Looksmaxxing promises young men confidence and discipline, but behind the glow-ups is a culture that believes how you look determines your value. (Image: Puhhha)

By Elena Stefanovic | @elenarandelovic

Content Advice: This story discusses body image.

For Atlan, it all began a few years ago during high school. While scrolling social media, he came across a video where he first encountered “looksmaxxing”, and his deep dive into the trend led him to create his own TikTok page. The account is dedicated to maximising his appearance and motivating others to do the same. 

According to looksmaxxing.com, “looksmaxxing is the process of optimizing your physical appearance through strategies like skincare, grooming, fitness, and styling.” But what do these words really mean, and are they actually an accurate representation of this growing subculture? 

“I remember there being this massive hype around models like Francesco Lachowski and Jordan Barrett,” says Atlan, who is referred to by his TikTok handle. 

“Social media is definitely the go-to.

“I’d go on this website, looksmaxx.org, I had an account on there in early 2024 when I was new to it. I’d look there for advice … most of it is just bullshit. The only way you can really get advice is by scrolling TikTok, and then just filtering out the bullshit as much as possible.”

Atlan practises looksmaxxing (Image: Atlan).

The ability to tell what content may help and what might cause harm isn’t so easy for many in this community, and the deeper you go into these spaces, the more obvious this difficulty becomes. 

Forums and Discord servers developed their own internal language, where terms like “mogging”, “ascending”, and “hunter eyes” are used as terms for perceived attractiveness hierarchies. More extreme corners push practices such as “bone smashing”, a trend encouraging users to strike parts of their face in the belief it would physically alter their appearance over time. 

Alongside forums, looksmaxxing culture increasingly spread to video-roulette spaces where appearance becomes a direct competition. Apps such as Omoggle allow strangers to compete in “mog-offs”, where users compare facial structure and attractiveness through livestream-style matchups. The platform uses facial recognition technology to analyse competitors before assigning scores based on facial proportions and perceived attractiveness.  

The language used across these apps reflects the same hierarchy-driven culture that dominates looksmaxxing forums. Omoggle’s ranking system is built on a “perceived sexual market value” (PSL) scale — a term originating from incel forums where men categorised attractiveness through rigid social tiers. The top of the pyramid is “chads”, the standard ideal masculine man, while the bottom is “sub3s”, the lowest tier of attractiveness according to forum users.

What might have once been advice on self-improvement has evolved. Across social media platforms, young men post photos of themselves asking strangers to rate them, analyse them, or identify perceived flaws. Some ask whether they are “genetically cooked”. Others ask what surgeries, exercises or routines they should follow to “ascend”. Even content that is completely unrelated to looksmaxxing becomes a space for unwarranted advice or criticism on appearance.

Where is the line between self-improvement and self-harm? When the pursuit of becoming “better” becomes an endless cycle of comparison, criticism and unattainable standards, that distinction becomes increasingly blurred. 

Screenshots sourced from TikTok comments section. (Credit: @makkingmuscle)

Atlan insists influencers like Clavicular do not represent most people inside the community. However, the twenty-year-old Twitch streamer has become one of looksmaxxing’s most recognisable figures, building an audience by ranking faces and promoting techniques like “bone smashing” and crystal methamphetamine to suppress appetite. His prominence reflects a broader culture that researchers say promotes rigid genetic hierarchies and appearance-based rankings that tie attractiveness to social value and success. Despite Atlan’s distinction, Clavicular’s name continues to circulate across looksmaxxing spaces as a benchmark and a symbol of the culture. 

According to Srdjan Vajdic, a clinical psychologist with a background in body dysmorphia research, these online environments often create a strong sense of identity and belonging, making it harder for young men to recognise the harm they incur. 

Srdjan Vajdic in his consulting rooms. (Image: Elena Stefanovic)

 “It makes people feel like they’re a part of something greater; therefore, they are valuable,” he says.

With looksmaxxing, appearance standards shift from something selective and varied depending on each individual to a collective reinforcement of a shared ideal and social system. This mentality is increasingly bleeding into mainstream social media in recent months. 

 Atlan is beginning to recognise this.

 “I think that when I look at someone now … I think, ‘Oh their nose is pompous’, their chin is recessed’,” he says, 

“And then I think to myself, ‘I sound like a massive dickhead’.”

Adelaide University researcher in social media and body image John Mingoia says social media has changed how appearance ideals are absorbed and reinforced.

“You have constant comparisons now because of social media,” he says.

“You don’t have to wait to see an actor or actress in a magazine anymore; it’s around us 24/7. This has made it very tangible to see what’s hot and what’s not.”

The academic explains appearance feedback was once mostly reliant on social engagement but has now become immediate and measurable online.

“Previously you had to rely on your engagement in a group,” he says. 

Rather than having a clear measure of approval, people previously had to gauge what others thought through their interactions. 

“Now it’s like, that has this many likes, that has this many comments, so it creates a tangible number next to appearance, which has amplified it,” Mingoia says.

“You upload a photo and, one way or another, directly or indirectly, you are perceiving feedback on your appearance.”

Clinical psychologist and Adelaide University researcher Professor Gemma Sharp says appearance feedback on social media intensifies comparison. 

“These behaviours are often reinforced by short-term rewards, such as feeling in control, reducing anxiety, or gaining social validation,” she says. 

“Over time, these reinforcing cycles can make the behaviours feel difficult to stop.”

Sharp says online appearance cultures can become concerning when behaviours stop being flexible and begin interfering with daily life or emotional wellbeing.

A 2025 study led by Dalhousie University researchers found that looksmaxxing forums subjected users to intense scrutiny. Researchers argued that, despite being framed as self-improvement, these practices could severely undermine the health and self-worth of users. 

Atlan says the appearance-enhancing online subculture has also changed rapidly since he entered the space.

 “The whole perspective of looksmaxxing has changed,” he says. 

“Earlier the point was you shouldn’t judge someone if they look bad … just help them improve. Plus, you kind of sympathise with the fact that in public they get judged. Whereas now it’s just a lot of people hating in general.”

This attitude is becoming increasingly present in the looksmaxxing community. Humiliation, resentment, and hyper-masculinity are recurrently enforced. Across TikTok and Instagram, young men describe imagining scenarios where their girlfriends or wives leave them for more attractive men — “chads” — to trigger adrenaline before workouts or to motivate self-improvement.

Under videos of influencers and fitness creators, comments are filled with young men criticising themselves and others in extreme ways, reducing their self-worth to their genetics.

Adelaide University associate professor Pam Papadelos says many of these communities are shaped by frustration around status, attractiveness and perceived access to power.

Associate Professor Pam Papadelos in her office. (Image: Elena Stefanovic) 

“These are men who actually struggle to access any kind of power, any connection to the patriarchy, men who are not able to receive success in a system in which they believe they should be successful,” she says.

Papadelos believes this often feeds into entitlement-based thinking around relationships and status.

“They believe they have the right to relationships, access to women’s bodies, right to leadership roles, they think it’s in their right, rather than something that needs to be earnt,” Papadelos says.

She says looksmaxxing communities frequently overlap with incel ideology, where attractiveness becomes tied to resentment and social hierarchy. 

“Looksmaxxers often fall into the incel group. These are generally young men that feel they have no access to the hegemonic model, and they envy and hate those who do,” she says.

“In their minds, they perceive that these men have access to everything. For them, this access comes down to looks, and because of their own looks, they don’t have this access.”

To better understand how online appearance culture is shaping young men, an anonymous Instagram survey was distributed to men aged 18 to 25 exploring male body image, social media use and looksmaxxing.

Graph: Elena Stefanovic (results shown in percentages).

The responses revealed young men believe looksmaxxing is both motivation and emotional punishment. One respondent describes online fitness spaces as increasingly tied to misogyny and resentment, arguing many creators profit from insecurity and polarising behaviour.

Another says the culture can quickly become harmful for younger boys already struggling with confidence.

“It mostly has a negative impact on young teenage boys who are already insecure in that period,” the anonymous respondent writes. 

“Because they don’t like how they look, they project their insecurities to other people.”

Others defend looksmaxxing as healthy when separated from obsession and comparison.

“Looksmaxxing is completely fine when it is done in a healthy way,” another respondent writes. 

“Working on yourself is the goal, not being depressed because your jawline isn’t perfect.”

The tension between self-improvement and self-harm runs throughout the culture itself. Advice on topics such as skincare and fitness is increasingly combined with obsessive ranking systems and extreme diet routines. In one scroll, users are encouraged to improve themselves. In the next, they are told they are genetically inferior.

This overlap is part of what makes the culture difficult to define. For some young men, it has given them motivation to exercise, dress better, build confidence and pursue physical perfection.

Exercise physiology researcher Ben Singh says exercise itself is not the problem, but rather the way it is increasingly framed online through aesthetics and transformation. Social media presents a highly curated version of fitness and health, often disconnected from reality.

“Young people are often seeing edited images, carefully selected videos, extreme routines, and people whose bodies may reflect genetics, professional support, lighting, posing, filters, or even performance-enhancing substances,” he says.

Research from the Butterfly Foundation suggests body dissatisfaction is widespread among young Australians, with over half reporting unhappiness with their appearance. Many link this to the rising levels of social media comparison and pressure around how they look.

Insecurities and beauty standards have always existed in society, but looksmaxxing makes this judgment more visible, immediate and often more brutal. It creates a space where insecurity is no longer private or temporary but assessed through a public and almost analytical lens.

For most of the young men in these forums and TikTok pages, looksmaxxing still presents itself as honest motivation. Although Atlan is critical of some newer behaviours associated with looksmaxxing, such as bone smashing, he continues to post TikTok videos promoting the ideology and his desire to maximise appearance. As a result, the boundary between self-improvement and self-harm becomes difficult to define, making it harder for Atlan and other young men to recognise the broader consequences of the culture they are participating in.

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