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What's funny about Clav is that he (apparently, though I don't follow closely enough), misses the irony that looks are less important than status, which is often self-reenforcing, and thus undermines the very thing he's popular for. Looks is a way to bootstrap into status, yes, but 'maxxing' it, hits diminishing returns fast.
He is not sustainingly popular because of his looks, but his fame, e.g. success. At this point, further maxxing on looks, has negligible effect on his further success, while staying in the spotlight, will.
Contrast his with say, Mr. Beast, who also bootstrap himself into virality. But Mr. Beast didn't misunderstand himself as 'counting-maxxing' but rather recognized the metagame as, 'stunt-maxxing' or 'brand-maxxing' on a path to 'virality-maxxing'. From what I've seen, Mr. Beast (whom I pay little attention to) talks about his own success with this awareness, rather than giving general advice that others also try to do viral video stunts to be successful too.
Suppose instead, after first going viral, Mr. Beast had decided that "looks are the most important factor in achieving positive social outcomes" and doubled down on that, rather than his 'stunt' focused avenue. Would he have ended up with better social outcomes? No.
Looksmaxxing is a stupid ideology because, aside from getting meta-famous for looksmaxxing, as an object level strategy itself -> improving looks is very important to a point, then hits RAPID diminishing returns. This is true of almost anything, unless you are trying to win a zero-sum tournament niche, which is always a bad 'general' strategy.
Yes, or as Kissinger phrased it:
He was certainly not a looksmaxxer. But if even a small portion of women go for status then he was drowning in it despite looking the way he does.
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On the flipside, Liver King's hard-earned clout immediately evaporated when he broke kayfabe and admitted it was all based on a contradiction and he was full of shit.
MrBeast's gimmick is basically inviting you to watch a Youtube nerd recreate Fear Factor with some additional consumerism for that fantasy element. So long as he can find some new wrinkle in that formula (or new people) he can get attention. Not sure it's the same for people like Clavicular.
sure Clav is famous for looksmaxxing, and if he stopped looksmaxxing, hed become less famous. But he's wrong in how much he advocates looksmaxxing as a generally effective strategy for status/success.
If I was famous for hopping on one foot, then continuing to hop on one foot would likely be an important part of my continued fame. But I would be wrong to espouse any general theory of hop-on-one-foot-maxxing that positioned it as a key to fame, generally.
Yes, I'm not saying he's correct. Just rational.
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