I can appreciate that there is an inherent comedy to making an article on Clavicular. Clavicular (Braden Peters) engages in outrageous actions such as looksmaxxing, and the comedy of it overshadows the severity of his actions and rhetoric. This article is attempting to analyze some of his public persona and give background information to a man who many people, especially in middle and high school, have likely seen clips of.

By being an unserious “jester” for his audience and the general public, Peters is often shielded from most criticism. While reading this article there is a non-zero chance you will at least once think, “My God, man, it is not that serious. He’s stupid, and that’s why he’s funny”.

You are not wrong that he is perhaps socially unintelligent, and that is a large part of his appeal. I, however, would argue that his internet presence is that serious. I myself laughed many times while writing this article because of how outlandish some of the things he says and does are. None of my words here are meant to shame anyone for finding certain things he has said funny; it is just meant to bring awareness to what he is doing.

20-year-old Clavicular, or “Clav”, legal name Braden Eric Peters, is a “looksmaxxer” livestreamer and influencer. Looksmaxxing is the process of trying to better one’s physical appearance through “softmaxxing” (skin care, exercise, etc) or “hardmaxxing” (surgery, bone-smashing, drugs, etc). Ultimately, looksmaxxing is enforcing systemic prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination based on a person’s physical appearance or how closely they align with societal (often eurocentric, or white) beauty standards.

One quick note: the issue is not engaging in activities like eating healthier and working out. By that metric, everything is considered some kind of looksmaxxing. Explicitly calling yourself a looksmaxxer or seeking out looksmaxxing tips is the concern here.

The “maxxing” suffix is now combined with other words, which makes the new term into something that means “I am working on improving [insert thing]” or “I am engaging in [insert thing]. Additionally, terms like “jester” are being used to describe people seen as lesser-than and acting in a way that would be amusing to others, particularly in a derogatory way. Those “jestermaxxing” are seeking attention and approval often through embarassing themselves or acting ridiculously.

People exposed to this language are more likely to see the world through a superiority lens; who is better in what way to whom, and “mogging” and “maxxing”, even through jokes, encourage ideas of superiority.

Height, body type, and facial “harmony” are pertinent to “mogging”. To be “ugly” is to be inferior in such communities. Thus, those who are insecure and vulnerable turn to looksmaxxing to improve their appearance and try to “ascend” their looks in an effort to be praised and rewarded by things society is perceived to be withholding (job, relationship, career etc opportunities). The term ‘mog’ came from the acronym AMOG, which stands for ‘alpha male of the group’.

Looksmaxxers like Peters coined and popularized terms such as “Stacy”, “Adam”, “Chad”, “Becky”, “True Adam” and “True Eve” which are an alternate version of the 1-10 ranking scale previously used to rank people’s appearances. The “peak” or “prime” looksmaxxers refer to is usually embodied by people called (true) Stacies and (true) Adams (the true suffix referring to people who do not need to looksmaxx and are simply “superior” in the minds of looksmaxxers), who are the most attractive people in Eurocentric standards. Beckies are more “mid” (or average) looking, but still attractive, and “normies” are people you would see in everyday life.

The comedic and absurdist quality of these labels tends to water down people’s understandings of these words that originate in incel-culture and blackpill-community spaces. Inherently, these words and spaces, often online, are rooted in racism and sexism. By using these words, even jokingly, one is normalizing such ideas and making them more mainstream.

As seen through the terms “Stacy” and “Becky”, as well as “foid” and “femoid”, women are reduced to objects and achievements to blackpill communities and looksmaxxers. Most looksmaxxers yearn to “ascend” and have the most attractive partner, and such thoughts require objectification and dehumanization.

This objectification and reliance on attractiveness as a rating of humanity is brought on by a festering resentment. Women are at fault in the first place, to them, for making them so insecure. Women are the ungrateful ones who refuse to date them and treat them as lesser for not being an “Adam”.

Men in these spaces want to regain a sense of masculinity and superiority they feel owed by conquering women’s bodies. Having sex with as many women as possible returns socially ingrained ideas of masculine power and achievement to these men.

Paradoxically, women who have had any sex are deemed whores and “ran through”, however women uninterested in sex or dating are seen as conceited and exhibiting superiority complexes.

Neirad’s The Crazy World: An Attack on Women explores more of the systematic oppression women face.

Having a lack of sexual experience is cringeworthy in these spaces; conquering women’s bodies and racking up your body count is how you prove to those around you that you are a “real man”, and have succeeded in “ascending”.

Peters livestreams his controversial opinions alongside his “mog” adventures, in which he goes out to clubs and prowls sidewalks looking for people he considers unattractive to stand next to and “mog”. Mogging is when one is superior in some aspect to another, thus “mogging” and humiliating them. If someone has 20 dollars and another has 100 dollars, the man with less money has been “moneymogged.”

Recently, Peters was arrested for shooting a crocodile upwards of 50 times. He has additionally used slurs like the n-slur and r-slur to refer to people, and delegitimizes the democratic process by stating that voters should side with the more attractive candidate rather than the one whose ideals and policies they align with more. Furthermore, Peters has past declared he is completely out of the political sphere, and that one could “be spending that time doing any looksmaxxing instead of jestering politics”. Politics are “jester” to Peters, or a joke.

Peters has, however, consistently discussed how “major crime” exists in cities (focusing on minority groups and misrepresented, uncontextualized statistics), that women should not be in any positions of power, declared himself pro-Trump, and a traditionalist. His ideal world is staying “true to Christianity” and he is a self proclaimed black pill “accelerationist”, intending to “restructure society” and it’s “dating market”. He has stated he would not date outside of his race and if he had children he would engage in eugenicist behavior in an effort to have the most aesthetically pleasing child.

Peters is most widely seen as a palatable cornball; not extreme enough to be Nick Fuentes (a white supremacist nationalist), and not calm enough to be a Joe Rogan (a popular internet podcaster who tends to lean right-wing) or perhaps a Charlie Kirk (a former right-wing podcaster).

Peters sees himself on par with Nick Fuentes, however, and aligns with white nationalism. He frequently says racial slurs and spreads false rhetoric about minorities. He has associated with Fuentes in the past and streamed with him. He has gone as far as to chant “Heil Hitler” and engages with with looksmaxxers, black pillers, right-wing grifters, and collab notorious rapists such as the Tate brothers.

Peters is eager to gain attention for profits and validation which all is afforded to him via outrage farming; while he expresses his feelings of loneliness and his want to appear more neurotypical, unfortunately the path he has chosen is guiding him to become a pariah.

While Peters displays intensely problematic viewpoints and behaviors, this is perhaps brought on by a deep need to be accepted yet struggling socially. By relying on his bigoted views, he can feel some twisted sense of security and familiarity with other looksmaxxers. There is a comprehensible scale for social and romantic success in his eyes, and it takes the responsibility to become socially aware and empathetic off of his shoulders. Peters is a public, destructive case study on how gender affects the way neurodivergence and mental illness is treated.

All of this behavior is watered down by people who record and reupload clips from his livestreams. The severity of his rhetoric is unrecognized by people who see these clips and his behaviors are normalized and in some cases excused, as people know he engages in “clip farming” and “ragebaiting”.

Normalization and the memefication of previously taboo topics and subjects is an actual method which the US government participates in called memetic warfare. This is used to make people more comfortable with previously unacceptable or unknown subjects. For instance, in 2016, widespread memes of Donald Trump helped him win the election as people did not take what he did or said seriously. In the current Israel-Palestine conflict and Iran-Israel conflict, AI has been expanding the reach of memes and spreading both misinformation and normalizing the conflicts by reducing them to humorous clips.

One specific example of this is the “Kirkification” trend, where people AI generate infamous podcaster Charlie Kirk’s face onto random people, further spreading a previously relatively unknown man’s face all over the internet. An issue arises when people stop acknowledging or knowing the harmful rhetoric he spread and simply find him to be a “jester”.

Furthermore, the “Big Yahu” trend where people call on Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, to bomb whatever is annoying them. Other jokes refer to certain things such as song genres or internet creators are “spiritually Israeli”. These jokes take seriousness away from the world events at hand. By laughing off Peters’ rhetoric, we contribute to this phenomenon.

On a different note, Peters has been speculated to be autistic. He refers to himself derogatorily as an “autist” and viewers and friends attribute some behaviors of his as traits of neurodivergence. While not formally diagnosed, one could argue that Peters displays some widely accepted “autistic” traits such as social difficulties, romantic struggles, self-centered behaviors, hyperfixations and special interests (in his case, fixating on reaching his “peak” or “prime” physical form for validation) and a need to categorize behaviors and actions to comprehend and mimic them.

To some degree I can understand Peters’ need to have a comprehensible scale for success in social situations as another autistic person; if everything is a formula, in his case attractive vs unattractive, there is an easy solution to his insecurity and loneliness.

So, there is perhaps a solution to Peters that is comforting within looksmaxxing. A fix to what many autistic people like myself struggle with—a feeling that everyone has some instruction manual to how to be a person, “normal” and liked, and you don’t have it. If social success becomes clear cut, just make yourself more conventionally attractive and everything will be okay, then there is no deeper work one has to do to interrogate how to properly act and respond in social situations in order to succeed with neurotypical people in society, which is a major stressor for autistic folk.

Physical change is less difficult, much of the time, than masking autistic traits which are often seen as offputting.

I myself have noticed that depending on how I look or dress, people will treat me in immensely different ways (of course, that is not a new realization for me as a woman). However, any kinder treatment achieved through physical alterations is not a green light to make the world a black and white space based on looks. Peters and other insecure people in his circle have gone entirely off of the deep end in their search for acceptance. Nobody checked Peters as he had no social circle to do so for him.

Peters has described trying to “NTmaxx” (neurotypicalmaxx) on his old looksmaxxing threads, linking video clips of movies and shows with characters he believed were “slayers”, or attractive protagonists. He watched those videos and mimicked their mannerisms and speech patterns. This is a particularly upsetting part of his life, looking back; Peters took this need to be accepted and his attempts to “normalmaxx” into a self destructive obsession. I and other autistic people can, once again, heavily relate to this. Peters however remained unchecked. He set a goal that was unattainable for himself. Peters’ isolation and a lack of intervention from those around him allowed his descent into this terrible reality.

Peters’ old Myspace account and Looksmaxx forum from his teenage years was where he gave tips on how to be as isolated as possible. He discussed how to count your words in order to say less than 50 per day, and stated he would never speak or interact with his family, aside from his dog, who he said he loved, and was the “only female he would ever feel a connection to”. To Peters, even “30 seconds” of conversation was too much. He wanted to avoid all of it.

In recent stream clips, Peters moves away from women sitting next to him saying that being close to people freaks him out, claiming he feels he is “awkwardmaxxing”.

Later, he reads a donation message that asks him “does Clav cry” to which Peters replies, “every day”. He jokes that his roommate has to “endure it”.

Peters’ use of -maxxing as a comedic term is a reliance on a “bit” which is socially acceptable. Peters may be reusing it as it is a familiar and sure way to gain social approval. This is another shared experience amongst many autistic people; trying to find a type of joke or “bit” that amuses people and keeps you included and valued in the social situation. Peters would call this “jestermaxxing”.

If anything, Peters and other looksmaxxers have worsened their social and romantic chances by becoming so conceited, and placing so much emphasis on their appearances.

Looksmaxxing is a pitiable effort; everyone who sees such content, and the people who interact with it, can immediately spot the deep rooted insecurities that egg on such behaviors. Additionally, many looksmaxxing behaviors are similar to self-harming behaviors; starving oneself, becoming addicted to drugs, training and counting calories obsessively, and bonesmashing are all dangerous behaviors.

Peters bluntly insults people based on their looks and sees the world through a black and white lens, reliant on people’s physical eurocentric appeal. Peters clearly displays a hyperfixation on sex-appeal and by viewing women as objects he does not have to grapple with the complex social and emotional factors that have estranged him from society, and perhaps most importantly to him, women. Society’s patriarchal structure has emboldened Peters to act in this way, he is surrounded by yes-men, and he has faced little legitimate pushback for his behaviors. In fact, Peters is paid by people who donate to his streams and incentivize his behaviors.

None of this article, however, is intended to blame or afford his behaviors to autism. Just because someone has some disorder or disability, does not make them unable to be held responsible for their actions. There is no excuse for what he has said and done, only causes.

Peters has long struggled with drug addiction. He has previously claimed that he is unable to get through a conversation without the aid of benzodiazepines, and described his life as “hell” and angrily asked the camera if his life was “interesting” to them. Peters takes methamphetamines both to self-admittedly appear more neurotypical and also lower his appetite to avoid weight gain. He also takes testosterone and steroids. A lot of his and other looksmaxxers share behaviors with orthorexic individuals, which is a type of eating disorder characterized by an obsessive need to exercise and focus on what type of food and nutrients one is consuming. He sets a dangerous example in every way for our youth.

On April 14, 2026, Peters overdosed on methamphetamines while livestreaming to his audience on the platform Kick. He tweeted afterwards that he was just “trying to feel neurotypical” and helped illustrate how some neurodivergent people will drink or take other substances in an effort to hide their neurodivergent traits. The effects of narcotics can make neurodivergent and especially autistic people feel less stressed in social scenarios.

For those unfamiliar with some autistic thought processes, many autistic people experience immense stress because they are trying to look and behave in a “normal” way. Restraining stimming and self soothing actions, self-tone policing, misunderstandings of social cues and facial expressions, and other things are all major stressors for autistic and neurodivergent people. By becoming inebriated, an individual becomes more relaxed, and for autistic and neurodivergent people, it often feels like a blessing to escape the constant fear of failure in social situations.

The ease of stress that is given through narcotic and alcoholic vices places autistic and neurodivergent people at a higher risk of addiction as we will constantly be searching for the answer and way to become “normal” even if it places us at risk.

Ultimately, Peters even went on to say that overdosing was not as stressful as his face “descending” (becoming “uglier”) from the indents of the life support mask that he was given to keep him alive.

The more self destructive or offensive one is online, the more attention they get, and the worse they get. Peters does not have the welcoming community and validation he is trying to achieve, and has instead burnt all of his bridges to “normal” well adjusted community life by appealing to bigots and younger vulnerable generations. Other neurodivergent children and teenagers are being told by Peters and the looksmaxxing community that the answer to their insecurities is self harm and cruelty towards others.

Peters is a tragic case of the internet and its rabbit holes claiming the life of a young and vulnerable individual simply seeking community, and an example of the tremendously troubling enabling nature of echo chambers and pipelines in online spaces. Peters’ circumstances and speculated mental illness, however, does not have any impact or lessening on the unfathomable harm he has done to our world.

Lolcow culture is far from dead, and Peters is a direct example of that fact. Before you close this article and dismiss my writings with an “it’s not that deep”, I would like to remind you that you are thinking that in reference to the normalization of a bigoted creator. When you see controversial clips you will always associate that funny clip with them and not ascribe as much weight to any hateful or offensive clips that you see. People in the communities he spews hate speech against, like people of color, women, and queer folk, find his content more threatening than amusing. Dismissing Clavicular’s harm humanizes someone who has made a career off of dehumanizing others.

Sources:

• https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/style/clavicular-looksmaxxing-braden-peters.html
• https://kick.com/clavicular
• https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62ex04n876o
• https://forum.looksmaxxing.com/
• https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/story/claviculars-family-is-very-concerned-after-his-hospitalization?srsltid=AfmBOorEyrVkyLU5Unate-CSIXD-ftncOkkdO2HxKiajrxbd-F5aQSvA
• https://medium.com/are-you-okay/why-are-people-saying-clavicular-has-autism-0c6b4d18ff41
• https://www.addictionhelp.com/addiction/autism/
• https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/mental-health/autism/autism-statistics/