicular is finding out, right? Like, you know, I think most of our reaction is he's very uncool.

SPEAKER_06 27:49

Yeah, that's why he's high. That's why he's on fucking coke 24-7. It's the only fucking way you can you can and self-medicating on steroids.

SPEAKER_08 27:57

No, he doesn't use coke. That's very millennial. He's on meth. He's on crystal. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 28:03

Zoomers are on meth. Zoomers are on meth officially. Speaking of zoomers, Stacy. What the fuck is a Stacy?

SPEAKER_03 28:11

Stacy, it's like think of it as like the female version of a Chad. What the fuck's a Chad? It's like the Chad is Chad, that's Chad. That's you, Mike. Oh, that's a great question.

SPEAKER_08 28:23

Well, I mean, I've been called that before. I keep telling people my name is Mike, but they keep calling me Chad.

SPEAKER_06 28:28

Oh Mike, don't don't bite. Don't I give you the bread? Why are you eating it? My friend, don't eat it. You need to manage your cortisol spike and not react to this.

SPEAKER_08 28:38

Just I am I am un nonchalant. You're the one who's spiking right now. You got a nonchalanted. Exactly. Gesture maxing too hard. God, God. I just mogged you, man.

SPEAKER_06 28:51

I'm having too much fun with this.

SPEAKER_07 28:52

None of them know what any of this means. Go on.

SPEAKER_08 28:54

Yeah. Let's just say I mogged Hugo and now he's coping.

SPEAKER_06 28:59

But you you cope, you fucking old man, really cope. You're talking like a jester right now, please.

SPEAKER_08 29:08

I am view moging you right now. Uh yeah. That's my only strategy, though. That's my only strategy is the jester max. So anyway, Stacy.

SPEAKER_03 29:16

Oh yeah. Chad. Stacy, Chad. Actually, I'm fairly certain Stacy may have come out of Incel adjacent Forms. It was certainly appropriated by it, but it's a lot older than that, maybe. And I think maybe it's been in the 2010s was appropriated by Incel Forms. But it's just like it is like the alpha male. It's the cool guy, it's the football player who bullied you in high school. Like, that's kind of the cultural energy that emits from this. It's the football player or who bullied you in high school. And then the Stacey is the hot woman or the hot the hot girl in your grade who said that you were gross and giggled at you when you tried to talk to her and then dated the chat. And like it is another thing that's interesting to pay attention to with a lot of this, is that it's like she's the she's the like head cheerleader. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. She's the homecoming queen, he's the homecoming king. You know. And it's interesting looking at a lot of the discourse about how these sort of things are discussed, is like it really does ooze cultural resentment from not being cool in high school. Yeah. Like all the people who are making this, and like one of the reasons why looks maximum people are so insane like the clavicular is like, well, he wasn't cool in high school, and he's like really compensating for that in a way of like, I'm going to be that cool. I'm going to become the Chad later. I'm going to ascend, as they call it. You know, become hotter so that everyone will like me now.

SPEAKER_08 30:29

Yeah, yeah. So it makes sense that he started when he was a 14-year-old teenager because this is literally seemingly high school level mentality.

SPEAKER_03 30:38

Yeah. Oh, and yeah, you just like don't graduate from that mentality. You're just like stuck in it.

SPEAKER_06 30:44

It's one of the unfortunate minuses. I mean, I hate ascribing like positive or negative moral categories to something that's non-human, like the internet, right? Which can become anything. But the potential, let's say, not drawback, but it gives challenge. It gives challenge. Thank you. The potential challenge, especially with, you know, raising young adults, is you very often, like you know, a decent parent, I would hope, right? I'm not one, but I would hope, does tell their kids to try and do their best to get informed on a particular topic before dealing with said topic, right? So a lot of these kids are very very normally, right, anxious about potentially dating at one point in their life. They're like 13, 14, 15, they're starting to get interested, you know, in other people and so on. So what do they do? Very naturally, because they have access to the internet, they sit down and they start googling the living shit out of what the best chance for me to get a girlfriend is, right? And very often they end up in communities such as this. Right. That doesn't mean the internet is bad or bad or that you should forbid your child from going online or any of that stupid shit. It just means that reactionary sentiment such as this, which is almost, I mean, not almost, fully predatory when it comes to kids, can be a very strong potential danger to them. Right. These guys like don't give a shit whether some of the subscription money they're getting on kick is from an 11-year-old using their parents' debit card or not. They could give less shit. They help. The more they can uh I like to call it child bot their stream, the better. The more very insecure young adults and very often just kids they can get in there, the better, even though they never, never, never properly let's say, paraphrase anything for them. And that's intentional. That's how the whole grift to an extent works. And how do we tackle that, I guess we'll we'll talk about uh later in the episode. But it is scary because we can quote unquote get them early uh is becoming a very very very absurdly weird thing where you you know you you catch a 10-year-old, 11-year-old, 12-year-old that's first going through puberty, feeling feelings that they didn't know that you know they're ever gonna feel, end up like exploring it the way all of us have, but then end up hitting their fucking jaw with a hammer because they're terrified that the way their tiny little you know baby jaw is is developing is not chad enough, etc. etc. And they end up fucking scarring themselves.

SPEAKER_08 33:23

Which brings us to how do they how do they like how do they evaluate someone's attractiveness? You know, I've heard of this phrase called the PSL scale. What the fuck is that?

SPEAKER_03 33:36

Yes. The PSL scale, it stands for the three kind of forums before looks maxing that kind of eventually coagulated onto looks maxing forum that like came up with it. The first one was PUA hate, and then then it was slut hate, and then it was Lookism. But it's a scale developed from, and we can go over that bizarre kind of arrangement, I guess, a little bit later, but it's a one to eight ranking system instead of a one to ten, because that's kind of kind of the classic. So like invented by the looks maxing community, where like for the most part, I think beyond a three out of eight, each point gets like statistically rarer than the last. Right. So a four out of ten is like the top one percent, and then a five out of ten is the top point one percent. And there's eight of them. So, you know, it takes it's a very critical, you know, it's very critical of people, which is ideologic, you know, it serves an ideological purpose.

SPEAKER_08 34:24

So it's almost like there's a hyper elite, and like the vast majority of us are just refuse and scum for the Uber Mensch.

SPEAKER_03 34:31

Yes, yes. The eight out of eight like doesn't exist. He's an ideal that the true Adam slash true Eve, depending on the gender.

SPEAKER_08 34:39

The atlas of humanity is, you know, that we all cannot ever attain.

SPEAKER_03 34:44

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And one way of like, you see how they rate like objectively very attractive celebrities, and it does see show how like how good this these sort of sites are at producing body dysmorphia. I saw one with like Timothy Chalame being like a four and a half. Out of eight. Out of eight, yeah, yeah. But still, you know, it one of the things it takes advantage of is the fact that like we think of writing in terms of 10 as well. Right. Like, even though they know it's out of an eight, a four and a half feels way worse because of that standard.

SPEAKER_08 35:12

Okay, okay, okay. Can we can we break down and not because I'm so curious? So PU hate and slut hate, those were forums set up to go after sluts and go after pickup artists and kind of like say they're bullshitters or they're evil. Women are, you know, sluts and they're evil. Is that like what does that mean, pickup artist hate? Was it a forum saying that you cannot learn how to seduce people? It's all based on your looks.

SPEAKER_03 35:37

It's interesting, yeah. So the original, the first forum was the PUA hate one. And it was originally a forum to like expose pickup artists, like this was maybe 15 years ago, I think, as like scammers. The problem is that a lot of the people who join those forums still had the kind of negative views about women that like pickup artistry kind of proto-manisphere people have, but they just came to the conclusion that like the pickup artists are lying to you when they say that you can pick up hot women. It's the black pill. Yeah, yeah. Or half of them is the are the black pill where like they come to the conclusion like, well, hotness is all that matters. Like the pickup artistry advice, it's not for someone like me because I'm not hot in the way that the pickup artist is, the way that like all the people who are seeing success are. Yeah, no, it's a very absurd way of looking at the world. But you can see how like a community of like-minded people like this can like kind of further enforce themselves, further enforce their ideology, and then like all that ideology, all that like resentment is then pushed away from pickup artists, we're initially and then just towards women of like, well, it's because women are shallow. It's because like women want to date the hottest guy, you know, they call it like a system of hypergamy. They think like dating is like all the women sleep with like top five percent hottest men, and then those men have the pick of the litter.

SPEAKER_08 36:50

So what that's what hypergamy means? It means that women are only oriented toward the very they're constantly trying to trade up, basically.

SPEAKER_03 36:56

Yeah, yeah. And so if you're not in that top 10%, like you're shit out of luck. And specifically shit out of luck because of feminism. It's like women are able to choose who they want to have sex with now. And so, because of that sexual freedom, because you're not hot enough, you're kind of cut out of it. And so, like, some of those people became like they took the black pill, they became incels, they're like, Well, I'm just cooked, I'm never gonna find a woman because the only thing that matters is hotness, or the main thing that matters at the very least is hotness. And the other group who kind of became the looks maxers were the people who were like, Well, I'm gonna try to ascend, as they call it. I'm gonna try to become as hot as physically possible and get out of this like status as like um, you know, male underclass that like women don't want to have sex with or sleep with and join that like five percent.

SPEAKER_06 37:40

But my friend, why not try and get as rich as possible? That's what I'm doing at why did they focus so much on aesthetic? Like aesthetic, aesthetic, aesthetic. Aren't you like if it's a you know man eat and man world where you know only the 0.1% of men get all the hot women and a big aspect of how hot you are as a man, because le woman knowledge is how successful you are financially and so on, why not also focus on that one? Interesting how when we erase that a system such as this, it looks more viable that I'm gonna turn into a Chad physically than actually make like a couple of million, isn't it? Yeah, it it reveals something about itself to a very large extent.

SPEAKER_07 38:20

Yeah, like it's all internalized, like they don't want to externalize the issue and like put it into something that is like I guess more fixable. It's it's more all in like the ideal world, like the uh you know, immaterial, something uh that isn't quantifiable or whatever. I've yeah, I've got some thoughts on that like later with with all of this stuff, but yeah.

SPEAKER_08 38:38

Yeah, and that brings us to our final term, which is foid. What is a foid?

SPEAKER_03 38:45

What is N Ford? I believe for some reason I think that's like like the N hero stuff about suicide. They they uh they add an N at the end as if the start of Ford is is a foul. I'm not sure why. But a Foid is basically it kind of does feel like a slur. I feel like that's where it's kind of going.

SPEAKER_08 39:02

So a misogynistic slur for all women?

SPEAKER_03 39:04

Yeah, yeah, essentially. It's a portmanteau of female and android, like fee femoid, and we which is meant to kind of articulate the idea that women are completely foreign and alien.

SPEAKER_08 39:15

Like, you know, it's like a robot or like an alien, like and they're an automaton, they're working off an algorithm or a program. They're not really sentient like you or me. They're like women are operating under these sets of rules, so you just need to figure out how to manipulate those rules, right?

SPEAKER_03 39:32

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 39:32

I read it as like a that way that people who did like race science and stuff like put like an ethnicity and put like oid after it. Like that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03 39:41

That's what I thought too. Yeah, I think that's maybe how it's like kind of shifted because you see oid as like a like a suffix.

SPEAKER_07 39:48

Like corcusoid and stuff, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:50

Yeah, as like in a negative sense.

SPEAKER_06 39:52

Yeah, used by everyone. Yeah, I call rhythoids, I say it every day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:56

Yeah, yeah. Like guy who hates China calling them like dengoids instead of dengus. Yeah. Oh well. So I think it's kind of shifted towards that.

SPEAKER_08 40:05

Well, okay. So what you're saying is that I mean, yeah, I can't believe it took us to episode seven for our Freud, or or is this episode four? What episode is this? Anyway, uh, to have our first major Ford guest. Is that what the appropriate usage? Because this is uh the sausage party.

SPEAKER_01 40:21

Some Ford representation. Oh god.

SPEAKER_06 40:24

You're like Liv said, soon it will probably become a slur, so Mike is using the floor. I'm trying to use it before I can.

SPEAKER_08 40:30

That's like every white man's mission is to get the last time it's acceptable to use a term before it becomes a slur.

SPEAKER_03 40:36

You're like the Robert Downey Jr. Tropic Thunder for Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 40:40

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_08 40:42

The last time we legitimate marketing is, yeah, beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

Me? I know who I am. I'm a dude, fleeing a dude, disguised as another dude. What?

SPEAKER_06 40:53

He's very good at marketing because like seven, like 172 episodes later, when like Floyd is like the main fucking slur, it's the year is 2034, the gender wars have begun, some men are on the side of the women, including this podcast, and then the women find out that in episode seven, like said Floyd. I'm not making it. Yeah, the revolution needs its own. This is what ends up getting us shot, like put on the put on the Moid wall. Moid men oid more. Yeah, you know, basically.

SPEAKER_08 41:25

I mean, that's my main political goal, is an old saying, which is I want to live in a world where I'm shot for being a reactionary. So the last episode of the React podcast will be about me on my way to the fucking gallows. That's that's my goal.

SPEAKER_07 41:40

We're not here to honor my creative to bury him, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 41:42

Yes, so uh hey, future you from the uh WNKVD, get it woman and kvd. Uh please don't shoot me and Freda. We we made fun of him. Shout out to women, shout out women based. But no, okay. Thank you for for genuinely. You did an absolutely brilliant job taking us through every single one of these uh definitions. And for probably around 30% of our audience, which uh are grass touchers, what you just heard and probably were very confused by are expressions used by a new, shiny, sexy, upgraded version of classic incel politics from the last decade. On the surface, they come from a guy who casually talks about masculinity, self-improvement, and you know, quote unquote hard truths. But underneath that you can see this pipeline into much darker, more explicitly reactionary politics. From your perspective, what is like the ideological work that this kind of influencer is actually doing for the broader right, as we like to call them?

SPEAKER_03 42:51

Yeah, looks maxing is definitely part of like the broader manosphere pipeline, which like I think I mentioned a bit of this before, like really appeals to men's masculinity. Especially like when they're like, you know, the teenager, it's kind of a weird time. You're uh kind of understanding your relationship to like gender.

SPEAKER_08 43:07

Like masculine gender anxiety, right, Liv?

SPEAKER_03 43:10

Yeah, absolutely. Especially if you're like kind of awkward and you're not like really fitting in, you don't really know your place in the world yet. It really attempts to encourage these like boys slash men to like really hold on to and protect their masculinity and and particularly like a reactionary image of that masculinity. That like this is under attack, masculinity, therefore you are. You know, male male nationalism almost. Yeah. And like all of your anxieties you're feeling they're a direct result of you know, feminism. We I mentioned before the hypergamy stuff, this idea of like the fact that Stacy isn't paying attention to you, or even like I think what Becky is like the middle level one that they have is like not paying attention to you, despite the fact that your looks matched, which is like the idea that you're objectively equal equivalent to traction, is because of feminism. Right. So like you can play the game. You can become Chad, you can ascend, and like your life will be better, but like you'll still realize like you're only getting this because of unfair reasons.

SPEAKER_08 44:08

Yeah, this is something that I think we will dovetail if I could pose the question for you, which is like you mentioned Becky's, right? And looks matching, right? So like, say I'm a three out of eight, I need, you know, a three out of eight woman would not want to date me because she's looking at the four out of eights and the five out of eights. And that's what feminism has wrought in our society, is that before feminism, back in the day, back in the 50s, all the three out of eights would find a three out of eight, and then we would have a nuclear family, as you mentioned earlier, and we would, I would get married and I would be the breadwinner. And because of her economic dependence on me and the fact that she was subs subordinated to me politically, she was at the home and she, in a certain sense, she loved me because that's all she had access to. And I had a duty and I would care for her and I would find fulfillment in my family. But because of feminism, that whole deal is broken up. And now the only way to survive is to ascend. Because then all the foids are going after you. And, you know, you have your pick of the litter. While, you know, most men who are not awake of this reality, they fall to the wayside.

SPEAKER_03 45:16

Exactly. Do you see this in L Clavicular in a lot of stream clips relates to women? As he clearly does have this ideology. Like he is very much so, of course, a true believer indoctrinated very early into this. That like he is quite disrespectful towards women. And and and like I also think that like the medium of the kickstream really contributes to this ideology and makes it look more real than it is. I was thinking about this, it's similar with like dating apps as well. It does make sense to me that more people think that like the only thing that matters if you're a guy to have sex with women is looks. If like the main way that you're date you're relating to women is through Tinder, where it's like, yeah, that is like much more important than like meeting a you know a woman in person, where like vibes and like your charisma are like much more essential. But similarly, with like these kickstreams, it's like there are people who are going on to be around clavicular for attention, obviously. Right. They're all using each other as a means to an end. It's all this the completely selfish, it's like Kant's worst nightmare. And then these young kids are like looking at it and being like, oh, this is how that works. And like clavicular gets all the women who want to, you know, sleep with him because he's hot. So like I just want to be like that.

SPEAKER_08 46:21

And yeah, no, and also you could see how it lends itself to reactionary politics because everybody has to orient themselves toward the biggest streamer, right? So everybody is naturally sorted into the am I kissing his ass? Do I have the favor of the big streamer? And so it becomes inherently an intensely hierarchical, and so people just start to naturalize the conditions that are created by these platforms' logics.

SPEAKER_03 46:45

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

unknown 46:47

Cool.

SPEAKER_07 46:47

I was just gonna ask, like, because with that hierarchy, because there is this like frame moging thing, whatever, with these like almost theatrical like confrontations between these guys. Like, what's going on there? Like, what's that about?

SPEAKER_03 46:59

Yes, no, there is a fascinating, like, this is the the kind of campiest component of the looks maxing extended universe that has come out of all of the memes about like clavicular getting frame mogged by the the so-called ASU frat leader, which was just one of these examples of like this buff guy, you know, clavicular is going to this frat in Arizona State University, and there's this buff guy who's like not doesn't even go to the university, I think, who's like massive shoulders, he probably just had a pump, and he's coming and he's like, I'm gonna be big beside clavicular, and then people are gonna like pay attention to me. And then of course it became this like massive meme because all those words are ridiculous and everyone was laughing at it. But then it became like everyone's looking at it, so they're all like, Well, we need to collab, we we need to make the it's kind of like pro-wrestling almost.

SPEAKER_06 47:42

Yeah, yeah, but it it it is, but it's like pro-wrestling for somebody that's like never been in a fight or seen a fight or been anywhere a hundred miles away from a fight. And in this case, it's like people that genuinely have not had, I guess, like a moment in a room where there's like a bunch of randoms and everybody's directly or indirectly competing for attention, either intentionally or not, you know, a bar or a club. So you get to experience the club experience or the bar experience, but online and you're living through clavicular and the other people that are trying to mug each other, etc. etc. It's it's so infantile that it almost makes me feel, you know, sorry for everybody involved, especially the audience. But hey, the reason there is a market for it is again going back to how many times is you gonna fucking repeat at this episode, systemic issues, right? Like you got what Mike and you said uh very eloquently, you got uh you know somebody in uh 1955 that simply has a job and therefore simply deserves a partner. Now the situation is completely different when it comes to the woman's perspective because oh, maybe she wants something outside of just being you know politically uh and systemically subservient to you, which is then pitched by uh some you know more eloquent ideologues and some less eloquent ideologues like clavicular to their wider audience as this is why, as you said, feminism is ruining your life. Like like patriarchal norms, and now I'm gonna fucking sound like a LARP, but for real. Patriarchal norms and the and the man-woman divide is the original othering, literally the original othering. One is a real human, the other is like just a thing that you know occupies space, is pretty, and then takes care of shit at uh at home. Now I'm not talking about different uh family structures that have existed in different cultures all around the world for like thousands of years that are exceptionally diverse. Particularly, I'm talking about modern reactionary politics that you know, especially from the West, come to us not only, you know, from the Third Reich, but also from the states. So the same way that you know race is utilized, ethnicity is utilized as a yo, back in the day you used to have a slave. Back in the day, there was a bigger chance you can be a boss, or back in the day you had access to more women, and that is why you should not look at actual systemic issues, but specifically your relationship to this either ethnic category or in this case gender category, and that's why you should uh find them to be your eternal opponents. And the only reason I'm going down this particular uh rant is because a lot of people when they look at you know right-wing thought and dehumanization, they very much always almost always focus on ethnicity, race, and sometimes even religion, right? But they don't understand that every identity category, every identity category, even vaxxed or non-vaxxed, everything can be utilized to be this is the other and this is this is us. And in order to understand that, and in order to understand how this othering happens, we need to understand kind of the the subject, the the person that this sort of rhetoric works very well on. So, how do you see that resentment being produced and managed in this kind of content in this case? And what does it tell us about the kind of people that are drawn into specifically these right-wing influencer spheres? I guess put on your Freudian glasses. You have glasses on, which is awesome. Freudian glasses on for a second, and let's say dissect a clavicular follower for us, please. His name is Mike.

SPEAKER_03 51:32

Which is there a specific state that this Mike lives in or originates from?

SPEAKER_08 51:36

Uh, I I think this this this Mike character is from Pennsylvania, and I think he's probably one of the more advanced followers of clavicular, very close to ascending. Uh, he never breaks frame, uh, he's mogging everyone in sight. Cortisol managed. But what motivated him? What motivated him to get into the clavicular space?

SPEAKER_06 51:57

The reason I before you begin, the reason I said Mike, it can be Hugo, it can be Freda. Guys, as insane as it sounds, you know, we're we're all ancients here, but if we were 13, 14, at very best case scenario, we would have spent five, six hours in these communities, and you know, we were raised right, per blah blah blah, and we would leave. But every single one of us would have interacted with this shit, especially knowing that all three of us were, you know, online-ish and so on. 100%. So we are in the past, I guess, a potential clavicular subject. But let's talk about the modern one.

SPEAKER_08 52:31

I would have had a trip code feminism will win, and I would have just been trolling these guys.

SPEAKER_06 52:38

Dude, the reason you know what jelking is means you've been through that in your own version of back in the spine. Like that, there you go.

SPEAKER_07 52:48

You've fought this war before.

SPEAKER_03 52:49

That's true. Self-improvement. Yeah, I think what one of the main things is that like the looks maxi more broadly like is able to claim that it's like the only ideology being honest about a lot of the things that like you know, the young boys are like concerned about, and like provides this like psychotic regimen for self-improvement, and then like kind of sneaks in the ideology in that regimen and is like, well, no, no one else is talking about like you know, basically surgical options to make yourself get hot. Like you're anxious about being hot, aren't you? And then the kid's like, Yeah, well, of course I am. And like I feel like the saying the quiet part out loud is like which I didn't realize was actually a phrase from The Simpsons, I think, originally, which is so funny. What?

SPEAKER_07 53:28

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 53:29

Yeah, yeah. Um, which is a side note, fun fact. Um, but that's how like a lot of alt-right ideology generally works. Um, specifically like the idea of like lookism, like that's like the L in the PSL was like a a website that was basically about the fact that like everyone treats hotter people better. And and like there's this kind of ironic affirmation of that of like, and it's good, and like they oftentimes you see this like curricular will do this, like they rate like people on the lower parts of the PSL scale as like subhuman, as like liter they're literally below us. They are they are less hot than us, right? And like the weird negative feelings we have about our own insecurities, we're gonna project outwards on people who are less conventionally attractive because that projection makes you kind of feel better, and it's and it like it affirms all of those anxieties, all of all of the worries about being liked that are aren't quite connected with like how hot you are, because like the halo effect is obviously real. I I think one of the components of that why why these sort of communities do well in mention of that is that like everyone kind of knows that at some level. It's like, yeah, it's like there are certain things when you're hot that are easier than when you're not hot, but like you don't say it, you don't dwell on it because it's not healthy.

SPEAKER_07 54:34

Yeah, the person who grabs is like very like insecure then or very yeah, uh just a normal person. Like there's nothing specific to the person originally that allows clavicure to appeal to them, right?

SPEAKER_03 54:45

Yeah, it's like it's an insecurity and then like an insecurity about like oftentimes like there are there are plenty of women who do looks maxing stuff because it is it has just become like generic self-improvement, but like a lot of it is like specifically insecurity about masculinity in that position and like positioning like you know feminist, you know, ideas as like just counter to who men are their very being. It's like they hate you because you're attracted to women, they hate you because you want a wife, because you want love. Where like a lot of those feminists are like kind of deconstructing like the social structure of that desire. Like, what does it mean to want a nuclear family? That's not like a politically neutral thing that like every everyone who is assigned male at birth comes out of the womb wanting. It's like there's something problematic there. But the what the looks maxing brought in manosphere is able to do is be like those people are like feed it free on their anxieties and be like, those people don't want you to achieve the thing that you want. They don't want you to achieve emotional gratification, they don't want you to find love.

SPEAKER_06 55:40

It's it's it's almost beautiful because it inspires loving someone because you actually deeply care for them, you relate to them, you want to create like a small tiny little community with them for maybe even the rest of your life by rejecting reasons for why you should be with someone. That's what that's that's the crazy thing that all of these fucking guys miss. It's like uh the when feminism oh the feminism, I love how it's like a creature, uh, but let's say it that way. When when when the creature of feminism dragon or feminism, yeah. Yeah, when the creature of feminism tells you, uh tells a woman that maybe one of the main motivating factors on why she should choose to be with you isn't just I has job, and that's all that she wants. That is not something that is supposed to dehumanize you as a man or undermine the very real work you're probably putting in trying to make a living at your job. No, it's making the point that when two people are choosing each other, they should not uh hyper focus on these uh systemic modes of sometimes inequality or just of well basic consumerism uh as a means to choose who their right fit is. So ironically, if you are dating a feminist, probably it's a person on the other side that actually likes you for you and not for the 17 categories that you probably as a dude also fucking hate because you don't want to also be commodified. But no, let's fucking hammer our chins.

SPEAKER_08 57:08

Well, I think I think the one point that I'd like to pose to you it is like just to build off of this, is the way that they, and you mentioned it earlier, they're like naturalizing their own ideology. They try to smuggle it by saying, this is just the way things are. It's like secret knowledge that they're exposing you to that we're all too polite to say. And the people that are telling you not to say it are actually sabotaging your structure of building, you know, maximizing yourself, ascending, self-improving.

SPEAKER_03 57:35

I like there is this like really there's this vicious cycle also that happens with this idea of love, because like like treating someone as a means to an end of like what can I objectively gain from this person is like the the most anti-love way of relating to an individual. Like if you can explain why you're in love with someone because objectively, because it increases then you're not in love with them. Like that's not how love works. And so, like this patriarchal image of love that these people are provided with like, look, you want gratification, you you get it through through dominating, through conquering, creates this vicious cycle of like even when they get it, they don't feel good about it. Like the interactions clavicular is having with women, you can see like obviously this is not a condition for him to find some true sense of love where he he might even like give up something that that objectively um you know, give up some objective standing for a feeling he has about a person through caring for them and wanting to be with them and truly understand them and you know, not on his own terms, but on theirs, this like there's this like um decentering of the ego required for that that sort of like love that like completely alienating these people from. It's it's making love seem like a battle, like like they have to combat and fight for it. And then also, yeah, when they when they get that form of love, they're obviously going to resent the person that they're with because they because like they're like, well, this woman is with me because I'm hot. This one is with me because I have a job. And it's like, well, yeah, that's how you structured the world. That's how you've come and look for for your partner. This isn't just a problem in like especially heterosexual dating with with men. Like women are certainly that are mirrored, oftentimes are mirrored to this and respond to this similarly of like, you know, a dating is like a a an a job interview. I want these three things, I'm dating to marry. But you know, like the obviously this like the specifically gendered masculine way is going to be a bit more violent in a patriarchal society.

SPEAKER_07 59:24

I have a question though, like I don't know how it is in the United States, but in Norway, with all this stuff happening, like beginning I think with like Andrew Tate and everything, political commentators started connecting this sort of like I guess early looks maxing and like you know this sort of uh misogynistic ideology with a rise in like young white men often uh voting for like far-right parties. So like in um the 2025 election, and by the way, as we're recording this, I don't know if like we want to date it, but they are counting the votes in Denmark right now. But in uh in Norway in the 2025 like election, uh men under 25 showed up two times more for the far-right, so-called progress party, silly name, who for American listeners are sort of like the Republican Party. And women under 25, meanwhile, voted three times more than young men for the socialist left party. Shout out to women. Um and they're kind of like DSA coded. And like I I'm not sure if like this uh phenomenon is happening everywhere, but I'm I'm sure it is. Like kind of like it's it's to one extent. Do you think that uh there is any sort of like Andrew Tate or Calil like clavicular effect or whatever you want to call it on these like young men who are growing up coming out of school, and then whenever they get the right to vote, they you know vote in these sort of patterns?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:42

Right. Yeah, I do definitely think like it's one of those things where like the the algorithm and how it's selected, people like clavicular and is definitely like a reflection of already existing problems in society. Like it's a it's the kind of like creating a a brutal coagulation of like the common denominator opinion anxiety, but then like it also subsequently enforces that common denominator and makes it stronger and stronger. So, like, you know, like if you really want to explain how these sort of things happen, you know, some people like rely on rely on conspiracy theories as like, oh, you know, the CIA is boosting, and like they very well may be, but like that's not the main reason why they're so popular. There's like there's an audience for it. Like the scarcity, the increased scarcity, neoliberal uh austerity has resulted in a lot of men, like younger men becoming a lot more defensive about masculinity than like even like millennial men might be, or even like even maybe Gen X. And like they're taking advantage of the those those influencers are taking advantage of that already existing trend of like men being a lot more worried about themselves qua their masculinity. For me to be better in life, masculinity itself must be protected. And like women responding to that, you know.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:51

Yeah. Yeah. So it's not like they they're pushing it, it's they're just meeting a need or demand.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:56

Yeah, yeah. And then making that demand worse, of course. Like it's a complicated dynamic of like people being exploited, but then like wanting the exploitation as well, viewing that exploitation as like again, back to that kind of vicious cycle, like thinking that that exploitation makes them um increases their standing in the world. Because they've they've been convinced it's their self-interests.

SPEAKER_07 1:02:16

When obviously, you know, cool because I'm suffering, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:18

Yeah. When obviously, you know, their self-interests are, you know, in relation to their economic class, which this completely obfuscates.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:25

Mike, if you want to do yours, because number five, we kind of answered already.

SPEAKER_08 1:02:30

Yeah, yeah. One of the things that I've kind of noticed and you mentioned was the idea that this type of of advice from the looks maxim community is advice that is mediated by screens, right? So we're talking about uh Tinder and whatnot. And Clavicular himself, you know, he talks about finding these spaces when he was in 14 during the COVID pandemic, when he was literally shut out from contact with people in actual social spaces. Do you kind of think of the looks maxing community and the way this stuff is kind of cooking off for the younger generation as a longer tale of the experience of like the isolation and the alienation we all felt from the pandemic, and largely from how so much more of our space is taken up by, you know, simulated spaces or screens as opposed to real contact with other human beings.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:24

Yeah, no, COVID made everything of this so much worse. Yeah. You know, as as I'm sure you all have noticed. I I feel like I joke like having like a conspiracy-related podcast. It feels like owning stocks in Raytheon. That's just like, oh, it's been a great fucking decade for that for getting into this in like 2019 or whatever. And certainly it's important to pay attention to the component of this that like all of these spaces are mediated by large corporations who like are trying to sell you goods. Like they're advertising, they're structuring everything in relation to like how can we advertise the most to people? And like that at the extreme detriment of like society, the social fabric, the way people think about each other, the things that are driven that like get the most engagement, are you know the things that are the most outrageous, the things that not not the things that make people think the most, then inspire the most interesting discussion. And then also, yeah, I I do think at some level also just the fact that you don't see a person. Again, the the social being completely isolated from people, it's a lot easier to yell at someone when you're not around them, when you don't see them. It's a lot easier, like Yeah, but I I think I mentioned this with like dating and Tinder before. Like COVID was the thing that like really sp really increased, really was the nail in the coffin for like dating in any other way for the majority. I saw a graph that like hasn't even hasn't been updated for the last couple years, but I assume it's like getting worse. Where it's like um like ways that young people meet their like partners and like dating apps like six years ago shot up to like 70% of people meeting each other. And those are just so alienating. It is like it's it's an incredibly shallow way of relating to another person. Yeah. So much less, like oddly enough, it it really encourages like a lot more casual hookup stuff as well. Right. Every every one of these apps turns into a hookup app. And then, like, of course, someone is gonna say, like, this is how not only my society works, but just like is an indictment of human nature in general.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:19

Compl completely missing, uh, ends up missing the point, right? Like, I I've been writing about this shit for like the last five years or something. Jesus Christ, I'm old. And uh the the allegory I like to use uh is that obviously the way tech develops and the way obviously it's co-opted by uh by these large corporations that you very adequately mentioned is going to have an influence on everyday life, including on how we view ourselves, how we view partners, and how we view dating as a concept. Like you know, we used to cook on fire and we had these recipes on how we cooked on fire, and then some motherfucker invented the stove. And while the recipes and stuff are similar, they also. change significantly to adapt to cooking on a different type let's say uh material and while date dating yes exactly and while dating is not completely reinvented because we interact mostly with uh potential partners uh through a screen it is a change right and uh what makes my previous allegory not radical enough for the dating market is that it there's no like you you buy a stove once and you can go and buy carrots and tomatoes and uh meat and whatever the fuck you want to eat whenever you want freely from the store they don't like constantly have uh you know consciousness and you don't have to pay rent for the type of stove that you use you have ultra premium stove that allows you to cook high quality food quote unquote high quality food and just a normy uh stove that allows you to just you know eat shit that is not necessarily very healthy for you well in the same way that is why it's a bad allegory because I'm comparing humans to to fucking carrots but when it comes to uh literally commodifying the dating market and selling it to you as a product and even selling access to the most quote unquote compatible partners as a premium thing that you buy into of course it is going to have a massive influence on how we view each other especially and I think that is the core underpinning of our conversation today especially when it comes to commodification commodification commodification where like we are playing RPGs with each other where where we we look at the motherfucker in front of me and like in most RPG games you can see their stats okay strength nine okay luck eight okay agility two okay not for me or even if you Yeah do I want this dude in my party exactly exactly you you like is is he gonna pull his weight yeah is he gonna pull his weight can this dude tank can he heal yeah and and throughout the game what happens when you're running around the map you keep meeting new companions and you have only space for one companion or three companions but for the metaphor of this let's say everybody's monogamous one companion right and these apps are continuously 247 throwing characters at you that are they're saying like oh this is gonna be much better for your party much better for your party much better you can upgrade you can upgrade you can upgrade and they're doing it not because of some mega fucking CIA conspiracy or or shadow government gang shadow wizard money gang we love Catholic spells shadow government no they do they're doing it because they want you back on the fucking app you dumb cunt like that's it if you are happy that you know they both want high statistics uh that they can show that the dating market is successful but they also want you to maybe cheat on the person you married through their app on your fucking platform because they're somebody with uh uh stats that you think you care about but yeah they want repeat customers as well yeah yes so DLDR uh of course tech is going to the same way tech influences uh the way you get from point A to point B or the way you cook food of course is gonna influence the way to the same extent the way you date uh other people but unfortunately this tech that arguably could be pretty good we could develop like incredible algorithms that really really help us find somebody that's very compatible with us but no we give it to the fucking free market and what the free market does with us is turn us into fucking looks maxing gooners or whatever the fuck yeah it's a part of the process of reification like every component of market relations like market relations affect every component of your social world in this case it's like even the way that you date is necessarily embedded in large capitalist firms who are trying to squeeze as much money from you as possible in your free time and it's like it's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:52

I've I haven't been on dating apps in a little while but I remember the last time it like it'll it'll advertise like twit Tinder platinum$40 a month or whatever or$40 a week and it's just an insane amount. Holy fuck because they know that like there are some men out there who are like I make enough money and I want to sleep with the woman enough that I will get any fucking advantage that I will take including this just like a ridiculous absurd because they weren't like that like I feel like I used to Tinder in like 2019 and it was like five dollars a month for the the one premium option. But it's fucking insane now. Because they know that like they got everyone. It's like what do what are you gonna do? Go to a bar? Like people don't like being approached.

SPEAKER_08 1:10:31

I think like we keep mentioning this idea of masculinity but the form of masculinity we see from the manosphere seems to me to be in opposition to like really traditional forms of masculinity that come from ideas going back to antiquity. So I'm thinking about ideas of like civic duty honor chivalry responsibility and fundamentally self-sacrifice that is the most masculine ideal that goes back in history which is like the idea that you give yourself up your life your identity gets annihilated for the good of other people that doesn't seem to be what the manosphere is saying when they say masculinity. So it to me it seems like a masculinity of a con man or the mafia boss how much can you extract from other people and give as little as possible in return what do you think about the way that even the idea of masculinity is being changed by the manosphere Yeah it's interesting.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:28

I it reminds me of like I I Dorno talks about a group of people called pseudoconservatives who are like they aren't actually conservatives they're just like authoritarian and they want like a very authoritarian structure. Right. And like they're invoking the past, these like old mythologies but like not actually because they wouldn't actually want to go back to the American system 150 years ago. They want Germany in 1941.

SPEAKER_09 1:11:51

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:51

I think that's like this kind of reimagined past that didn't actually exist that's for the purpose of fueling something new something different than before that like there's like a bracket implication of like so that we can't go back to this state. So we can't get another feminism.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:06

Yeah. I was just gonna say it's it's sound it sounds like a like revolt against modernity but it's not actually like it's constructing a new modernity. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:14

Because there is no going back really it's you know like let's let's you you can't do the Ted Kacinski thing. I mean even I think Kaczynski recognized how like harrowing that possibility or how impossible that was um to achieve like we have modernity now and didn't Tucker Carlson say that he wanted to go back to like feudalism or something? Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:12:33

It's like let's let's like who are we fucking kidding here dude like well we can't go back to the 50s because as you rightly point out as you guys just pointed out if we go back to the 50s then there's going to be a feminine mystique too and the women are going to revolt the same way they did during the 50s and they're going to run away from their suburban lives and they're going to have another sexual revolution and we'll be right back the way place that we supposedly left. So nuclear family that's just a myth in service of as I said this new masculinity and to me it's interesting because you know the way that women are treated in society right in a very superficial way, the male gaze it almost seems to me like looks maxing is importing the way that men looked at women and selling that to men, which is like you need to be hot and attractive so that when people look at you and they desire you, you're desirable. It's importing that kind of oppression toward men almost in a certain kind of perverse way. Like clavicular is telling men you need to get the the male equivalent of a boob job. And everybody who doesn't want to get a boob job is actually the sucker. Only the people that get the boob job are the Chads.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:47

Brilliant thing yeah there is a there is a large irony like you all were asking me before about like isn't it easier to like get more money or to like you know become more charismatic as a guy to like attract women? And it is oddly like like if looks maxing was much more tailored towards women about like conventional beauty you'd have a much stronger argument of like yeah society is incredibly um um like treats women incredibly poorly and only cares about their looks it's it's much easier to argue like yeah if you want to date hotter men it's it's much more invested in your physical beauty and how conventionally attractive you are but then for some reason like yeah as you mentioned they kind of import that idea onto masculinity which you know is putting yourself in kind of a prison for no reason you know like it's it's like people people do talk about how like gay coded clavicular is and I do wonder if this is kind of a part of that.

SPEAKER_08 1:14:40

That's what I think I'm getting at right which is like he's turning men into the object of desire right which is kind of feminizing them in a certain sense. Not saying this is good. I'm not saying that female role is good in society. It's just women are objectified and clavicular is telling you objectify yourself for advantage. But the the net effect of that would be it would be like anything else in capitalism, you know, when you invent a new method of production it gets proliferated to all competitors and then every factory has that new method and you get no advantage. So what clavicular is really doing if he succeeds everybody will be looks maxed and then it goes back to where we were which is some people just genetically have slightly better you know looks than others after the looks maxing and so you're back to square one except everybody has gone through this mutilation process.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:33

Yeah it's it because it still is like there still is a self-sacrifice there but like it's like irrational it's like an irr like like the the the self-sacrifice of like like Odysseus in in in Homer is like for the sake of increasing his like strength and power in the world, better bettering his standing object but like this is like an attempt to do that but it doesn't make any sense. Like it's like you're not actually doing that in the way that would be rational. Which is how fascists I think deal with myth in the the Western canon, western tradition often is they they completely butcher it, they misunderstand it towards this this very new ideal of a type of society that like has never been tried outside like it it's never been realized because it's like contradictory. But it looks absolutely nothing like the the things they're trying to invoke.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:19

And on that I think you made a perfect transition away from this category of reactionary over over into let's say more traditional ones. But you know we are the reaction cast and we don't like moving to traditional we prefer to stop talking about straight men and become a little bit more inclusive. So I want to talk about a proud black successful woman business owner by the way Candace Owens and of course no show would be good or American enough if it didn't have a quirky gay Mexican character. So Okay I think you're pulling ahead of me in the cancelled category by the way no I will die on this hill like the uh the right is DEI the right is DEI on stereo you get more money the more of like a minority category you are while spouting their shit and they unironically hire you go screen a little off the rails and if you want to listen to that half of our interview with Liv you can get access to it through our Patreon linked below at patreon.com slash the reaction podcast.

SPEAKER_07 1:17:29

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