Decline porn explained, and why Clavicular is misunderstood

0:00Okay, Matt, we have been chatting for ages about doing a podcast because I guess we investigate and analyze different bits of the social media world that kind of complement each other. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I've followed your work for a long time. You're the official, what's your job title? I'm the social media investigations correspondent, which basically means I look into the real world consequences of stuff like conspiracy theories and trolling and algorithms and all that kind of thing. So you really are the expert on this. No, and as are you, as are you. Well, I'm a freelance investigative reporter.

0:29I do cover a lot of the same stuff as you. I also cover the manosphere, crypto, internet culture, all the kind of dark corners of the internet. And the purpose of this podcast Top Comment is essentially for us to talk about, analyse, investigate what is popping up on your social media feed, which is basically how we're all experiencing the world right now. Exactly. And also how and why the things you're seeing on your phone are there. This week, episode one, we are going to be chatting about two stories. The first one is this thing, decline porn, which is essentially when people on social media are making cities look not actually as they are, often using things like AI.

1:06And the second thing we're going to talk about is clavicular, which I think the media is misunderstanding because they're not asking why and how did this person become famous so quickly and they're not following the money.

1:27So the first time I heard the phrase decline porn, you actually said that to me, but I hadn't realized I'd witnessed some decline porn being made. I saw this guy, Kurt Kaz, and he was a YouTuber filming a protest that I was covering. He had security around him. He was trying to rile up the crowd. When I later saw what he was doing, I realized it was decline porn. Yeah, and this, I mean, the word itself is so interesting, because decline, obviously, as in presenting a city, often metropolitan, quite liberal cities, as being in decline, that they're like in a bad way, maybe they're overrun with crime, or there's lots of immigration, or some other political point that's being made.

2:06And that's not to say, by the way, that cities don't have crime or problems with immigration, all of those things. But what we're talking about here is when people are distorting reality. And I guess that's kind of where like, the porn bit comes in. And the idea that you're kind of sharing this stuff in a way that feels quite sort of provocative and to get a kind of reaction or to make a political point. And it's appealing to something base inside you when you're watching it. So I read that YouGov did a poll that said that 61 % of Britons now see London as unsafe, which is up from 39 % in 2014.

2:35But just a third of Londoners agree with that. And the vast majority, 81%, say that their local area in London is safe. what's interesting is that crime has gone down but london has found itself kind of increasingly a target for this kind of content and i guess it's not just london as well like there's loads of us cities aren't there like places like san francisco or chicago or even new york where people will be posting content i guess in some cases showing real examples of homelessness or crime or people taking drugs but that perhaps omits the wider context and then there's something that's much more manipulated, perhaps as a way of describing it, where people are actually using AI or other technology to change the reality that's in front of us.

3:18Exactly. And so we have this perception, especially in the US and outside of London and other cities like this, that they're unsafe and that crime's really bad, which is completely, does not match with reality or the local residents of those cities' own perception of their city. So where is it coming from? And yes, it's coming from this decline in porn. One of the best examples of decline porn is this new trend of YouTube auditors. That guy, Kurt Kaz, I think fits this category. There go the police and the drug dealers are right there in London. The last time I was here was about 10 years ago.

3:52And it's changed to say the least. I looked at the video he made about London afterwards. And in the video, it's called Avoid This Place in London. He basically braves the streets of Croydon for this video. And there's a scene where a smiling black man cycles over to him. And in the thumbnail, he's put a balaclava with AI on that man's face. But then in the video, he's not wearing the balaclava. So he's making it seem odd. And he's changed the writing on all the shop fronts to be in Arabic. And I think the first clue about the intention behind this distortion of our perception about London is the fact that there's a racial undertone to it, right?

4:32the Arabic writing, the fact that he's put a balaclava on a black man, which reminds me also of the Kruhkern Gazette, which is a kind of AI parody account. And, you know, he has a famous video where you can see kind of Sadiq Khan, who's often a target of this decline. Because he's the mayor of London Muslim. Exactly. It's called Sadiq So Bleak.

4:57And he's used AI to kind of animate Sadiq Khan running past crumbling buildings with burning vehicles. And like his other videos, it kind of plays into this narrative about immigrants ruining the UK.

5:12Now, Channel 4 has unmasked this guy, who's previously been anonymous, as a man who was sentenced to five years in prison for racially motivated attacks on Jewish people. This is the guy who's making these hugely popular AI videos. What I've noticed about this kind of content is you've got a real mixture of different types of accounts that are creating it. You've got some YouTubers who are using their name and building a profile on that basis. Then you've got people who are using pseudonyms and are anonymous in some way. So they're getting the clicks and the views and the likes, but they're not kind of growing, I guess, a profile or a reputation, at least personally in quite the same way, which is really interesting.

5:52And I started to look into this specific genre of AI content about London that was being shared. these videos of people in Croydon, South London, young trackies. Is this like the Croydon AI water park video? Yeah, exactly. So water parks, zoos, water slides. And what was interesting, I mean, most of the people in the videos, they weren't white. They were often like masked up and you couldn't quite see them. They are what people would call road men. It's this kind of term that the creator, and we'll talk about them in a second, uses. And the videos themselves, some of them are obviously satirical.

6:24Like I saw, when I first saw them pop up on my feed, I thought, oh, this is kind of like funny. But then you start to notice this political undertone, or perhaps it's not even an undertone at all, just messaging, where you've got labels over the top saying, this is taxpayer funded. And then you go to the comments and you've got some people who think it's a joke. And then other people who are kind of saying, right, look, there's a problem with immigration. Wait, sorry, as in like the Croydon water park, which doesn't exist, could have been funded by our tax? Yeah, so it's like a water slide and you'll have people going down it and it's got a sticker on it and it says, taxpayer funded water slides in Croydon.

6:54Right. You've got some people who obviously know it's a joke and it's worth saying that. But there's this real murky area between sort of satire and then satire that can be misappropriated. And so I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on this one because one of the things we're going to be doing on this podcast is some original reporting, trying to find the people behind the accounts, trying to figure out why stuff's happening in the way it is. So I tracked down the account that has admitted to creating all of this content. They're called Radial B or D. They've had various accounts, some of which were taken down.

7:22And what was actually really interesting is the way that I found them was by just messaging loads of accounts that were showing these videos. And then loads of other creators were like, oh yeah, yeah, no, it's this account. This is the guy you need to speak to. And when I messaged him, I sort of thought, well, at the time I didn't know it was a him, but I thought, is this guy going to get back to me? Because often when people are generating this content, they don't always want to talk to you about it, particularly if they're using a pseudonym. And the only content on this TikTok profile was the Croydon AI stuff.

7:48Anyway, he agrees to speak to me. So I get him up on the phone. And essentially what he goes on to say is, look, I see this as sort of a form of almost like satirical art. But what was interesting is I challenged him on, but wait a second, it does look quite realistic. Even when they have the tiny AI generated label on them, you can see that people believe them. And this is what he had to say to me about why he makes them so convincing. No, the goal has always been to make it believable. If people saw it and they immediately knew it was fake, then they would just scroll that. That's unengaging, absurd content, isn't it?

8:21You know, the selling point of generative AI models is that they look real. And what's the goal of getting the views? I guess you could say it's an art form. And well, the views aren't a goal. The views are a measurement of how funny something is or engaged in something is. So he's claiming to you that this is art, but it fits into this narrative that non-white people are kind of ruining London and also that it potentially could be taxpayer funded and therefore the fault of the government. And he himself said he added that taxpayer funded label. Like he put that on. And when when I messaged him about his kind of political views, he said, well, basically, yeah, I am actually kind of engaged with politics, but I kind of think all politicians aren't very good and we should replace them with roadmen.

9:05That was that was his quote. But when I when I challenged him on that, on the way that his account, you know, there were either people responding to it who some of whom seem to actually believe it. Or there are people who were creating their own content inspired by him or downloading videos or reposting stuff on different platforms. And they were being very overtly political and essentially playing into this decline porn thing. E.g. London is a mess and here's why and believe this video. He basically just said, it's kind of not my problem. Like I made this stuff and ultimately my intention wasn't to divide people or to make them not like London or whatever.

9:42It's just an absurd idea I came up with. and this is what you said. Obviously, it's always been about incorporating stereotypes in it because that's just kind of a cornerstone of humour. So just originally it was, the first one I made was roadmen in Parliament. And I mean, when I was smaller, it was more the case. I could put stuff up and there would be like 50-year-olds and 60-year-olds in the comments raging and saying all this political stuff. But as it got bigger, people kind of knew the art style, I guess. So they just saw it as just humour. Where does this guy from? So you can hear that he's from the northwest of the UK.

10:24So he appears to be based in the UK. He wouldn't tell me who he was, his name, but he did say he was in his 20s. He also said he worked in, he described it as like gambling, kind of financial markets, that sort of stuff. I think what was particularly interesting is the way that he got into this was starting to use generative AI, but especially when it became more accessible. So he throws it back to October of last year when Sora, this generative AI tool, basically became a lot easier to use, more accessible, available. And he started to be able to make his own content. He has made other videos like this.

10:54So like Roadmen in Parliament, like a lot of his content is political. Yeah, exactly. And so he made that originally. Then he came up with all this water slide stuff. What's really struck me though is because I've been looking into the other accounts that have been sharing this content. And a lot of them are not from the UK at all. You know, people have told me they're in the States. There are accounts posting in Arabic. There are accounts that say they're in Brazil and other places like that. Even Radio BD said that they'd never been destroyed. And certainly these accounts have probably not been anywhere near South London.

11:22So why are there accounts all over the world reclipping and reposting AI content that makes it seem like South London is a kind of roadman water park hellhole? I think there's different reasons. I messaged loads of these accounts and quite a few did get back to me. One of the main reasons is engagement farming. Essentially that they see that these videos are getting a load of reaction. They trigger rage, you know, accusations of racism, what have you. And so they get the clicks and views. They get recommended by the algorithms. So quite a few of these pages either share AI generated content or meme content and basically say, I just wanted to get in on the trend.

11:56There are others that their intentions are slightly murkier. So a few accounts I've found are posing as almost like patriotic British news accounts. They're not a real outlet, but they're reposting this content under that guise. And I think one of the things that can be really hard with this stuff is you can kind of tell the accounts that are engagement farming that want views and likes. With the ones that are being politically divisive, that could just be personal ideology. That also could be more coordinated. It's often incredibly hard to prove that it's more coordinated. But ultimately, the impact of all of this, whether it began as a joke or it began seriously, is to kind of inflame tensions, distort perceptions of what somewhere is like and possibly to influence people's political opinions.

12:37And that point about the different accounts connecting with each other and sharing their stuff, that was something I actually put to Radio B because I kind of wanted to know who was behind his account. Was it just him? That's usually my caption. What, you've put taxpayer funded? Why did you put that on it? Yeah, we've put that on a few ones. It's just like an inside joke. Who's the we? The whole theme has been, well, I'd say we could it's a page, but no, it's just me. So, okay, it sounds like a bit of a slip of a tongue there because he did use the word we, and that kind of implies a little bit more coordination potentially is behind this.

13:13I think every single example of decline porn we've just done, whether it's YouTube auditors or the AI stuff, it always has either a racist, Islamophobic or anti-immigrant undertone. So whether these are some kind of coordinated movement, whether they're people engagement farming or a combination, the effect, I think, is always to increase the potency of anti-immigrant rhetoric. And it's worth saying that this is a lot bigger than London. I mean, this is a trend that's being applied across British cities, European cities, American cities. And I think why it matters is because it's completely legitimate for people to raise concerns about different cities and the places they live and everything else.

13:52But what is happening here is this distortion of our perception of reality. And it's difficult to overstate how much of an effect all of this is having on our politics all across the West. Similar claims about Paris, San Francisco. I mean, if you look at Minnesota, that whole ice crackdown arguably started from Nick Shirley, who's kind of a quasi YouTube auditor stroke investigative journalist, saying, look how ridden with Somalian crime this state is. And look what that arguably led to. This is a huge part of the rise of anti-immigrant rhetoric and racist rhetoric all across the West. Which is fed off by different political accounts, very high profile ones that will pick up and post this stuff.

14:33I mean, when we look at Elon Musk's posts on X, for example, he's someone who's often shared content that paints certain places as being in decline, not okay, particularly Europe, particularly the UK. when that is contrary to the evidence available to us. I think that one of the reasons that this is happening in the way that it is, is because the bar for entry when it comes to AI has just like completely changed. The ability of someone like, for example, Radial BD, who is able to sit at home wherever he is and generate this stuff. He said, you know, I can make 30 videos a day, basically, because now the technological advances when it comes to using something like Sora, it's just, it's like, great, I can make this stuff.

15:13It's really easy. It's enjoyable. I like making it. I find it funny. I get a reaction. And the technology is ever improving. I mean, I don't know if you've heard of Sea Dance, which is now. Sea Dance 2.0 has just come out. Yeah, which has just come out. And the videos are so realistic. So just the average person can make stuff really, really easily. And they can feed into the chaos, whether they intend to or not.

15:39Okay, Matt, something I've seen increasingly popping up on my feed, whether it's content from this creator themselves or people talking about this creator, is Clavicula, which is very much up your street. Not personally, but in terms of the stuff you investigate. And I want to know about Clavicula. So I think that the media and the public are kind of misunderstanding what's happening with Clavicula. Because he's been popping up on people's feeds, but then also he's been getting quite a lot of media coverage recently as well. Exactly. There's countless think pieces about Clavicula, creating the perception that all young men are interested in looks maxing which we'll explain in a second but in reality i think that this is essentially a marketing campaign and i'll get into why in a second but first a short bio of clavicular he his real name is brayden peters he's a 20 year old looks maxing streamer from new jersey um he's been active for a few years but he's completely blown up and become you know the man of the internet right now what's going on fellas Welcome back to the channel.

16:40Today, I've got a good one for you. So hopefully you guys, you know, pick something up off this video, because I think this is the future, truly. That's such a good phrase, the man of the internet. I feel like there's a person of the internet probably every week. Yeah, well, he's certainly the man of the manosphere. I mean, it was Andrew Tate. Now it is arguably him. And so his name itself relates to the bone, the clavicle, and that connects to this thing, what's it called look looks maxing yeah so basically the width of his clavicles i.e his collarbone is significant and that's why people call him clavicular and that's something looks maxers are obsessed with so looks maxing it comes out of the incel community involuntary celibates it's actually kind of sad if you go on the the forum where clavicular kind of started looksmax.org it's a very sad place it's full of boys often under the age of 15 who are they believe this kind of incel thing that we live in a sexual marketplace and that women are hypergamous, which means that they will only mate with someone who has better genetics than them or more money than them.

17:48And there's no kind of courtship. There's no love in this world. It's just, how do you improve your looks to achieve the highest sexual marketplace value? Because we We live in this biologically determined kind of Darwinian sexual marketplace. And so what Lux Maxxers do is they do all sorts of crazy things like bone smashing, which is where you smash the bones on your face to kind of increase your chiseled bone structure look through bruising. They take kind of gray market peptides and testosterone and steroids. They do frauding, which is basically like kind of lying. So that's like putting inserts in your shoes to make you look taller, etc, etc.

18:29Clavicular himself, he started taking testosterone, according to him, at the age of 14, as a result of which he's now, according to him, infertile. And so that just shows you how extreme the lengths he'll go to for luxmaxing. He also says that he took meth and Adderall to kind of hollow his cheeks out and reduce the fat in his body. It's more like really extreme. Yeah, it's kind of extreme body dysmorphia. The other thing about looks maxing is the vocabulary. So the way that most people kind of encountered Clavicular for the first time was this meme where he's standing next to a frat leader and it says Clavicular got brutally frame mogged by an ASU frat leader.

19:12getting frame mogged means like mog stands for it comes from alpha male of the group it's an acronym and to mog someone is to like present yourself as superior to them and frame mog means you have like a wider muscular frame than them so that kind of ridiculous lingo gets you into their heads a little bit it's like speaking an entire i mean i always think this like in like most of the kinds of subcultures that we investigate online there's like certain words you learn like crisis actor with conspiracy land say or whatever i feel like particularly in this kind of realm that's just like i've never heard of mog before yeah exactly but i think one of the reasons this has gone so viral is because people are kind of performatively and ironically participating in that discourse and using that vocabulary because it's even if they don't buy into even they don't buy into it because it's so funny and ridiculous and that then makes it go more viral and it kind of cascades and is that how overnight he just became such a thing it's part of it it's part of it because it felt like he kind of came out of nowhere like as someone who's not hanging out in the manosphere on a regular basis so whenever someone becomes that viral that quickly you should always question why and what's behind it it's very rarely organic and the rise of clavicular reminds me a lot of the rise of andrew tate so i've been looking into how he's become so famous so quickly and i think it's all part of what i call the kind of rage bait industrial complex.

20:36So to understand how he's become famous, you have to understand, first of all, what Kick is, the platform that he streams on, and second of all, what Clipping is. So Kick is basically a kind of controversial streaming platform where people live stream their entire lives. It's a competitor to Twitch, which is the biggest streaming platform. They've been called like the Wild West of streaming because they've been accused of not having the same kind of rules and regulations as to who they let stream. And Kik is connected to a crypto gambling company called Steak. And a lot of the streamers on Kik, including Clavicular, are not just streaming themselves doing like looks maxing stuff.

21:16They're also streaming themselves gambling on Steak. Okay. So that's an important part of it. The second part of it is clipping. Clipping is this kind of internet economy where a clipper gets paid per 1 ,000 clicks on a clip that they put on social media. And according to Clavicular, he has a whole army of clippers. He says he has 950 clippers. He also says that he's given a seven-figure per month budget from Kik for clippers. Okay. So when you encounter Clavicular, you're likely encountering him via a clip that has been posted by one of these paid clippers who are incentivized to get the most controversial, craziest things that he's done, write the stupidest, most outlandish caption and post that.

22:03Essentially getting really good at gaming the algorithms, which we know will promote stuff that triggers a reaction. So he's kind of following the tried and tested path now for far-right and manosphere influencers, which is say the most outlandish, taboo-breaking, controversial stuff on the internet, become famous, get reputed, then go on podcasts and appearances with other right-wing Manosphere influencers, which then creates a whole new ecosystem of footage that can be reclipped. This is called cross-pollination. And I guess you're implicitly endorsed as well by an influencer who the people who are listening to their podcast or following their content, they like them.

22:39So they think, oh, well, therefore, I might be interested in you. Exactly. Now, this kind of came to a T in this clout bomb moment where he was filmed. Clout bomb is a great word. He was filmed at a Miami nightclub with the misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, with the avowed white nationalist Nick Fuentes, and with Sneeko, another controversial Manosphere figure, and they were chanting Heil Hitler along to Ye's song, right? So they are saying the most obnoxious, often racist, often controversial stuff because it gets the most attention, which they can then translate into fame and money if they're clever about it.

23:18Yeah. And how exactly is Clavicula doing that? You've been looking into the way that he's monetizing his infamy or fame, however you want to describe it. Well, first of all, there's the relationship with him, Kik, and the crypto gambling website, Stake. So that's one source of income for him. Second of all, he's also selling a course similar to Andrew Tate, who also got famous through Clippers. He is selling a course for$49 a month. That is quite expensive. Yeah. I mean, making a lot of money, surely. I signed up to the course and based on the members, if they're all legitimate, I calculated to be making at least 60k a month just from this course.

23:55And it's a course that basically helps teach you to ascend, which is the lux maxing term for achieving your maximum sexual marketplace value through modifying your appearance. If you're tired of being invisible to women, tired of getting rejected and tired of watching other guys who won the genetic lottery take what's yours, then pay attention. Because what I'm about to show you will completely transform your face and physique in ways that you didn't even think were possible. Look, I'm not going to sugarcoat this. You have been lied to. They told you just be confident, just be yourself. Looks don't matter.

24:23But you and I both know that's complete. What I found out when I signed up for this course to check it out was first of all, he says makeup isn't feminine. It's tactical warfare for the face. So he teaches men how to do makeup. He's advising people before they go and interact with women and flirt with women, they should be taking viagra testosterone use something called a vacuum erection device they should be taking pregabalin gray market peptides which by the way he also sells now himself on his own website and ssris as well and that's all to make you like more confident in front of women it feels like being connected to incel culture but then also talking about sexuality are at odds with one another kind of because of the nature of what being an incel is so what's going on there so So you could describe him as post incel.