Exposing the Ugly Truth of Looksmaxxing | Clavicular

26:45You know, it's typically the reporter who started. Well, that's what I was going to say. Do you find that that, how often is that reciprocated, that kind of respect? You know, I watched you with Piers the other day and it's just like, I'm not a fan of his. Just like, just unnecessarily combative and judgy and everything else. Like, I'm just here to listen to what you say and, you know, people can make their judgments. That's fine. Well, it really just comes down to people's experiences in life and how much they value like forming a relationship, for example. And when I did Hannity the other day, and I know you did that.

27:20I was with him yesterday. He's great. He had nice things to say about you, by the way. Exactly. So I did Hannity and he was, you know, going to end the interview with a more controversial question. And I said to him, I was like, you know, Sean, we've had such a great interview. Like there's no point to, you know, put this, the stain on it. And he's like, absolutely. All right. Thanks for, thanks for coming on. Um, so, so Sean realized, you know, it's better to be in good graces, um, than to just try to go for some clippable moment. Um, but peers is the opposite, right? He's kind of made his career by being super antagonistic, um, and all up in people's faces and that's just his thing.

27:57Yeah. Do you like that to some extent? Like we all kind of, we can all like be like, ah, it's annoying and it sucks and whatever, but then you do put yourself in those positions. I mean that for myself too. Well, I just do so much media that like, whether it's a hit piece or not that I'm walking into, I really just don't care because I think I'm so sure of all my talking points that like, you know, even if you completely disagree with what I'm saying, like I'll go in there and, you know, kind of get into it with you, you know? What do you, like, what's your relationship with the hate portion of this that, you know, I'm not talking about the interviewer, but just like any general hate that you're getting online?

28:38The general hate comes from a lack of understanding of my actual beliefs because of out of context clips. I don't think there's ever been a scenario where someone's watched an entire podcast of mine start to finish and said, this guy's a lunatic. I hate this guy and he should be canceled. That just doesn't happen. That just happens where people clip me in the most ridiculous ways to making me look like an asshole. How do you think you'll change over the years? Because like 20, you can basically, even if you weren't doing all this stuff, you could basically eat whatever you want. You could still drink and do, basically, basically.

29:18I'm not saying it would be the exact thing that you're, the max part that you're going for, but obviously your biology will change. Everything will change. Trust me, 50, like it's a lot harder for me now to do that stuff, you know, and be as fast and all of those things. And I have to eat better now and all that. Like, how do you think your attitude around this will change as you get older and just certain biological things and, you know, father time will hit you one way or another? Yeah. So aging is a very brutal thing, but I mean, I would say it's kind of in the mid twenties where, you know, usually men come into their looks peak where their facial fat pads are perfectly redistributed and their collagen still hasn't started its downward trend.

29:58That typically starts said around 25, men lose about 1 % of their collagen every year. And a lot of men even before that start to deal with issues with hair loss. I'm not someone who's genetically predisposed and I take my hair loss medications. So I would say it would more so segue into just me trying to leverage all my other stats rather than me trying to leverage all these different youth indicators. And this is already something I do, right? While looks, maxing is my main thing and it's my claim to fame, I still say to people all the time, you got to be a well-rounded guy because if you're super good looking in this competitive 2026 dating market, there's going to be someone else who's good looking, rich and famous that you're competing with the same girl for.

30:45So if you're not coming in with a full package, you might as well not even try. How much of your time during the day when you're meeting somebody or you're literally looking across from somebody, are you like, well, that should be this way, or this guy should do this? Or like literally right now, are you like, well, his jaw should be a little more like this, or whatever else? Like, it's got to be some portion where you're looking at people going, you can just see all these different things that you would change if you could, or would point them to changing. Well, so that's not something that's exclusive to me as an individual.

31:17No, for sure. For sure. So every single person looks at a face and subconsciously is going to either treat them good or bad. And that's called the halo effect, right? The difference between my situation and a normal person is I can identify exactly why a face is good looking or not, right? But that's still a thought process, but it's more so a subconscious one. Am I consciously going through someone's facial ratios in my head. No, it's more so if I'm prompted to do so. But that's kind of how I go through it. Right. So I'm going to regret this, but so you're looking at me right now, again, 50 years old, I'm sitting right across from you, taking good care of myself, doing my thing, microneedle every now and again, sauna, blah, blah, blah.

32:05What are you seeing? You can be as honest as you want. I'm really curious. You've got a bit high of a mandibular plane. So you're - Don't even know what that is. So you're gonna have to talk me through this. Sort of like the plane that your lower mandible is this bone right here that it follows. It's a little bit too downward grown and your gonians. So this part right here are inward facing rather than outward giving you that super square jaw shape. So that's a bit of reducing your harmony a little bit, but it's not too significant. And so what would you say to a 50-year-old with those issues?

32:49I'm really curious here. Yeah, like what would be the solve for that? What I say to... And maybe that's not age-dependent. Well, it's a little bit more nuanced to that, because what I say to someone who's extremely successful like yourself, and who's super well-rounded in all these other categories, hey, you need to get jaw angle implants immediately or your life's over. No, that'd be... I don't have that kind of time, man. Yeah, right. No, exactly. So that'd be completely ridiculous. But what I say to someone who's got all these issues, but has no other statistic of theirs to leverage, it starts to make a little bit more sense.

33:29So that's why these general recommendations don't work. Yeah. So that's kind of interesting. So, okay. So you really do want it to fit into a wider bucket of what your life is that it should. So if you're looking at somebody and you're like, ah, I can, all right, this thing's this way. I could, whatever, but you're successful. You have a family. You're like, you're living a good life. Like then you're able to kind of move that around in a, in a functional way. That's not something I've ever heard you say before, or at least that's come across like my phone before. And I think that's, I think that's actually pretty interesting.

34:01Yeah, but it is actually interesting. Yeah. Well, not internet interestingly. Yeah, it's not interesting. So like, what is interesting on the internet is like, you know, math, you know what I mean? So it's like, it kind of like diminishes the quality of what I'm talking about and the brand a little bit, just because like people have a low attention span and don't want to watch me in a serious context. But yeah, absolutely. It'd be ridiculous to say looks are the only thing that matter and all these other things, like you shouldn't even acknowledge them or try to be a more charismatic person, to be more interesting, you know, fuck all that.

34:37Like that would just be totally ridiculous. Do you work on those other things too? Of course. Of course. I try to be as well-rounded in every single category as possible. Simply what I'm saying is looks are going to be the easiest thing to make a marginal and life-changing improvement on, you know? How often do you find that when someone does the looks maxing part, that then they're able to fix whatever like other insecurities they have or whatever social stuff they have, or it feels like everyone's autistic these days and like, like all that kind of stuff that it actually, okay, they deal with the first part.

35:11And then do you usually see that it like pretty quickly starts solving some of the other stuff? And the reason for that is, is you get negative reinforcement if you're not good looking. And every single thing that you do, people are going to react completely differently to if someone good looking were to do it. Every joke you tell might be received a lot better by your attractive counterpart. And you might think, hey, wow, I'm not funny. I'm just a piece of shit. I'm never going to talk again. But if you look, Max, and then you start to go out and test all these different things, your results are going to be a lot better and that's going to be positive reinforcement that's going to be a lot more motivational to you.

35:55Let's stick with that for a sec. So wait, tell me again. So if you do the Luxmax part first, then what were the two other phases that you mentioned? Those are just two of many things. Yeah. So let's walk through all that. If you were just guiding somebody that's getting into this, they want to be well-rounded. I hear you on that Lux is not everything. It's just a part of the thing. So guide me on that walk. Yeah, so looks maxing is just going to allow you to improve a lot quicker in all these other metrics. So when you go into a job for an interview, it's important that you're extremely presentable, right?

36:29That's not something that's really controversial. Do you think that's a weird thing related to your generation? No. No, because there's research that dates back quite a bit on this, that less qualified, better looking interview applicants were getting job positions over their more qualified on paper counterparts. So this is not like a new phenomenon. Yeah, oh, I didn't mean that that was, I meant that like just not taking care of yourself, like there was like a COVID generation that was just like trapped in their room, like stuck on the internet, like rotting basically. So they have to learn what is fairly obvious, which is that if you're going in for an interview, you know, look right and everything else.

37:08Correct, yeah. And unfortunately, my generation has a pretty horrendous understanding of fashion. And there's a lot of bullshit like these baggy clothes and branded. So that's the one thing that I've always tried to tell people is you look ridiculous wearing a big Supreme shirt. That's not, you know. There's somebody in this studio that I'm looking at who's going to be really upset after this interview. we got a baggy pants guy here but he's he's doing the rest of the stuff we're working on the pants maybe you could talk to him after yeah so all that's a little bit silly and it another trend is to um speak with improper grammar and you know to try to be cool and i don't like that either so just being a respectable and super presentable person um like that's not something that's you you have to looks max first to do so.

38:07So you could do all these things at the same time and improve in all these categories. I'm just saying it's easier once the looks kind of comes in. And about 70 % of what you're able to accomplish in looks maxing comes from getting to that super low and chiseled body fat percentage. So that's the most important thing is to lean max pretty hard, improve that facial contrast, and then you're a good percentage of the way there. Right. So what percentage body fat are you or would you want? So 10 to 12, is that age dependent? That's pretty general, I would say. Right now I'm probably around 12.5 to 13 myself.

38:51So I've got a little bit of work to do. And do you ever have a day or a weekend where you like put this stuff aside and you're like, yeah, I'm going to have burger and fries and eat some pizza and do all the other stuff. Well, yeah. I mean, I eat burgers all the time, but once again, it comes down to just the total caloric intake for the day and the total macronutrients. Whether you get your protein from a Burger King burger or a grass-fed steak, it's not going to have that much of an impact in the short term. What do you make of the fame component of all of this? Did you want it? Do you like it?

39:28Do you resent some of it? I mean, I like to be able to address a bigger audience when I do this kind of stuff. As for the fame, it can be a little bit overstimulating. Like, for example, last night, I tried to walk around this area that's pretty college dense with my main demographic and just people swarming and having to have constant security when you do stuff like that. It's definitely different. Like you can't just be like a normal. I assume most of it on the street is love though, right? Like it's not. Yeah, no, but, but regardless if it's, if I'm trying to like, you know, go out with a girl to go get dinner or something, the fact that I have to have like, you know, a security guard, like sitting right there and like, um, I can't go anywhere by myself.

40:18Uh, it could get a little bit frustrating sometimes, or it's just like a difficult uh you know reality to face but yeah no it's it's absolutely love but it's really just about like crowd control of like you know drunk kids wanting to take a picture so bad that they're like you know storming over right you know how are you monetizing all of this like like this is obviously your job you don't have you know i assume you don't have like a side gig while you're doing this at this point like it's all one thing basically um yeah so i i um i do a little bit of of of gambling i um so similar to the kelsey thing that you have there um i stream on kick which has like a pay per hour basis and a couple other things right i recently launched um an app where you scan your face and it tells you actually about all these facial ratios um and and what harmony percentage you have.

41:18Right. And is that subscription or? Yeah. So you could put, you know, any of your friends in there, any celebrities, and it'll measure out like their mid face ratio, for example, or their total facial width to height ratio. So that's another area that I started monetizing. I launched that yesterday. And have you heard, have you heard stories of where this has just gone sideways, where like, you know, somebody that you're working with, or someone that's watching you is doing these things and it just, for whatever reason, they're either not doing it right or they're misprescribing things or probably think of a hundred ways that this could kind of go wrong, that they just, you know, it just completely goes the wrong way?

41:59I haven't seen many cases of that recently, but like a while ago, people used to be a lot more extreme on these forums to where I've seen a guy, self-performed gyno removal surgery. So he surgically removed the glandular tissue in his nipples. And it was like pretty brutal. I saw like a lot of like blood. I've seen people try to self-install orthodontic appliances. But that's all just ridiculous. I don't think that there's any thought in people's mind that this is something that I have to deal with or I've pushed for. I've always said, you know, medical professionals all day get everything overseen by doctors.

42:48So those are just like, you know, the crazies. And I don't think that that's something that's necessarily my fault. Yeah, I'm not blaming you. Do you think that just comes with the territory? Like you're going to be in these boards and or wherever these communities are, discords or whatever, and it's just going to be like, you're going to get kind of the best of the best. And then you're going to get a lot of a lot of people actually have issues like serious issues right yeah and it'd be the same thing as like extreme extremists exist all over the place um for example like you know someone on the left giving their talking points not to get too into politics um and criticizing like you know charlie kirk for his talking points i don't think they're responsible for um what that individual chose to went out and do.

43:37You know, I don't really think that's fair to say. I think people are crazy all over the place. Do you care about politics at all? Like, does it matter to you in any way? We don't have to do like a deep political dive, but like, no, it doesn't, you don't care about it. I'm intentionally ignorant. Yeah. Is that the key? Yeah. Um, and I, I made a post last night about, you know, how you could, uh, leverage politics to be more successful with your boss. It was kind of just like a meme, like shitpost that I did about how just like, you know, sitting back and listening to other people's political opinions and then kind of like adapting and like, you know, aligning yourself with those could allow you to, you know, have a better connection with someone and build that rapport with your employer.

44:28so where the next time you ask for a raise, you're a lot more likely to get it. I think that's how politics should be used if you're actually being intelligent and honest with yourself. That's going to give you a lot more benefit than scrolling on X and watching media all the time. Are you ever able to put some of this down? I don't mean like the diet part, but you could see how eventually this could all become a little Machiavellian in a sense. like that you'd be always, everyone that you're sitting across, you'd be thinking about how you can either ultimately end up manipulating them or manipulating yourself, or they'd be thinking, oh, he's just trying to get ahead or something like that.

45:06Are you able to just like put some of this down every now and again and just like be? Just all of the thoughts around all of this, that everything is sort of about attaining something. And I don't mean that necessarily in a bad way, but that you could just kind of put it aside every now and again and be. I wouldn't necessarily say it's Machiavellian, but it's more so extreme individualism. And I'm not really keeping my cards close when I recommend these things. I've always talked about the fact that I'm not so much doing this whole streaming thing as a hobby of mine or because I like it. I'm doing it to make money.

45:49so uh like that's not really how i would say um but am i able to put it aside and like you know go out to the bars and have a drink when i know alcohol is extremely neurotoxic it inhibits my growth pathways in the gym uh yeah of course so you are able to yeah yeah what do you want to what do you think you want to be doing in 10 years if it's not and with the way you kind of framed that just then was like, ah, the streaming is just kind of something I'm doing right now. How, how, how, how much time a day are you streaming usually? Uh, usually every day for a few hours. And it's just like out and about doing your thing out and about.

46:29And I recently started doing more stuff at my house. Um, you know, going and doing advice, uh, with viewers where I dragged them into the the stream or whatever, sort of like how, um, Kevin Samuels did the image consulting, but that was more so like funny in my opinion, rather than like trying to be overly serious. Um, so it's not like me just trying to like shit on people. It's me just trying to, uh, give some more specific advice. Cause I don't think looks maxing is something that's, that's really, uh, generic at all besides a few basic principles. Right. So 10 years, are you, are you still streaming?

47:08I couldn't even tell you what I'm doing 10 days from now, to be honest. Yeah. Is that right? Like you don't, so you don't have like a grand plan here or like when you're doing, like it was just, I think literally like two days ago, my guys were like, oh, Cliffhick, he was in town. Like, let's do it. Like, are you just kind of bouncing around every day? Just trying to figure out what's what? Yeah. There might be a grand plan in my head, but it's not something that I'm going to tell you. Fair. That's fair. Who do you look up to? Like who has inspired you or makes you want to be better or has influenced you while you're doing this?

47:49I would say that this is kind of just like a new thing entirely. So there's really no influence behind it. I think I'm just kind of being myself. But I mean generally in life, not even about looks maxing per se like is there anyone that like you look to that you're like oh that's like the type of person i would want to be or something like that um i i wouldn't because i think that's just kind of like attaches you to everything they've done for example if you uh you know, say, Jeff, you're inspired by Jeff Bezos and how he was able to get so successful. I think that just opens you up to people saying, oh, you're inspired by the fact that he underpays his workers, in their opinion.

48:41So that's why I just wouldn't address that. All right. Is there anything else that you think is like completely misunderstood about what you do that we didn't hit on here? um i would say that the main thing is that i'm lux maxing from a place of insecurity when it's just purely objective and research oriented that's like the main thing that i would want to clarify that almost in some sense that almost seems like impossible to get over like maybe not for you personally but just like the world is always going to have a certain version of that uh-huh because um you know i'm someone who's neurodivergent so i don't really have the same thinking as a normie and NT guy.

49:22So they would never really be able to understand that. What are some of the other phrases I'm supposed to know that I've aged out of? So my favorite... Just lay it on. Lay it on. The ones that people like. Yeah. You know, I told this to one of my friends. He thinks it's the greatest thing ever is an IOI versus an IOD. That's how I like to walk around the world, you know, identifying these. an IOI is an indication of interest. So if a girl looks at you and gives you a smile or waves at you or any indication like that, that's a good thing. That's what you want. But an IOD is an indication of disinterest.

50:00That means disengage. Do not go talk to that girl. It's a waste of your time. So I've kind of saved a lot of people embarrassment by like having them be pretty conscious of that, that if a girl gives you an IOD before you even go talk to her, there's no point of even going and doing an approach because it's going to hurt your ego. It's going to be negative reinforcement. So if you only go up to girls who give you that IOI first, your success rate is going to skyrocket. Do you think most guys are completely crippled by this just because of the nature of the internet and that everyone's doing everything online first and they literally just don't know how to approach people and sit across from someone and talk to Yeah.

50:43I mean, Instagram is the biggest dating app. More people are meeting online now than ever. And that's how a lot of relationships start. It's not uncommon that people are meeting girls on Tinder and getting married. um so those in-person uh initial meets and cold approaching it's very rare nowadays um so like and that's really brutal because it sort of globalizes dating to where you're not just competing with people in your immediate proximity you're competing with people all over the globe and sometimes a famous soccer player is literally stealing your wife like we saw the other day. Wait, what was that?

51:21What was that? I think I missed that one. So this guy had been with this girl for five years. I believe they were recently engaged. And then the soccer player, I don't know his name. I don't know anything about sports, sends her a message. And just like that, it's over. Right. Also something about just like atomizing all of it, that you would know everything about the girl or the guy right before you've even met them just seems just seems depressing, honestly. Yeah, I would say that I'm not the biggest fan of online dating, but it'd be more preferred to meet people in person, have that initial conversation.

52:02But it's not something that you should change or that you can change, so you might as well adapt, right? That's pretty much your motto, I sense. Yes. You can't change all this stuff. You may as well figure out a way to work with it. Correct, yeah. So like, um, hypergamy and like extreme sexual degeneracy that we see in the modern dating market, like that's not something that I sit there cherishing. Um, I don't think that, you know, it's necessarily like super cool to, to go around, like, you know, having as many one night stands as possible, but that's like just how the world is, uh, unfortunately.

52:43And it's not something that I personally could change if I went out there and made it my entire motto to say, go get married at an early age. It's just not going to happen. Is that part of what you think the controversy around you is? Is that you're trying to tell people to optimize themselves? People can judge it accordingly. And then the counter of that is just the trad thing that is just telling people this very strict thing to do. Yeah, because it's cope and it's unrealistic. So I'm super real about what is actually possible and what the influence I have can do. So that's why I think I've been so popular.

53:23Give me a couple more phrases before we wrap. So we already went over jester. So mogging is another one. It comes from AMOG, Alpha Male, the group. So it would be usually on forums, like people would take a picture of one less good-looking individual and one taller, better-looking facially guy and say, like, oh, this is a mog, whatever. Or you could money mog someone. um like you know for example you know jeff bezos versus myself he money mocks me brutally you don't have that yet i know i don't know not quite um but yes so these are all just kind of funny terms um that people have picked up on and obviously maxing i would say is the biggest one to where you're literally seeing billboards now from lawyers saying law max yeah yeah like i saw that the other day.

54:17And I'm like, wow, like I really did this. Um, so is that weird? Is that weird? Like, I'll see that every now and again, a phrase that I've said five years ago, suddenly like weirdly enters culture or something. Not really. You're like, you just, uh, cause it's just like, I think about it, like how good the words are and how it's like what we needed. And obviously people are going to feel the same way. Yeah. What was the one you guys told me before about the angling? What was the angling? Oh, talk to me about vantage points. Yeah, so I used to do this thing where I would stuff my boots with a few inches of lifts.

54:54But you're already tall, right? You're 6 '2". I got papers in front of me. It says you're 6 '2". Yeah, right. But before I was super famous and a lot more financially well off, I was just a normie. I was just a guy working in a restaurant. So I had to compete in some other regard by maxing out and becoming 99th percentile height. So that was my way of beating the odds and staying competitive. And what happens, obviously, is when you go home and you have to take off these shoes, it's like, whoa, what's going on here? Right. So if I were to do this interview and you had a rule in your studio where people had to take off their shoes, what I could potentially do is send one of my staff the prior day to make up a red herring that they have to go over the itinerary and go over the questions.

55:53and they would have conveniently laid down maybe like a book there by that desk, another item there, and then you're creating a pathway all the way to here so that you don't perceive the difference because I'm stepping on these things very conveniently. Did you guys throw me under the bus? Is he mogging me right now because of a book somewhere? What the hell is going on here? So there's no change in perceived height. Right. That's what it is. All right. Give me one more either phrase or concept that we can end on.

56:30Well, adding cell to the end of words is a pretty popular one.

56:41I tweeted out the other night how I was looking for more security. I posted that on X I said because of people who are all picture selling that's just like forum lingo like and you know it used to be used to describe like why someone is celibate like someone might be a height sell or like a personality sell but I'll just use it like ironically just as a suffix so you're a picture sell like you don't want to take any more pictures or did I completely butcher that I think I got it yeah so essentially just it would just be like why someone is a celibate you know and you put that at the end I think we did it I've enjoyed this I'm glad to kind of get to see a different side of this whole kind of you know everyone becomes kind of an avatar not a human I appreciate the really kind interview thanks man