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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)?
Looksmaxxing ideology, PUA, redpill, and incel are kind of like "alternative media" or "intellectual dark web." That is, they satisfy a demand that original information sources couldn't meet. A lot of people do not think mainstream sources are credible on the subject of "status for men." By mainstream sources, I mean ones that follow the background Western memeplex (which is feminism). If the question is, why do people feel feminism is not credible on the subject of "status for men," I am a little biased.
For me personally, it is probably because of being on the internet in the 2010s. For kids these days, I'm not sure. It's hard for me to imagine what its like to see the cultural landscape with fresh eyes. Probably all the boys these days notice that all the help goes to girls, and never to boys. Indeed, if any help were to ever go disproportionately to boys, the culture has a ready-made, uncostly way to rectify this and give proportionate help back to the girls. The reverse is not true.
The big difference between 2010s manosphere content and 2020s manosphere content is that there was a lot more optimism in the 2010s. 2010s RedPill content, yes, believed myths like 80/20 and AF/BB (i.e. the myth that only a few men get to be sexually active with a lot of women) but they also showed men how to sleep with a lot of women, and believed any man could achieve that with hard work. This was, of course, degeneracy, but there was an optimism I don’t see these days.
My biggest frustration is how this content is designed to have the most misogynist and negative view of women possible, believe myths simply because they make women look bad and make men angry with women, e.g. If I had a nickel every time that dishonest version of the 2009 OkCupid chart was reposted, I would be very rich.
This flamebait results in engagement, so it goes viral, but it isn’t healthy because it results in men hating women unreasonably. (There’s also misandry online, but that’s another discussion for another day)
Does this really make it better? That women hold their noses and message perfectly average guys they think are ugly seems like cold comfort for the mids in question.
I don’t think those women were thinking men were mostly ugly. I think what happened is that women don’t build attraction from just looks the way men do.
In terms of replication, the results are generally not the gap we saw in that old OkCupid chart but, yes, there is a gap.
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