Bulwark Takes - A 20-Year-Old Meth-Smoking Influencer Is the Future of Right-Wing Masculinity

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

Sam Stein, Tim Miller, and Will Sommer break down the bizarre, disturbing, and increasingly influential world of “looksmaxxing” and the internet personality at its center, Clavicular. The trio give their takes on how a 20-year-old influencer built a massive following by bone smashing his face, abusing steroids and meth, and livestreaming chaos all while becoming a minor celebrity in right-wing online culture. They explain the strange vocabulary (mogging, jestermaxxing, foids), the overlap with incel ideology, and why figures like Clavicular matter politically, even if you wish you’d never heard of them.Read more from Will's reporting on Clavicular: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/clavicular-looksmaxxing-streamer-influencer-moggingGo to: https://Quince.com/BULWARKTAKES for free shipping and 365 day returns on your order.

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All right. Hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bullwork, and I'm joined by the Potato Boys. Is that what we're calling ourselves now? We're working through the names. As we start, I just want to apologize for frame-mogging you guys so brutally. I know you guys are doing the best you could, but with this wallpaper and with my P-WAT shirt and kind of my cheek bones, I just feel like I'm really trained-matching. Yeah. Have you bones smashed? People are going to not know what we're talking about. We're back.

We have a new piece to discuss, another Will Masterpiece. This one's on clavicular. If you had an internet connection this weekend or on Twitter for about two seconds, you probably read some nonsense about this man. He's 20 years old. Is that right, Will? Yes, he's 20. It's 20 and a half, I think.

To be precise. And he does things to his body that no human being should do, all in the name of trying to perfect his look, his chiseled. Okay. Will, what don't you go through what clavicular has done to his body and why he's doing? Why should we care about clavicular at first?

Well, we're going to get to that. Okay, all right. Let's get to that second. This is a man. He's internet famous and he does fucking weird shit to look good and get girls. But Will, you know this stuff.

What is going on here? Sure. So clavicular is a guy who's, maybe the most prominent face of what's called the looks maxing community, which is in some ways sort of like a division of in cells. These are guys who have decided, you know, that women, you know, everything's against them. They kind of hate women.

And the only answer to get women and to sort of get ahead in society is to turn themselves into sort of like, like sexy Squidward types with just these kind of like very handsome, kind of very somewhat bizarre faces. So he has done all kinds of things. I love a sexy Squidward type. Like, people ask me what my type is, and I've never been able to really put a finger on it. But sexy Squidward is pretty close. Sorry, what is Squidward?

I'm maybe I'm lost here. From SpongeBob, there's a point where he kind of like has like a really bulky face. I don't know. I mean, it's maybe somewhat obscure reference. But, but basically, like, he will go to any length to get hot. And kind of in a very specific way that he sees hot to exist. So he started on anabolic stings. steroids when he was 14. And doing, by the way, like, enormous amounts even by the standards of, like, a 40-year-old on steroids.

Like, there are steroid influencers on YouTube who are like, this kid is doing too many steroids. We love steroids, but this is too much. There, he does a thing called bone smashing, which I mentioned where, and this, by the way, is quite scientifically dubious. Is he, he, too, the idea is you kind of like hit your cheekbones and this creates micro fractures that will make them reform in like a more handsome. some way. It's not clear to be why it wouldn't be like, oh, now I look like I broke my cheekbone. But he has like a little like hammer or he'll do like a theragun or he'll sometimes he'll just punch himself in the face. And so, so I guess the other big thing he does is he smokes meth or at least had recently. He would smoke meth. He would go on. There's one. The fact that that's number three on your list. There's a video where he's like, he's like really ranting. And by the way, like he

gets angry, like he'll get really angry or sometimes he'll just like throw someone's drink on the ground or he'll put out an angry video. And it's like, is that the meth or is that the steroids? Well, it's, is it a toxic cocktail of the two? And he'll say like, this is what women make me do. Their standards are so high. I have to go on a three day meth binge, you know, to lose weight. So, so he's not the most stable guy, I guess. And Tim, you, you would do that for for the game? I mean, I don't, I'm not sure if, uh, I'd have to get a birth certificate. on age appropriateness for sure. But just like it's an objective matter,

I think whatever he's doing is working, and I can understand why he's built a big following that looks maxing community. Fair enough. So you asked the question, why do we care about this human being? And honestly, I struggle with this.

Is it because you've been munting and magging? Yeah, well, should we talk about the terminology and the here? Because they're so weird. But I want to get to why we care about this man, because this was like the main issue with my edit when I was editing those pieces like, why are we reading about this human being? Like, what point does he serve? And I guess we stumbled upon this idea that this is where the

discourse is going. Like right-wing culture venerates, or at least a portion of it, venerates this guy. He's got huge followings. He's weighing in on politics. He's got this take on Gavin Newsom versus J.D. Vance that's pretty spot on. And there is like a cultural relevance to it that I think we can't just ignore. It is weird and uncomfortable, obviously, but, like, I think he matters. He was also in the party bus. Will and I did a video.

Was this a trio video or was it just being Will? No, just you and well. Yeah, the party bus that included Nick Flentes and Myron Gaines, which I learned during that video is not his real name because people are admiring his gains. And who else was in that was in there? The Tate brothers. Yeah, so he was there with other prominent kind of right-wing alt-wereignette.

right type figures, I guess was another. Singing Heil Hitler by Kanye. Yeah. Yeah, correct. Yes. And so he's he's kind of swimming in this universe. And I think what's interesting about clavicular besides like all the weird little things is that he represents

this kind of like this fruition of this just like angry young man archetype. You know, his he's often saying, I'm not into politics or whatever. Like I think that's stupid. But he has this actually extremely reactionary anti-women agenda, which is sort of like, I have to like scheme. And, you know, women are just these like,

like, lustful snakes and you have to, like, do all these little tricks to ever have a chance of finding love. And it, and he's obviously a very opposed to, like, women, like, working outside of the home or anything like that. And I think this, it's almost like this post-Fuentes politics where, like, Nick Fuentes has this kind of like Nazi-ish vibe going on, whereas clivocular is just like, like, the world is a wasteland.

I mean, he opens, he says, I'm a nihilist, I'm a black pillar. I'm trying to freak people out about the state of the world. And all you can do is this kind of sinister plot on yourself to make yourself an experiment to survive. Yeah, the only thing that you control in this world is your own choices. And the choices that he wants people to make is to bone smash and munt and mogg. And so that makes sense. I think one of the things about Sam, I'd like to give one of the sort of related element why people should care about clavicular in this moment. And particularly, I think, maybe democratic strategist types and politicians or anyone who enjoys the trio's flavor on the Democratic side.

And that is, I have not watched a single, I'm not even sure where clavicular posts. Like, does he stream? Does he, is he on, I don't, on Rumble. I literally don't know. Will don't tell me. I don't want to know. Everything that I have consumed, which is a substantial. amount. Like, I've consumed more

clavicular knowledge than I have knowledge of, like, important matters, like St. Thomas Aquinas or, like, you know, famous people throughout history. I know more about clavicular than I know about St. Thomas Aquinas. But I have consumed all this information via I guess, like, these

accounts that cut from his live stream and then post them onto various social media feeds and aggregate the best scenes from his live streams. And in order to get super famous and to have control of the narrative now, like, that is what you need to do successfully. It's something that I wish I had.

Like, why aren't there more people doing highlight reels of me? If you're out there, something to think about. That if you're a Democratic politician, if you're a politician right now in 2026, like to get into the narrative, like you doing a good job with your own TikToks and tweets is really only so much. Like people are, you know, it is these clip farms where people are seeing this, you know, this information. AOC has this on her working for her. Very few politicians do. And clavicular does. And I think that it's an interesting kind of viewpoint into how to get famous and how to how to shape the narrative in the year 2026.

Yeah, but I would just add like an element to it. First of all, St. Thomas Aquinas, famous Jester Maxer. So they have those two things in common. Thank God. You didn't call them a goon. Because that would have been sacrilegious to call St. Thomas Aquinas a jester Guna. I did not. But the flip side of what you're saying is that this guy, clavicular, like, yeah, he streams a lot.

But like, and this is what was in the piece that Will wrote was like, you know, it's always up in the ante and doing insane shit. Like obviously, meth is insane and breaking bones in your face is insane. But like, in Will, you can maybe describe what actually happened. So, like, he live streamed him running over like a human. being in his cyber truck and and like got away with it and like you know it's like there it is all sort of yes

it's all streamed online but it's also all obviously a play for continued social relevance with this guy. Yeah I mean so the maybe we should talk briefly about the media environment here and as as you suggested Tim a lot of this is going down on like 12 hour

live streams where they're out in the world typically on kick.com which is like twitch.com dot com, but Twitch wasn't friendly enough to gambling ads, so they made a new one. And so basically, he's doing, I mean, I talk, I mean, he's getting, he's waiting guns around. I mean, he's like, this guy's coming after me, you know, I'm going to wave a gun at him. He's, as you said, I mean, there was an incident late last year where this guy was like stalking him. It was, it was, it was just sort of like in a mall.

And then the guy jumped on the hood of clavicular cyber truck and clavicular ran him over and said, you know, along the lines of like, I hope that guy died. And then he was never charged for it. So maybe it was all fake. But I mean, it's these kind of things that then, you know, these 12-hour streams, I will say having watched even maybe a totaled out, an hour of one of them, and they're really boring for the most part. But you have these little, these clippers who come in and they get that like 30 seconds of like clavicular ran a guy over. And then that's how it blows up. Let's talk about some of the the words that are used here, which are fucking impossible to understand. Yeah. Yeah, they are. I don't think I've got to. I don't think I've

I've heard of it. Well, I didn't have it. Maybe prior to this weekend, I did not. What is Jester Gooning? Can I just, can I feel this one? Okay. Sure. So, Jester, I don't know, I'm not sure that there's a ton of Jester Gooning happening. Wilkin may be correctly. Jester Maxing came out of potentially as recently as the night. I know, I know. It's important to understand what Jester Maxing is going to understand Jester Gooning. Clivicular When he was at the club, there's videos of him at the club. And, you know, there was a, you know, a kind of sense, I think, through the a aughts where, you know, a guy at the club to attract a woman, you would, you'd go to the,

you get a booth, you know, you'd get a couple bottles, maybe a couple bottles of gray goose. You would seem very cool, what we'd call down mugging. You'd like look good and you'd be chill. And the women would come to you, right? Because, you know, if you're an alpha dude, you're not going to go beg for it. Clavicular tried a different strategy, which was acting an ass. And it doesn't sound cool to say you're acting an ass on the dance floor. And so they called it jester maxing.

He was being a jester. He's being silly. He was jester maxing. And then jester gooning would be a spurn off of that. Gooning would be kind of extensive masturbation, like a very lengthy masturbation. And so then I believe jester gooning would be masturbating while like making silly faces. I'm taking that one via context clues. So, Will, please correct me if you don't think that's right.

That's right, Tim. I mean, basically, clavicular. Klamicular. Typically, typically clavicular hates gestures. Because you have to keep in mind. And then this by this language, it's been compared to like a clockwork orange or something. It's very this kind of weird like side English. But basically the, because on one hand you have clavicular.

who argues that the most important thing in the world is how you look, even over money, over status, the other things that these kind of like, you know, these would be playboys really seek. And on the other, some people might say, well, you know, I gesture max. I win over women with my charm and my personality and my jokes. And then clavicular disagrees with that. But even, you know, sometimes he'll get, he'll jester it up a bit. But a lot of times on stream, he'll get mad. And someone will be like, hey, clavicular, like, I love your stream.

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It's now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash bulwark takes to get free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash bulwark takes. Hold on. I do have to interrupt really quick. I'm sorry, because Will Summer is using some really out-of-date. terminology. When clavicular is

getting mad on stream, the appropriate term is to say that his cortisol is spiking. Yes, thank you. And I think you do hear a lot of people talking about how sometimes clavicular is cortisol spike, or more impressively, there will be some jestermaxers trying to get his cortisol

to spike and they will fail. And that is something that you want to, you know, that you want to aspire to. You want to keep your cortisol. You want to get, you want to keep your cortisol level. pretty level. All right, we've mentioned before, but what is monging? Yeah, mauging, I think, is kind of the most important word in the clavicular universe and sort of, I think increasingly in the kind of like Gen Z internet. So, mauging is a shortening of an earlier looks maxing word, an acronym for alpha male of the group. So the big dog among the men at a nightclub,

for example, or in a friend group. Then they shorten that to mog. And so if you, you know, if you just look cooler than a guy or you're keeping, you know, you're just making another guy look like a wimp. That would be you're maugging him. Yeah. Can we pull up on the screen here? Calvicular getting brutally frame-mogged by the ASU frat leader. That's what was going around this weekend.

No, Cicular is my guy, not the ASC. I don't, I am not into the ASU frat leader who framed-mogged. brutally, Cuvicular, but he, objectively, he did so. And just to be clear,

he got, he got fame mug because the ASU guy was just more Jack than he was. Well, but he also had like quite a frame,

right? I mean, he kind of looked like this. And I saw that as also he dominated the frame. You know, so if clavicular is being followed by a streamer

around, like most of the time he's dealing with kind of gestures and other, you know, riff-ref. I don't know what they use what were these riff-rap,

months or Floyd's. And so usually in the frame, in the frame, clavicular is kind of the key person. But then he went to meet the ASU frat leader and he kind of receded into the side of the frame because he got frame-mogged so hardcore. I was asking a lot of parents about this out at, out at the Frette, the crew of Frette parade this weekend on Saturday. And a lot of people had thoughts about how, how brutally he got framed-mogged. You mentioned foids. What are foids? Foids are short for femoids.

That's what these looks maxers call women. And if that seems a little unpleasant, you know, it is. And again, you can kind of see the overlap there within cells. But they'll say, like, there will be a video of like a griper walking around with his girlfriend and saying, like, this is my foid. Hey, well, this leads us to a key question that I haven't really got the answer to. And this was something going around this weekend. there's a viral post about Covicular at the club and how he was justrogooning and a group of foids came up to him.

And the person posed this query and I struggled with it. The query was this. Is ignoring the foids while munting and maugging moids more useful than SMV Chad fishing in the club? So again, I want to repeat that for folks. Is ignoring the foids while munting and mogging moids more useful to, than SMV Chad Fishing in the club. And that was kind of a brain teaser for me. Was that an earnest, do you think that was an earnest tweet or was that someone trying to

make light of the situation? I don't know, but it has 23 million views, which is significantly more than this video. I was going to have. So I want to set the scene for the club because that, obviously everything took off with that tweet and people being like, what is this language? What the funnies, I didn't realize because I didn't watch us. much as will that apparently

of the stream. But the weirdest part was why he was in a bad mood. Because this was the big problem for Gilvicar.

He looked very sad. And we can't even read it because it's so stupid. But he was not in a bad mood because he was

ignoring the foids of the moists. It's because, according to his piece, a woman had come, the waitress had come to

deliver his food. And she brought him Tomahawk steaks. And there's power techniques. And what he really wanted was his chicken tenders. Oh, the tendons. It's crazy. I mean, this guy, he's living the, like, influencer dream that this restaurant, I think, is giving him free food to him and his entourage. And they're like, all right, now we're going to light the cocktails on fire and all this stuff.

And you can see, like, the bodyguard, all the other kind of, like, lesser looks maxers are like, this is amazing. And clavicular was like, oh my God, oh my God. And, you know, he's with this young woman who's just, what's wrong, clavicular? And he's like, I need my chicken tenders. And finally they come and he really kind of visibly relaxes. Seems like his cortisol spiked over the attendees. Sam, I should mention we're 19 minutes in at this point. And it feels like you haven't done a great job of you buried the lead a little bit because

Clivicular did get jailed. Oh, right. Yeah, that was the issue. So the news here is that he was using a fake ID. He also had some drugs on him that were not legal. And he was arrested. He's out. I think that's good for him.

But he can't leave the state of Arizona right now. I believe he's supposed to go on some podcasts and he's not going to be able to do it. It's hard to do Chadfishing outside if you're stuck in Arizona. The pills that he was carrying were Adderall and an anabolic steroid pill. So what does one do if you're like a committed steroid and meth user and you get caught and you're in jail? It's got to be tough. Well, this is one of the great problems. And also, you know, if I'm understanding right, clivocular does not produce testosterone on his own due to his years of steroid abuse.

And so, you know, in the past when he's been busted, whether his college took his steroids or his parents did, it's become a big medical issue for him. But overall, I mean, I think he kind of hit a roadblock here in his quest for viral fame. You know, and he claims, you know, this is political persecution, what have you. I think one issue he may face in his trial is his numerous videos and blog posts talking about his love of abusing illegal drugs constantly. So I think that may come up at trial. But what if he, what if he frame Mogs the judge? And I'm assuming that he's that he sell Mogged a couple of the other criminals in jail. So I don't know.

Will, I had a question for you. I saw a post. It's hard to know what's real in this world. Like, for example, can I just throw this out there? I got caught on a viral thread about the TPSA halftime show. And I believe them when they said that Frazier did a rendition of tossed salad and scrambled eggs at the T.P. Shandesa halftime show. It turned out that was not true.

I passed that along as it was as fact to people. So I apologize for that misinformation that I accidentally passed along. So I don't want to do this again. I saw a post that's indicated that Peter T. Bailed out Clivocular. Do we know anything about whether that is true? That is not true. So in Clivicular was released.

I don't want to do that again. Was released on his own recognizance. So number one, I don't think he did, but there is no bail to pay. But what I would note is that in the past, Clivicular, he, he, like, answered the phone and he said, it's Peter Thiel. He's inviting me to a raucous party. But I think I kind of have to assume that that was a stunt he pulled to get attention. Got it.

But speaking of stunts that he pulled that successfully got attention, Sam mentioned this earlier. But I do just think it's really important to say that I like to be fully candid at the audience. You know, I have my biases. There's certain politicians I like better than others. One thing about clavicular that appealed to me was when he first came into my field of vision for the first time, he was doing an interview with Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire, who is like one of the easiest people in America to frame log. And Knowles is asking Clavicular about a hypothetical Newsom versus J.D. Vance matchup. And Clivicular talked about how Newsom is a giga-chad.

And J.D. Vance has a recess side profile and is obese and a subhuman. And despite the fact that we, I do think we have a lot of disagreements about his black billing and his nihilism. And I wouldn't have gone to the club with Nick Plaintes. I do think he had a pretty good read on JD Vance and his side profile. And I think it's possible that I'm maybe a little bit more forgiving towards Covicular for his different behaviors just based upon that introduction, which really drew me to him quite a bit. I do have to say.

Just one stray at J.D. Vance was all it took to when you over. Well, I'm going to end this by reading a little bit of the social media commentary about Will's piece that went up tonight. we're recording us at Monday night around like 9.30. This guy, Andrew, writes, quote, it's generally upsetting that I'm aware of this person's existence, thanks to a shocking degree to the bulwark. But it's also so dumb and unhinged.

It's hard not to get sucked in. Okay, that's one tweet. Hold on. Here's another guy walking Ryan. What the absolute fuck did I just read? That's a pretty good one. Thank you. And the last one from Bob Samson is,

it's my own fault, but there are so many things I'd rather know nothing about that I even understand this is a little depressing. So, yeah. I'm going to tell to all the people that are upset that we've introduced you to this. I hear you. They're happy upset. They're happy upset. Yeah.

I hear that. Look, there are elements of this. I wish I didn't know. I am happy to hear about J.D. Vance's recess side profile. But I think the good news is this weekend, you know, I don't know if wherever you live, they have carnival, they have Mardi Gras. But if you got to a party, you go, you know, you're hanging. out and someone asks you about the brutal frame mugging of the ASU frat leader, you know,

you're going to have a take, you know, and that's good. So that's kind of a little social capital that we're providing you. Yeah. No, Will's not doing this for shits and giggles. He's doing this to help people out. Well, and, you know, if I could just get serious for just a second, I mean, people say, like, what's the point of knowing about this guy, whatever? And besides his social media profile, I mean, I do think if this guy is being presented as a model of kind of like what it is to be a young man and the ideal of masculinity in 2026. I think it's worth looking at what does he what is his life really like? And so you read, oh, well, this guy has to take enormous amounts of an anti-seizure drug just to feel comfortable at his college move-in day. I mean, and, you know, it looks just a lot weirder when you get

into it. And so that's what I hope we provided here. Yeah. And I do think that's good. You know, people, you should find, if you're a young man watching this, you know, find your self-esteem from the inside, you know, from what you're providing to the world. You don't need antipsychotics in order to, you know, get through the day. All right. Speak for yourself. You know, you don't need to psychotic to deal with an annoying waitress, right? I mean, you're handsome the way you are, you know, without the bone smashing.

And, you know, I think that's important, an important counter message that we're providing. So thank you, Will. Thank you, Will. I'm going to go smash my face and take a little meth and call it a night. Tim, Will. Thank you very much. Everyone, subscribe to our feed. Also, if you're in Minneapolis, we got a live show on the 18th. Very few tickets left. You should try and grab them up if you are in Minneapolis. We also got some shows coming up in Dallas and Austin in March. So try to check those out as well. Fellas, thanks a bunch. Really appreciate it.