Looksmaxxing: When Self-Optimization Becomes Dangerous
There are boys who deliberately hit their own jaw and cheeks with a hammer or their own fist.
Not out of anger. Not out of despair. But out of a wish to become better looking.
It even has a name: bonesmashing.
The idea behind it: repeated injuries are supposed to make the facial bones grow back more defined.
And it is only the extreme tip of a trend currently sweeping up millions of young men:
Looksmaxxing.
What looksmaxxing actually means
“Looksmaxxing” roughly translates to: optimising your own appearance to the maximum.
At first glance, that sounds fairly harmless.
- A better haircut.
- Skincare.
- Exercise.
- Eating healthier.
- Sleeping better.
There is nothing wrong with any of that. The looksmaxxing scene itself distinguishes between everyday forms of self-care and so-called “hardmaxxing”, the increasingly drastic attempts to eliminate supposed physical flaws. In extreme online spaces, that now ranges from surgery and steroids to unregulated injections, extreme diets and bonesmashing.
The real problem therefore doesn’t start with face cream or at the gym. It starts where your son learns:
My face decides what I’m worth.
The dystopian origin of looksmaxxing
Part of looksmaxxing culture comes out of incel and manosphere forums, where attractiveness isn’t treated as something subjective but like a mathematical ranking. Faces are compared with each other, proportions analysed, and men sorted by who is supposedly more attractive, more masculine or genetically superior.
Tied to this is a particularly pessimistic idea from these online worlds: the Black Pill.
Anyone who adopts this view believes the decisive cards of life were already dealt at birth. Only two things count: looks and height. Anyone not attractive enough supposedly has almost no chance with women or in society. Character, humour, effort, all secondary. The Black Pill’s cold conclusion: “It’s over.” Unchangeable physical traits determine success.
And it was precisely out of this hopelessness that looksmaxxing emerged.
If looks and height really are the only things deciding your fate, then optimising them becomes the only straw left to grasp.
The pseudo-science of the "perfect face"
Looksmaxxing presents itself as though it were an exact science. In the forums, the face is broken down into countless individual parts and measured as if it were a technical component. Anyone who uploads a selfie gets a score from strangers on the so-called “PSL scale” from 1 to 10. At the very bottom sits the “sub” (short for “subhuman”), at the very top the “Chad”, the supposedly perfect man.
One of the best-known methods is “mewing”. The tongue is pressed against the palate in a particular way, in the hope of developing a defined jawline. The effect is not scientifically proven.
And that is exactly where one of the problems lies.
On social media, pseudo-science starts looking like science remarkably fast.
An influencer shows before-and-after pictures. A face turns into a table full of flaws. And the longer your child internalises this scale, the more they see themselves as nothing but a sum of defects.
Why this reaches millions of boys
Every big trend needs a face. Looksmaxxing has found its own: the 20-year-old influencer Clavicular, real name Braden Peters.
In 2025 he became the scene’s best-known star on TikTok, with clips about extreme looksmaxxing content pulling in millions of views.
By his own account, Clavicular was injecting testosterone at 14 and later even took crystal meth as an appetite suppressant. In June 2026 he had a nose operation broadcast during a livestream lasting several hours.
And the genuinely dangerous part is the visible status:
Clavicular doesn’t get his millions of views because of these extreme methods, but because it appears to work. In his clips he is constantly surrounded by beautiful women giving him attention.
Followers. Attention. Money. Attractiveness. Recognition.
The message that can stick with a young viewer is far simpler than the ideology behind it:
He optimised himself, and now everyone wants his life.
Your son doesn’t have to go searching for looksmaxxing
This is the most important point of this article.
A boy doesn’t suddenly think, “Today I’d like to slide into the manosphere.” The entry point can be completely mundane.
- Fitness.
- Building muscle.
- Gaming.
- Motivation.
- Cars.
- “How do I get more confident?”
An experiment by the Anti-Bullying Centre at Dublin City University shows how quickly recommendations can shift. The researchers set up ten test accounts on TikTok and YouTube Shorts, including profiles of boys with ordinary interests such as sport, fitness or gaming. Some of the test accounts were recommended manosphere content within minutes. Once the accounts signalled interest in such videos, problematic content increased markedly further down the feed.
It shows something decisive: the path to this kind of content rarely begins with an active search.
What are the telling signs
A single mewing video is no reason to panic.
What matters more is whether your child’s relationship with their body is changing.
Pay attention if your son suddenly spends a great deal of time checking his face or his body, constantly compares himself with others, avoids certain photos or mirrors, researches cosmetic procedures for hours, or avoids activities and friends because of his appearance. Recurring checking and avoidance behaviours like these are among the clinically recognised warning signs of severe body-related anxiety.
What you can do now
1. Talk about it openly
If you catch your son mewing or measuring his face, ask about it neutrally, without mockery. Precisely because self-improvement content connects to real needs for confidence, fitness and belonging, you usually reach boys better through curiosity than through mockery.
Explain to him: social media cheats with lighting, filters and angles, beauty can’t be measured objectively, and his worth doesn’t hang on a jawline.
2. Separate self-care from self-worth
- Exercise is good.
- Liking your haircut is good.
- Skincare is good.
- Dressing well is good.
The goal shouldn’t be to teach your son that wanting to look good is shallow or wrong.
The important boundary is this:
“You’re allowed to work on yourself. But you are not an unfinished product.”
He needs to learn that taking care of his body can be something that does him good, not an endless repair job on his supposed flaws.
3. Change more than the screen time. Change the feed.
Look together at which accounts he follows. Use “Not interested”, unfollow accounts that regularly leave him feeling worse, and question supposed before-and-after pictures.
You won’t hear about every new trend in time
Today it’s called looksmaxxing.
Yesterday it was something else.
And tomorrow the same mechanism will have a new name.
That is exactly where the real problem lies for parents:
- You can’t know every Discord server.
- You can’t understand every piece of slang.
- And you can’t monitor every chat your child has.
But you do want to notice when an internet trend turns into a real danger.
That’s exactly where Helmit helps
Helmit helps you spot the warning signs early, before an algorithm becomes a worldview. The app analyses your son’s social media accounts in the background and detects patterns pointing to self-worth crises, Black Pill ideology or dangerous group influences.
When Helmit detects chats or content involving a distorted body image, you get an alert before these attitudes harden. Your child’s privacy stays fully intact, because you only get insight when it genuinely matters.
You don’t need to know every term and every trend. What you need above all is the chance to notice in time when your child needs support.
