'It's Washed': The Snob Discovers Looksmaxxing

Human beings don't deserve to go on as a species.

There, I said it.

We've been terrible stewards of the earth. Or I should say, those of us with all the money, power, and control have been terrible stewards of the earth, dooming us all to either future climate disaster, nuclear hellfire, or both. Mostly because those of us who have everything—clean water, ample food, air conditioning, garbage pick-up, and laws that people mostly observe—keep making shit up to be miserable about. And from that misery, we try to make others just as unhappy as we are. And if we make a few bucks off that pain along the way, well, that's just capitalism.

On Tuesday, Braden Peters, a 20-year-old man who goes by the name Clavicular online, was accused of the sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl. He allegedly plied her with alcohol, then raped her when she could not consent. I didn't know much about Peters until yesterday, beyond that he was someone on the Internet who was into something called "looksmaxxing," which is apparently about young men and teen boys trying to make themselves as good-looking as possible in hopes of bagging really hot women or girls.

Sounds like something someone without a fully developed frontal lobe would come up with!

My friend and podcast producer, Moses Williams, introduced me to the concept. He's in his early 30s and has aged out of these shenanigans on what people call "the manosphere," which is a bunch of cryptocurrency scams in a trench coat masquerading as a men's rights (and wrongs) movement.

According to Moses, young men are encouraged to reconstruct their facial structure, hit the gym, use serums and creams, take testosterone and other supplements, in order to become more "manly," but also more "beautiful" in a feminine way. Think manosphere "king" Andrew Tate being arrested in his "the titties are the top" shirt and pedal pushers. But they don't use the word feminine, I think; they just call it "looksmaxxing." Which sounds a bit like being a metrosexual, a thing that was popular in the early-to-mid 2000s, but not as violently dramatic.

Basically, these people saw the emptiness, vanity, and violence in Patrick Bateman from American Psycho and thought it was a "how-to" manual.

Moses explained to me that they all want to look like "a white male twink." To which I responded incredulously, "To attract women?????"

On 'Twinks,' 'Mogging' and A Bunch of Terms I Barely Understand

I had always understood "twinks" to be something popular in the male, queer community. For those who don't know, twinks are basically small-ish, really fit, boyish-looking men. Think Teen Beat, or 21 Jump Street-era Johnny Depp—if you're "an old" like me—or actors Timothée Chalamet and Tom Holland. You know? Pretty boys! They usually have little to no body hair and seem "non-threatening."

They're basically the kind of guys only prepubescent girls and men who are into men who look like boys would like.

For example, "Can We Talk"-era Tevin Campbell, who I thought I was going to marry when I was 14, was probably a twink.

He was also a child.

I then asked Moses if there were Black looksmaxxers because surely we would not be participating in this tomfoolery, to which he happily showed me a young Black man who looked like Tyson Beckford if someone smashed his beautiful face in with a boot.

Then Moses explained "mogging" to me, which is basically a game of one-upmanship between looksmaxxers over who can be the hottest, tallest, manliest-without-being-too-manly man.

For example, my boyfriend, Joe, is very handsome, but he's not super tall. Which is perfect for me, as I am not super tall; I'm only 5'3". So if my best friend Jada Prather, who is tall, clocking in around 6'3'-6'4", entered the room, he would be "height-mogging" my boyfriend. But if Moses entered this same room, he would out-height-mog both of them, because Moses is almost pro-basketball-player height, coming in around 6'7"-6'8".

Based on looksmaxxing logic, I should want the taller man. Or the tallest man. But I do not.

Jada, while I love the guy, is and has always been like a brother to me, and all we do is fight about nonsense. We have a goofy, geeky, big-brother/annoying, brainy little-sister dynamic. He's very good-looking, which I feel contractually obligated to mention because he lives for the applause, but we're also not romantically compatible in any way, and my neck hurts from looking up at him all the time. And Moses, I've known him since he was literally a child, so I'm basically his auntie. When he was a child, we bonded over his love of the cartoon band Gorillaz, and I bought him his first transit card when he went to Howard University. He's also handsome and smart, but ... ugh ... gross. He's forever a bright, precocious 11-year-old to me, gushing about Star Wars. I'm mildly horrified that he has the gall to be 30-years-old.

ELEVEN-YEAR-OLDS CAN'T BE THIRTY, MOSES!!!!

Or at least I hope he's only 30. I can't take it if this child keeps getting older.

But I say all this to say that it's almost as if there are other factors beyond height and looks that go into play with attraction!

The Art of Attraction

The night I met Joe, we talked about a lot of things, from the fact that he's a member of Phi Beta Sigma and I'm in his sister sorority, Zeta Phi Beta, to how we're both journalists from the Midwest who know a little about a lot of things. The list of common interests was quite long: we both enjoy history, culture, politics, music, sci-fi, and comic books. (Although Joe officially gave up on Star Wars after Rise of Skywalker because it was so bad that it made him question his lifelong devotion to it.)

In the hour or so when we chatted, I found out we both came from large extended families with Southern, working-class roots. That we both came from relatively boring two-parent homes, dominated by loving, beautiful, high-strung mothers who I'm convinced, if they'd lived long enough to meet each other, would have either become best friends or mortal enemies because they sounded so similar. We're both "word nerds," and my corny matches his in terms of humor. We both like to dance and love music (although Joe is more of a House-head). Also, Joe has a lot of game. Like, tons. He treats everyone well, especially me, and is kind and charitable. He's very Theo Huxtable if Theo were from Detroit and had street savoir-faire.

Meaning, he has home-training and brought-upancy, and we've been pretty much inseparable since we met.

But based on looksmaxxer logic, no woman should be attracted to him because he's not a 6 foot+++ adonis. And no man should be attracted to me because I'm over 130 lbs. (We're also Black, and I'm pretty sure this looksmaxxing thing is racist.) But based on this trend, you can't be a funny Black guy with a great, strong nose and a cleft chin that he hates but I love, because that's the face I fell in love with. It's the same way with him. I have things I don't like about my face, but if I didn't have an asymmetrical jawline, crooked grin, and wide-ass nostrils, I might not have bagged him! Because those things are part of my face, and he finds them beautiful.

So, hey fellow kids: You don't have to look perfect to find love! (Or just get laid.) You don't have to be rich or tall. People have been producing other people regardless of looks, wealth, or status since the beginning of time! How do you think all these hideous looksmaxxers came into existence in the first place? Someone's ugly daddy met a woman who actually had sex with them enough to produce a child that is so deeply miserable and insecure that he's mutilating himself for a beauty standard that makes no sense. It's already dumb when women do it! We got women out here developing a Mar-a-Lago face just to stay "forever 41" when they're knocking on 81's door.

This shit, as the kids would say, is washed. It's cooked. Why do this to yourself?

Delusions of Youth

When I was in my 20s, I once cried to my therapist because I'd never get to date actor Wentworth Miller or anyone as "beautiful" as the then-Prison Break star because I was a short, fat, depressive. Even as I type this sentence, I realize how incredibly stupid that sounds, but I was 24, and my frontal lobe was not yet fully developed. I was also clinically depressed.

I was not in my right mind.

Years after this embarrassing incident, Miller would come out as gay, and I would realize how pathetic this all was. It's almost as if humans are complex people with rich interior lives that don't have shit to do with you. Like, everything is NOT ABOUT YOU and your little feelings. People don't exist for your pleasure, and no one owes you anything.

Get over yourself!

So I got over myself and focused on being the "best version of me." A smarter, healthier, fitter, funnier BLACK SNOB. Not whatever I thought an actor I'd never met and never would meet wanted.

Because attraction is more than looks. Especially after you get out of your long, dark, confusing 20s.

But if this is what we're doing as a species, send the meteor, already.

Maybe the elephants should inherit the earth? You know? They're really social and highly intelligent, live long lives even in the wild, and don't have a massive carbon footprint. Pretty sure elephants don't mog each other. They probably just get dates off their wit, ability, and might, like the rest of the animal kingdom.

I mean, I come from a time when young men got women by coming up with elaborate, high-energy dance routines that they performed in the club. If you were a good enough dancer, you didn't even have to buy women drinks. You could be broke! You could look like Kid from Kid n' Play, and you could totally get it. Let's go back to that. I prefer traditional mating rituals like hip-hop dancing to Full Force compared to whatever in the Zoolander "blue steel" this is. Everyone should just study the movie House Party and run that back.

Couldn't hurt!

But Clavicular might... so maybe don't do that?