Maybe you’ve heard of looks maxxingan online trend in which young people strive to be attractive, often to their own detriment. Thanks to Clavicularyoung, influential in the manosphere, this term—and others modeled after it—has grown. You can be lookmaxxer for smooth maxxing (skin care or exercise) or for hard maxxing (plastic surgery or self-mutilation). Looksmaxxers often find themselves jester-maxxingthat is, using humor to get women’s attention.
Maxxing can be specialized, too, and even relatively, maximally speaking. A guy can be a personality booster instead of a joke-maxxing one. A few versions of incel-maxxing may include health-maxxing – what people called it good health about 10 minutes ago. Do you want your gut to be more normal? That’s fiber-maxxing. Do you want to build abundance? You are protein-maxxing. Some women called tradfem want to have more children through reproduction-maxxing-a process that our culture understood as getting pregnant again. Maxxing goes the other way too, increasing harm instead of benefits: Maybe you have a drug habit, in which case you can be pills-maxxing. Anorexia, for some, now hunger-maxxing.
Everything worth doing seems worth more. Want to use less technology and pursue more human connections? That’s friction-maxxing. What about rest or isolation? You are nothing-maxxing. Reading is adding books. Going to bed is sleep-maxxing. Buying denim shorts to welcome summer is probably jorts-maxxing. Do you think you are reading an article right now? Nah, bruh, you are Atlantic– multiply.
The trend is offensive and stupid, but it also betrays a truth: Online life is extreme, and the result is a lot of boredom.
As with any trend, but especially in the depths of YouTube, Reddit, 4chan, Discord, Kik, or any other place online, maxxing is overrated. Not many people say any of this—at least not in large numbers. Instead, they consume protein, get pregnant, and even read books.
But an idea can become potent through its rapid depiction in culture—including in articles such as this one, which maximizes maxxing even as it attempts to minimize it, somewhat. Online, our buzzword ticks—“Do it better,” figuratively literally“I can’t”/“I’m dead,” “THIS”—it can sound crazy. Information about madness can help make it real.
Writing hours New York TimesNitsuh Abebe he argues that – multiply as a suffix is the beloved child of two cursed parents: the idea of improving resources, which he associates with video games, and the incel culture, where he finds the origin of looks maxxing especially.
These two natures—sports and raunchy culture—make maxxing seem perverted and out of bounds. Critic-maxxers hope Clavicular is, like my colleague Will Gottsegen to put itcuriosity—in other words, curiosity. But a freak that can be dangerous, because his words and actions can spread. Perhaps they already have: Gottsegen’s concerns, for example, were confirmed by the hateful, violent and anti-Semitic abuse he received from Clavicular acolytes after requesting an interview with lookmaxxer in chief.
This version of the internet extremist story is comforting. A bad actor becomes violent online with other former bad actors, who then spread their particular gospel of evil, online.
Radicalization really works this way, sometimes. Colleen LaRoseaka Jihad Jane, she delved into online jihadist recruitment forums, joined an al-Qaeda cell in Ireland, and became embroiled in an assassination plot. Anwar al-AwlakiAn American propagandist for al-Qaeda, spread Islamic extremism among the English-speaking Internet world. Dylan Paa White supremacist messages imported from the site were picked up by search engines, and later carried out the 2015 shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Tamerlan Tsarnaevone of the Boston Marathon attackers, was inspired by YouTube. That’s what they were Brenton Tarrantwho killed 51 people at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019 after taking far-right ideologies from online forums such as 4chan, and Jake Angeli, “QAnon Shaman” known for his shirtless, hooded appearance during the January 6, 2021, attack on the White House.
As sad as it is, these well-known extremists offer comfort to those who want principles, because they represent the perversity of principles, even as they also threaten to erode those principles. So are the categories of soft radicalism not linked to specific headings: “grind” hard work, manosphere Red pill, disinformation-added Facebook seniorsor “HODL” investment fraudsters. Life online seems to be well divided, and indeed divided, into weirdos on the one hand and, on the other, sane people like yourself.
It’s not. Online life has extremes in depth and breadth. The gravity of internet life, even in normal situations, pushes us to extremes on any topic—and every topic. No idea, belief, purchase, product, or event can be normal or innocent. Everything must be done with integrity, and those standards must be done publicly, online.
When an influencer announces that they’ve been “struck” by a makeup palette, a bowl of slop, or a low-priced dress from the outside, their wordmark spreads. Suddenly ordinary people are also “handled” by the purists. They discover peptides that “can’t live without.” Little enthusiasm doesn’t travel online. Severity does. Code, and the economics that support it, first add to the discourse that deepens the emotions that govern it. When speech spreads, emotion follows. People really come to believe that they can not live without certain peptides or palettes.
Over time, everything changes or becomes meaningless. Moderate positions can be held, but only in ordinary life does one lead calmly and quietly offline—to the extent that offline living is possible again.
Fans are not easy anymore like a television show, movie, comic book, author, quick service restaurant, or any other cultural product. Instead, their enjoyment has been elevated to a level that was once reserved for unrestrained, extreme fanaticism, such as Trekkies and Beanie Baby collectors. Fans feel the need to defend the true meaning of the work. They attack deviations from the accepted “norm”. They stop interpreting but instead draw lines in the sand. For every cultural beauty, identity is intertwined with something beautiful, turning ordinary people who used to live extraordinary lives into purveyors of Steak ‘n Shake, Harry Potter righteous, or pot-cleaning radicals.
On Facebook or Nextdoor, a missing package can never represent bad luck or a misunderstanding; it must instead be urban decay or racist encroachment. A large car heard for miles or miles away represents social destruction. A dog released on a leash becomes a sign of moral decay. Comments made abroad suggest a secret evil that must be removed. Platforms pay increase for attention, and viewers also often respond. And so everyday life is over-interpreted, as local councils become a metaphorical battlefield.
You no longer buy or use or encounter products, services, or events, but persevere with your full self: I am a Moleskine journalist; I am a Stanley cup traveler; I am a barefoot runner. Just some advice or thoughts –check email only after noon; never do 10 reps of crunches– strengthened into absolutism or extinction.
The speed, immediacy, and stability of online life exacerbate extremism because posting, replying, and generally participating in conversation is its own characteristic to overshadow everything else, increasing the Internet to dominate everything else. Loving became correction, watching became protection, asking turned into accusation, trying to commit to improvement, discovering distortions in perception.
Maxxing advertises this situation honestly. Finally, we can remove the pretense that online life is satisfying, balanced or healthy. The entire internet is a machine of extremist thoughts, beliefs and actions. Maxxing may be the end of it—the final triumph of extremism of any kind and form. But online misconduct is always confused. Eventually, and probably soon, the max-maxxers will look sober in hindsight.
