The purpose? As influencers like 21-year-old Braden Peters, aka Clavicular, would say, is to “mog” other men. That is, to overwhelmingly outshine and dominate someone else in physical attractiveness. Peters – who was arrested at the weekend on a battery charge, and has received absurd amounts press coverage this year thanks to everyone from The New York Times to the BBC – is the most famous proponent of the above forms of looksmaxxing, and, indeed, the movement itself.

Put simply, looksmaxxing is the process of maximising one’s appearance. Women have been guided towards looksmaxxing for the better part of the 21^st Century thanks to the Kardashians (from lip fillers to BBLs and face lifts). Only post-pandemic, though, has this become a primarily male phenomenon. There’s “softmaxxing” like anti-acne skincare and mewing (“training” your jaw in an attempt to gain a squarer face). And then there’s hardmaxxing: implants and limb-lengthening surgeries, abusing steroids to try and become the AI-sanctioned version of man, and the aforementioned bone smashing – a form of pseudoscience based on a false interpretation of Wolff’s Law, which states bones adapt to stress by becoming denser and stronger.

The point of all of this “maximisation”? Hyper-online pundits will tell you it’s about increasing your value on the dating market by increasing your primal currency in finding a mate, aka one’s sexual market value (SMV). Academics quoted in mainstream journalism will tell you it’s proliferating 2010s “incel” culture by ranking men into categories like subhuman (below average appearance), normie (average), and Chad (traditionally good-looking) on a numerical scale. An incel is an “involuntary celibate” who defines himself by his inability to find romantic and sexual partners. Yet something critical missing from the commentary and think-pieces on looksmaxxing is actually talking to real young men – not influencers, not those who hide in online forums like Discord and Reddit, but regular teenagers – and asking their how pressures to looksmax affect them.

“I feel like it’s just another way to sell something,” says Liam Neighbour, 19, a Massey University student who recently became a gym buddy of mine at Les Mills Victoria Park. “If you look deeper at all these influencers [like Clavicular] they’re just selling some supplement, some one-on-one coaching plan.”

This healthy dose of cynicism was notable when I started chatting to the other young regulars at my gym. “It’s not really about attracting women at all,” says 20-year-old Aucklander “Irish”, who asked me to use his nickname. “It’s about how you look amongst [other] men.”

Both myself and all the Gen Z/Gen Alpha-cusp guys I spoke to believe looksmaxxing is inevitably rooted in vanity, not for SMV, but because it’s finally okay for men to care about their appearance.

“What’s wrong with wanting to look better amongst your friends?” Irish adds, curling a dumbbell. I pointed them to recent media coverage on the subject, which features the extremities of looksmaxxing and the dangers and toxicity of the trend, from body dysmorphia to literal self-harm. None of these young men had even heard of bone smashing, while mewing was “a stupid thing people did at home during Covid”, Liam adds. “[Looksmaxxing is] just a Gen Z way of saying you want to improve your appearance but going so seriously as to make it a hobby.”

Plastic surgeries and facial ratio ratings on looksmax.org aside, this brings us back to mogging, the act of aesthetic domination in a physical space over other males. Braden Peters was famously “frame mogged” by an Arizona State University student in a viral video that shows his shoulder width as broader than the influencer’s, embarrassing the self-titled Clavicular himself. Derived from “AMOG” (Alpha Male of Group), the term mogging is more male-centric than the term “slaying” but comes with equal weight. “A mog and a slay are essentially the same thing,” says Irish. “It’s a compliment. It’s something to look up to.”

The absurdity of this lexicon is now becoming the butt of the joke, being parodied on Saturday Night Live. Comedian Sarah Sherman plays “Chad Maxxington”, a “gigachad” (top-tier male) character who promotes “mewing” and talks of “frame mogging” SNL host Colin Jost into “oblivion”. For laughs, this caricature goes down the rabbit hole with terms like “jester gooning”(attention seeking behaviour) and “beta cuck”; a pejorative that combines use of the word “beta” as subordinate to “alpha” males, and cuckold, a term historically used to describe men whose wives cheat on them.

“This can’t be real,” says Liam, after watching the SNL clip. “People don’t talk like this. I guarantee you, most guys that are into looksmaxxing are doing it to become their best selves,” he adds. “We are being portrayed like we belong in a chatroom for incel groups. It’s actually embarrassing people think my generation talks like this.”

Lee Seabrook-Suckling is an Auckland-based freelance journalist, with 10 years’ experience writing for the Herald. He has a Master of Journalism in health reporting and expertise in men’s health, social change, and leadership.