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I occasionally see content about Clavicular (Clav, age 20) pop up in my algorithm. I used to ignore it because I felt like I had a good read on his schtick. I decided to watch a couple interviews to understand why he might be popular among others, and to better understand him from a psychological perspective.
The primary thing he is known for is being a spokesperson for looksmaxxing ideology. He believes looks are the most important factor in achieving positive social outcomes. He therefore believes in going to extreme lengths to optimize his own looks. His own looksmaxxing experiments include steroid usage at a young age, taking meth to stay lean, and altering his facial structure by hitting facial bones with a hammer/fist.
Digging deeper it appears that he has social anxiety (he suspects he has autism) and he usually uses a cocktail of drugs to overcome this anxiety when streaming his social interactions. He recently overdosed while streaming, but made a quick recovery.
He is very in tune with social media trends and algorithmic manipulation. He knows how to clip farm and turn novelty into engagement. He uses weird terms like methmaxxing and jestermaxxing to increase the probability of a clip going viral. He also knows how to livestream and turn audience engagement into content.
His interviews tend to be a combination of him wanting to sperg out about looksmaxxing and him playing the role of clip farmer. The interviewers usually start out as curious about Clav’s worldview, but then they try to bait him into talking about his past controversies or play some rhetorical gotcha game. When Clav appears to have his drugs dialed in he seems to achieve his goals in the interview (spreading looksmaxxing ideology and generating algorithmic engagement). Sometimes he just comes across as spaced out and like is he having a hard time following the logic (like he is impaired by a substance).
My personal critique of him is that he is correct that looks matter, but he fails to realize the importance of balancing other skills and traits in order to achieve social success (like Aristotle's golden mean). I also think he is on a precipice with his drug use. He has the opportunity to taper and integrate the confidence he learned into his sober personality, but if he continues using his cocktail of drugs he will cause physical and mental injury to himself.
I’m far more interested in discussing the larger pattern that Clav is symptomatic of. Young men don’t see any viable paths to success, or have good role models for how they should live their lives. They look around and see the traditional paths (like college) are uncertain at best. They notice young women’s expectations have increased and they often don’t meet them. If they see a successful person (like a retired boomer) they don’t think that path is still available to them. If everything is uncertain the best thing to do is look around for successful people and imitate them. So, they find an influencer like Clav and realize they can play the social media influencer lottery by trying to become viral like him. If society tells them to figure out everything on their own and won’t provide a clear path that is likely to succeed then becoming viral on social media, giving up, or gambling suddenly seem like much more attractive options.
It is obvious to me that incentivizing a bunch of people to figure out how to optimize viral social media content is not good for society. It steers people into echo chambers, distorts their ability to see reality, and is also a huge waste of potential – they could become productive members of society (like scientists and engineers) if only society better aligned the incentives.
How can society better support the men who sincerely look up to Clav as role model? Is there a way to become as viral as Clav by doing pro-social things (so offering a viable competing worldview)?
Ban social media.
I don't see another way to square the reaction to the recent articles about female radicalization (where most people seem to think the internet/ideology caused an unjustified reaction) with this post (where we seem to take it for granted that men are reacting to some objective fact about their circumstances). The internet is the common factor. We can't control when people feel oppressed but you theoretically could ban the internet.
Of course, a lot of us don't consider this feasible or wise in practice.
No, they all seem crazy.
Seriously, who is the best adjusted streamer? It seems to select for the most dramatic. Going down the list of streamers I know something about:
Healthygamergg seems quite well adjusted (or was a few years ago, I haven't kept up much) and semi-viral. As far as I know, This is the closest thing to what Ponder is asking for.
That channel got big by appealing to spirituality, teaching emotional awareness, and most crucially the interviews. The host, Alok Kanojia, is a psychiatrist with spiritual training and a flair for storytelling. Through interviews he would help his viewers understand their feelings and situation, usually culminating in some moment of emotional catharsis. To the viewers who were not being interviewed, this provided a conversational style that they could emulate in their personal lives, and potentially a new lens through which they could view their own situations.
In addition, he does online lectures that serve as introductions to various concepts within psychiatry and Hinduism in a way that has proven very popular within his fan base.
The channel turned viral when it started doing interviews with popular streamers such as Reckful, Pokimane, and Destiny. So it still depended on the clout of others to achieve its reach.
The main controversies have been related to the ethics of a psychiatrist doing live interviews which look very similar to therapy. My understanding is that the channel is very aware of this, and does a lot of work to draw a clear line between what they are doing and actual treatment though. So overall, the content is ethically defensible and definitely a net good.
That’s a good point there are some popular influencers who provide helpful advice to young men without trying to produce maximally viral content for the algorithm. They still play to it somewhat by choosing provocative titles or captions for videos. In addition to Healthygamergg I would say André Duqum is kind of like that but more spiritual, and Chris Williamson is kind of like Healthygamergg with less therapy.
It seems much harder for someone to replicate any of those healthier podcasters though. A lot of it came from them filling a specific niche at the right time. Additionally, all of them seem to have dedicated a lot of time to building expertise over time (by going to medical school, spending a lot of time doing spiritual practices, or doing a lot of research). I know Chris talked about his beginnings as a podcaster and I think he spent a few years with much fewer views and it eventually grew organically and he already had some social media followers because he was on Love Island (a reality TV show).
Those paths seem harder to replicate for a newcomer because someone already found and popularized the niche. As a newcomer it seems like a better bet to play the virality lottery where you try to get popular from a single outrageous clip and then create new content based on what the audience liked in the viral clip. This doesn’t require any expertise at all and it will have a much faster payoff if it succeeds.
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