My Trip to the Manosphere
By Reed Heath
I recently–and unwillingly–discovered who Clavicular is.
I was talking to a friend who had worked backstage at New York Fashion Week when he told me about Braden Peters, the 20 year-old “looksmaxxer” influencer who had appeared on the runway in February. When I told him that I had never heard of this guy, he tried to explain–only leaving me more confused on who he was and why his presence at NYFW mattered.
So I went home and looked him up, which sent me down a spiral into a dark corner of the internet that I had been mostly oblivious to: the Manosphere.
The manosphere is the umbrella term for online spaces that include collections of content like online forums, streams, and blogs promoting a warped version of masculinity often rooted in opposition to feminism built on extremely dangerous rhetoric and a flawed set of values.
In just the past week, I’ve watched Louis Theroux’s new netflix documentary, “Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere”, along with interviews featuring Clavicular on platforms like Channel 5 News with Andrew Callaghan and The Adam Friedland Show. Together, these offer views into two sides of the same coin. Clavicular leans into the pseudoscience of looksmaxxing, while figures in Theroux’s documentary– like HSTikkyTokky and Justin Waller–focus more on “escaping the matrix” and the ideology surrounding it.
Something especially concerning is the language these communities have built and how quickly it is spreading among teenage boys and young men. Terms like “LDAR” (“Lie Down and Rot”), “Stacy”, (the female equivalent of a “Chad”), and “Incel” (short for “Involuntary Celibate”) are becoming normalized. Others like “Framemogging,” are hard to define but easy to recognize. And then there’s “Jester” (which I must say admittedly is my favorite), someone who partakes in embarrassing and stupid behavior for attention, but has just become Clavicular’s catch-all for people he dismisses and often anyone who challenges him.
You can also attach “-maxxing” to almost anything which is fun and shows the high level of intelligence these guys hold.
My first exposure to this world came last year through the award-winning show Adolescence, which explores male toxicity and the influence of this content on impressionable boys. It was heavy–because it felt real.
I volunteer with a high school ministry, so I spend a lot of time around teenage guys. They’re incredibly impressionable, and I’ve seen firsthand how this content affects them. It doesn’t just amplify the insecurities that already come with growing up–it offers a false solution. One rooted in misogyny, homophobia, and racism. In other words, tearing others down to build yourself up.
I’m not writing this to be purely informative or journalistic. If anything, this is therapy. The level of sadness I felt consuming this content is hard to describe. It’s a kind of hopelessness as I sit and watch young people become poisoned with hate and bigotry.
I don’t know exactly what to do, or what role I can play in pushing back against it. But maybe this is a start.
Let’s take the power away from these jesters and fight the manosphere.
