In New York, the world's most problematic influencer walks the runway He calls himself Clavicular, he's the king of looksmaxxing, and he claims to do meth to stay thin

His stream has millions of views; he is the most prominent member of a community made up of men whose sole purpose is to “ascend” toward an extreme physical ideal and humiliate their peers, going to any lengths to maintain his physique—from consuming meth to hitting his face with a hammer. He is connected to figures from the far right; the NY Times dedicated a profile to him in recent days, and last weekend he debuted as a model at New York Fashion Week for Elena Velez's latest FW26 collection. His real name is Braden Peters, better known by the nickname Clavicular, and he is 20 years old.

Why talk about him? Because Clavicular is merely the problematic, highly visible tip of the iceberg of a culture, that of looksmaxxing, which is spreading worldwide and threatens the mental health of many young men. But let's proceed in order.

What is looksmaxxing?

The looksmaxxing culture is an online movement centered on the maximization of male physical appearance, often through extreme and controversial methods. It promotes "hyper-masculine" beauty ideals (one must have a squared jaw, a sculpted physique, meet certain measurements) and originated around the 2010s on 4chan and Reddit, where various incel communities discussed how aesthetic attractiveness is the key to social, romantic, and professional success on a forum called PUAHate.

In 2014, the forum was shut down after one of its members, the 22-year-old Elliot Rodger, killed 6 people (including himself) and injured 14 in an act of misogynistic terrorism better known as the Isla Vista killings. Following this massacre, the forum was closed, and the entire community migrated to a new site called Sluthate, where users abandoned the more overtly misogynistic aspects of the culture and instead devoted themselves to their theories on male aesthetics, codifying concepts such as "looksmaxxing" and the PSL scale, an aesthetic rating system.

These platforms form a sort of algorithmic bubble where extreme content amplifies itself, generating an entire language based on the suffix “-maxxxing” to describe the most diverse practices, “mogging,” “chad,” and so on. It was precisely from these platforms that Clavicular emerged, the most extreme of them all, though he has only recently become known to mainstream culture.

Is Clavicular really that problematic?

Clavicular became famous online for all the wrong reasons. He emerged as a guru of looksmaxxing culture by promoting a line of thought, known in slang as “hardmaxxxing,” according to which, to “ascend” to higher degrees of physical beauty, one must undergo dangerous and painful physical alteration practices to become more masculine. According to both Business Insider and the NY Times, his rapid rise is due to pages that serially repost clips to make them viral in exchange for payment. In short, his rise has been funded, though it's unclear by whom.

Among the disturbing practices for which he is known is “bone smashing”, that is, hitting his face with a hammer in the (pseudoscientific) belief that the bones will heal from microfractures stronger; stuffing himself with anabolic steroids and hormones to the point of becoming sterile at 19 years old; and using micro-doses of meth mixed with ketamine and Adderall to stay lean. He also sells “packages” that illustrate his method for maintaining his looks, and according to the NY Times, his streams on Kick earn him $100,000 a month. During these streams, he injected fat-dissolving peptides into the cheeks of his 17-year-old girlfriend to reshape her jaw and performed Aqualyx injections, another fat-dissolver, on the 19-year-old Jenny Popach.

Clavicular went viral last Christmas when he ran over a stalker on video with his Cybertruck, but his success is something profoundly mysterious. From the beginning of his career, he has had an anonymous donor known as “P” who sends him absurd sums of money (the first was $150,000), and according to unverified sources, gave him half a million over three months. According to various conspiracy theories, this mysterious “P” is Peter Thiel, the billionaire behind digital surveillance company Palantir and friend of Jeffrey Epstein, from whom, however, the influencer has always publicly distanced himself. Thiel has a long history of funding voices in the American alt-right.

According to some, Thiel would be the person who indirectly funded the six surgeries the young man underwent, as well as, according to far-right influencer Nick Fuentes, Clavicular's bail after his recent arrest in Arizona for possession of illegal substances and a fake document. Among his friends are the far-right influencer Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, with whom he was filmed singing a Kanye West song with Nazi themes; he uses the n-word very liberally and is convinced that all politics is actually just a clown show (in English, the term he uses is “jester”).

A strange brand of political nihilism that has also led him to say he would not vote for JD Vance in the elections because he is overweight but would vote for Gavin Newsom even though he considers him a “degenerate” (his words) only because he has a more Chad-like physiognomy. Among the other practices he promotes are injections of potentially toxic peptides, extreme fasting defined as “starvemaxxxing,” chewing on hard objects to develop the mandible, and other less extreme but decidedly strange facial manipulation practices.

Why did he walk for Elena Velez?

So, why did the most problematic influencer in the world close a New York Fashion Week show? The answer lies in Elena Velez's marketing methods, an emerging designer who became famous after a NY Times article portraying her as an example of emerging designers trapped by debt. Velez had gained fame thanks to that piece, then turning her shows and her brand into pure rage-bait: models fighting in the mud, shows inspired by Gone With the Wind that took the theme of slavery very lightly, she defines herself as “post-woke” and criticizes liberal feminism. She too is indirectly associable with Thiel according to Rachel Tashjian-Wise.

Choosing Clavicular to close the show thus fits both an online provocation strategy and echoes the themes of a collection that revolved around extreme body modifications, such as restrictive corsets, facial bands, and visible dental appliances, making him a figure symbolizing the lengths some go to alter their appearance and commodify their body.

The move worked on the media level with one major problem: giving a platform to Clavicular means giving one to an entire culture whose social and psychological dangerousness is absolute and whose rise is, to say the least, suspicious given its ties to shadowy financiers and far-right online figures. The designer told Vogue that her goal was “to make sense of the feeling of our time without any nostalgic, retrospective, or prestigious lens, and to simply focus on what are the most compelling and iconoclastic voices of this historical moment”.

We certainly don't know whether Velez is a true conservative with oligarchic sympathies or a simple dissident who wants to shock, but in a world like ours, where everything and everyone must be suspected and more and more hidden hands seem to emerge every day, a moral compass is needed. But where do the compasses of Elena Velez and Clavicular point?

Takeaways

- Clavicular (stage name of Braden Peters), 20 years old, is the most extreme influencer in the looksmaxxing subculture, an online movement that pushes young men to “ascend” toward a hyper-masculine physical ideal through dangerous practices such as bone smashing, steroid abuse, methamphetamine use, and extreme fasting.

- His fame exploded thanks to viral streams on Kick that earn him $100,000 a month, but it is fueled by a mysterious anonymous donor (“P”) who reportedly sent him hundreds of thousands of dollars, with widespread theories identifying this figure as Peter Thiel.

- Clavicular is connected to far-right figures such as Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, freely uses the n-word, sings songs with Nazi themes, and considers politics a “clown show” (jester), while still making aesthetic judgments about politicians like JD Vance and Gavin Newsom.

- He has committed controversial acts, including injecting fat-dissolving peptides into his underage girlfriend and other girls, and was arrested in February 2026 in Arizona for possession of illegal substances and a fake document, with the charges quickly dropped.

- Last weekend he debuted as a model by closing Elena Velez’s FW26 show at New York Fashion Week, a provocative choice that fits into the “post-woke” designer’s rage-bait strategy, known for divisive runway shows and indirect ties to reactionary circles.

- Clavicular represents the visible tip of a looksmaxxing culture that seriously threatens the mental and physical health of many young men, whose rapid rise and opaque funding raise suspicions of hidden orchestration and connections to powerful figures in the tech right.