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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)?
Virality is probably not correlated with pro-sociality.
So far as people like this are concerned, they're just overoptimizing for one aspect of social status and mining the cognitive dissonance for clicks. And what's the goal? In much the same way that bodybuilding quickly loses any connection to actual sex appeal, this "lookmaxxing" or whatever is another proxy being reified.
Young men will always be looking for ways to hack the social milieu in some way that gives them sexual access to young women. Most of them will be looking for One Simple Trick to avoid having to work too hard at it. Drugs, surgery, PUA classes, whatever. The con artists who sell them these fantasies may have a kernel of truth in their spiel, but only that.
Here's the reality: Becoming an expert at seduction, whatever we're currently calling that, is something many men are capable of but far fewer are willing to put in the work to achieve. Most men are best off building a decent life for themselves and trying to find a monogamous wife/girlfriend, not dating as a method of getting laid.
The fantasy is that you can do something easy to change that. Sexual access is competitive.
In my experience, finding an interesting single woman to marry is about two orders of magnitude harder than becoming an expert in seduction.
Getting laid is not easy, but at least doable. Finding someone I wouldn't mind inviting to my lair is... well... unsuccessful.
The whole secret of fishing is where and when.
If there are no suitable mates where you are fishing, try a different hole.
Also, perhaps think long and hard about what you mean by "interesting".
Long ago, I thought interesting women were women who were interested in the same things I was interested in. Which meant all the interesting girls were lesbians.
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