The Rich Roll Podcast - Decoding Looksmaxxing: The Crisis Consuming Young Men & The Real Path To Self-Worth

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

Bone smashing. Steroids. Crystal meth. 13-year-olds letting AI judge their faces. It's called looksmaxxing – and it presents as self-improvement. Underneath, it's a deftly weaponized pipeline to nihilism, misogyny, and self-destruction, consuming millions of young men right now. Adam Skolnick and I sit with all of it this week – what it is, why it's spreading, and what the real antidote looks like. If you have a young man in your life – or you are one – sit with this. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today's Sponsors: Rivian: Electric vehicles that keep the world adventurous forever👉🏼https://www.rivian.com  Shokz: Visit SHOKZ.com and use code RICHROLL to receive an exclusive offer on your purchase👉🏼https://beopen.shokz.com/RichRoll-OpenFitPro  AG1: Get a FREE bottle of D3K2, Welcome Kit, and 5 travel packs with your first order👉🏼https://www.drinkAG1.com/richroll  Prolon: Get 15% OFF plus a FREE bonus gift👉🏼https://www.prolonlife.com/richroll  OneSkin: Get started today with 15% off using code RICHROLL👉🏼https://www.oneskin.co  WHOOP: The all-new WHOOP 5.0 is here! Get your first month FREE👉🏼https://www.join.whoop.com/Roll  Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors👉🏼https://www.richroll.com/sponsors  Find out more about Voicing Change Media at https://www.voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange

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Rivion gives you both so you can adventure without compromise. eyes. Clavicular was mid-gester-gooning when a group of foids came and spiked his cortisol levels. Is ignoring the foids while munting and monging moids more useful than SMV chat fishing in the club? I've never felt so old in my entire life. Clavicular. How's it going?

If you haven't heard of clavicular yet, it's only a matter of time before you do. The 20-year-old looks-maxing live-streamer has become inescapable online. Looksmaxing is the furthest extent. that you could take self-improvement. Do whatever it takes to ascend through any and every mechanism out there. Here's how you ascend. You do crystal meth steroids and you like bang a hammer on your like cheekbones for something called bone smashing. What is even happening?

Anybody who has fallen into this trap, put the fucking phone down. So let's begin with defining this term looks maxing. I mean, looks maxing is basically this movement, uh, wherein, you, young men are insanely committed to improving their physical appearance. And this entails a spectrum of behavior from what's called soft maxing behavior, which is like normal grooming habits,

like taking care of yourself, brushing your teeth, and conditioning your hair and taking care of your skin, to these hard maxing behaviors, which are more extreme permanent or like even surgical interventions. Like we're talking about the people who like break their legs so that they can extend them, and become taller, something called bone smashing

where you take a hammer to your cheekbones. For some reason, this is supposed to create, you know, higher, more pronounced cheekbones. There's roid maxing, taking steroids. It even goes so far if you like observe this clavicular guy to like taking crystal meth to suppress your appetite. Now this, if you've never heard of it before, just sounds like absolute insanity.

But this is happening. And there are a lot of young men who are engaged in this behavior or are being heavily influenced by people like this person called clavicular who is sort of an avatar of this movement. And the essence of it is much more than personal vanity. It is this gamified approach to maximizing your physical attractiveness on the premise that that is truly the only thing that matters,

that your entire self-worth boils down to the degree to which you are physically attractive. And not for nothing, it's not for the purpose of being able to then go out in the world and get a good job or find a partner. It's truly this game in which the point is to ascend this hierarchy in comparison, like this zero-sum game, where you're ascending this hierarchy in comparison

to other men. Like, it's literally that. Well, I think, I think it's this, it's basically, from my understanding, is it's accepted knowledge that unless you're in the rarefied air of this ranking system, then you have no hope of a partnership. You have no hope of making real money in this economy with AI. You have no hope of a good life at all. You're just going to be like a bottom feeder,

unless you adhere to these principles, unless you pursue this. looks maxing, you have no hope, especially if you just genetically look a certain way. What is your explanation for why this has become such a popular trend with young men? Well, it's like this, it's like the glow up gone bad. You know, it's young women have been under pressure from the way they look and the way they're perceived

for the entirety of popular culture. And young men have avoided that same, to some degree have avoided that same scrutiny. Social media changes all of that. Now, although they're late to the party, young men are seeing themselves through that same looking glass, and they're not liking what they're seeing. And this branches off in-cell culture and right-wing culture.

It's all about this isolated young man who is unhappy in their life, trying to figure out a way to get better at life. And so, you know, all this self-optimizing, it's basically self-optimization just mutated into this bizarre appeal to look a certain way, not to accomplish a certain thing or to be a certain person, but to look a certain way. And that itself is the gift. That's the gateway to the good life. And so it's all this stuff that we know has been toxic to some degree in a certain dose. optimization, efficiency, the worship of the successful person. All this kind of stuff is now backed up on these young men.

And, you know, listen, when I was a teenager, I wasn't super stoked on myself. I wasn't a happy guy. I didn't have a bunch of girlfriends. I wasn't like, I mean, I had friends. I was fine. But I wasn't, like, stoked on life to be an adolescent with, like, no girls around.

Like, I wasn't really happy. but in our day, it was, I think, more normal. And now it's looked at not just through the kids in your school, but you know, you're judging yourself based on this infinite fun house mirror of social media and it's just getting twisted. Your entire worth is reflected back to you

through the digital mirror of your lived experience. Like you're measuring yourself constantly against impossible standards that you can't live up to. And, you know, if you're a young man and you are in that, you know, either adolescent state or post-adolescent state, like, listen, it's hard to be a human being. You know, it's particularly hard to be a young person,

more so than ever. Like, it's so difficult and fraught. And I'm very, like, empathetic to that sense of not knowing where you fit in, who you are, how are you gonna, how you're gonna connect, with other people and develop some degree of self-esteem. And like yourself, like I was not a vision for you. Like, you know, people know me as like,

oh, the ultra athlete or if you Google me, there's like pictures of my torso and I look very fit. But as a young person, I was an isolated, lonely child who really had a hard time, like making friends, connecting with other people. And it didn't help that I walked around with, and I wore glasses, but I also had an eye patch. I have a weak left eye.

And the idea in the 70s was that if you want to correct that problem, the best thing to do is to put a patch on your strong eye and make your weak eye work out until it gets adequately strong. This didn't work. This is a vestigial kind of torture device of the 1970s that I was victim to. And on top of that, I wore headgear orthodontia, you know, this for people that don't know,

like wires coming out of my mouth with like a strap around my back. So imagine glasses, patch on the eye, wires coming out of my mouth, like walking the hallways of a school. Like, this is not looks maxing. This is looks minimizing. This is like a John Hughes joke.

And yeah, I was, you know, I was sort of a social pariah as a young person and it had an indelible impact on my self-esteem. Like I was a naval gazing kid who struggled mightily as a young person. And I can only imagine that I would have been vulnerable to somebody who pops up on my social media feed

and who's saying like, listen, comb your hair. Like, you know what's the entry point to this? Like, you know what? Like wash your face, brush your teeth. You know, comb your hair. Like comb it this way, not that way. use this grooming product because if you can just up level how you appear like that's gonna make a big difference.

And before you know it, now you're moving into this world where then it becomes this strange, kind of deftly weaponized, pseudo scientific, eugenics coded, you know, vocabulary that has to do with like the, you know, the angle of your jaw line and the distance between your eyes and the degree to which your clavicle is like,

you know, straight or angled down, like all of this very bizarre stuff that then gets laden with meaning that is intertwined with self-worth in a really kind of like perverse way, where the ultimate kind of representative of this is Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. 100%. So here we are,

Millions of young people are being influenced by this subculture. We've got engineer Desmond up there, also a young man. So do you, are you aware of this looks maxing, like world? Yeah, totally. And do you know anyone who's in it? Like, how do you understand this? What's going on? I feel like half of my friends are like that.

They're into it? They're into it. Because I feel like in our age, social media is pretty, like, you know, prominent. and then like everybody is just kind of like terminally online I would say and then like you feel bad like you know because when something gets trendy

like you know looks maxing right it's like an idea for like you know men to like look better so they can attract like you know their partner and stuff so I think like everybody is just kind of like trying to seek like you know the approval that they didn't have I guess.

Yeah. It's almost like a video game, the gamified aspect of it with all these weird terms, the terminology, but beneath it all, not only is it this exercise and self-indulgent, self-obsession, it's deeply nihilistic. Right. You know, it's basically like, the only thing that matters is your physical appearance.

And your self-improvement should be restricted to, you know, know how you physically appear. Right, I mean, it's all distilled down to that. Like your self-worth is distilled down to your appearance. And it's something that, like I said before, young women have dealt with their lives and had to kind of figure out, now young men are subject to it.

I mean, the Patrick Bateman reference is so perfect. Like there's a scene in the movie, his morning routine, where he ice packs his face and then he does a thousand crunches. And that- It's so mild compared to today's like morning routine, you know, self-optimization kind of like stuff that you see on social media. Yeah, and it's also satire about here's this guy who's a psychopath, by the way. He's murdering people.

He's murdering people. And he wants to look his best. And it's been viewed unironically millions of times. Like it's picked up speed in 2023. It was up at 17 million views already. And so like God knows what it's at now. You know, it's interesting, like back when we were growing up, you know, we could go home and at least not be in the lens, not be in the spotlight and we could just find some solace. But now with all these kids like Desmond said, terminally online or young men terminally online, there's no escape because it's not just that you're comparing yourself to the whole world.

Your own insular community is now looking at you all the time. Like, you can't escape from the judgment of your peers. And I think that this idea of you can learn how to do things online, which is good. Like, you know, the DIY aspect of YouTube is playing into this. Like, everything that has been helpful to people to learn how to, like, do everything from baking sourdough bread to play in the guitar is now being used in a way to kind of to reexamine how you look and what you look like. And there's a ranking system. Yeah, that's the gamification of the whole thing. It's like there's wins and fails.

You know, there's all that, like, this idea of magging is basically like you're showing up somebody else standing next to somebody, like who is the more dominant force. Like, it's all competition premised on this zero-sum idea that everything is a hierarchy. Like it isn't a video game. Like there's a scale of one to nine or something on how you look and a nine as a slayer

or an eight as a Chad, these are good. And then if you're four to six, you're a normie. And if you're one to three, you're subhuman. And I mean, that's how people are getting judged and you can get judged in forums where other people judge you, sometimes harshly, sometimes they mean well. And others, you can actually get AI to rate you.

There's something called look smack GPT or something, looks maxing GPT. There's something called UMax, where you can go online and AI will judge you based on how you look, taking photos of your angles. And apparently like 13-year-olds are into this. Like 13-year-olds are engaging in some of these practices. It would be comical if it wasn't so deeply sad and tragic.

You know what I mean? Like there is like you read that tweet and you're like, oh my God, what's going on? But I know that tweet that you read has something like 12 million views. You know, like obviously, this is more than just a small thing. And you can't help but think, like, how is this affecting the still forming prefrontal cortexes of, like, young people?

Right. You know, it's fucked up, man. It is. It really is. And you can empathize or sympathize with the young man who is feeling lost and, you know, comes across something that seems just self-improvement oriented enough

to kind of bring you in, right? But then it becomes, it can become like this pipeline to some not great ideas. Like you're hooking a lonely person who hears a voice about how to get a better jawline. They end up joining some community or some forum where they're following a creator and learning about this terminology.

But essentially, you're being indoctrinated into this comparison economy where you're in competition with every single person, looks are everything. and this is going to make you, over time, like more vulnerable to being manipulated into some not so great adjacent ideologies, like not for nothing, misogyny. You know, women are props. They're superficial.

You know, they're not really what's important here. The idea that society is a rigged hierarchy, it's all set up against you, and this is your only chance. You have to invest in your looks, and this is your only way out. Like, it's really tragic. It is. I mean, it comes from in-cell culture, right? So they're lonely, lonely guys who couldn't figure out a way to communicate with women who feel like they were.

And some of them became proudly in cell that, you know, we're never going to, they're going to be celibate involuntarily for their life. And then this became an escape hatch for some guys out of that. And that's why you have teens and tweens, tweens, queens posting. detailed measurements of their bodies, photographing every angle of their face. I mean, think about that, a tween boy doing that and putting it up online for judgment and as a way to try to make sure that you are more attractive to the opposite sex. It's like this crazed, it's a anxious neuroses that just continues to spin. And so it like it's, you know, how do you, I think the main, thing is how do we get out of it? Like, why are half Desmond's friends on there? Like,

what is going on in culture? Is it that young men and women aren't connecting as much in normal life? Desmond, is that part of the draw that these men are not, they want to, they want to meet women and this is their way of doing it? I think it's also because, like, right now we have, like, you know, social media and then dating apps, right? I believe you guys didn't use, like, you know, dating apps back then. And when you're using, like, a dating app, from my experience, you're kind of, like, you know, shopping around to see, like, who's attractive instead of, like, actually getting to talk to them.

And then girls would kind of, like, you know, only kind of, like, match with you. Once, like, you know, if you're attractive enough to them. And since, like, you know, becoming, like, you know, looks maxing is kind of trendy right now, more guys want to be, like, you know, that have that facial feature. or like that height and stuff to like, you know, attract the opposite sex, I would say? Yeah, I mean, I think it makes sense that this would be an outgrowth

from the gamification of dating and relationships, right? Like these dating apps are gamified and so, all right, so how are we gonna play this? But I think what's sort of distinct about looks maxing is that it's not about, it's not really necessarily about getting attractive to find a mate. It's getting attractive to like,

maug other men. You know what I mean? It's this hierarchy amongst men. That's the ultimate, like, I think it's, I think that's coming from guys that have already gotten enough validation from women, don't you think? And then the next thing that they're promoting

is to be above men, like clavicular. The clip that kind of went nuts and put like clavicular on the map was when he was doing a podcast, with where basically he was comparing Gavin Newsom and J.D. Vance. And he was basically saying that like Gavin Newsom is a Chadd. And J.D. Vance, you know, is not looks maxing enough. You know, like this guy isn't measuring up like in his jawline, you know, he's, he's overweight or whatever. And he was so matter of fact in this like breakdown analysis basically saying like, like I, he was basically saying like,

I agree with J.D. Vance's worldview, but I'm going to vote for Gavin Newsom because he's the Chad in this equation. That's right. It was a right-wing podcast because these guys typically are and and he was, yeah, he was asked who he'd vote for in a 2028 presidential contest and apparently the host of the podcast, I forget who it is. There's no reason to big him up now is, was shocked that this guy who he knows is Republican picks, picks the, picks Gavin Newsom and it's purely superficial. I mean, it's self-improvement culture gone wrong. Haywire. Yeah. Yeah.

It's like the nip-tuck wing of the life optimization, morning routine, longevity, extending kind of health influencer corner of the internet. Which is interesting because we both in different ways have been connected to that corner and we profited. Am I like responsible on some level for, you know, kind of planting the seeds for something like this to happen? because these are topics that I talk about a lot,

you know, and it's interesting to kind of like reflect on that. But what is the relationship between this movement and like the alt-right? Like what is that like nexus all about? I mean, Nick Fuentes, it's the Groyperism. It's that what's the Pepe the, it's the Pepe the Frog. It goes back to 4chan in-cell culture. And you know, it's sort of, you know,

Nazi youth coded as well, right? Like there is a, there is a superior race kind of like aspect to all of this. That's right. That's, you know, deeply unsettling. I watched Jojo Rabbit by the way, again recently, not for nothing. It's a, it's a, you know, it's a great satire of Nazi Germany.

It's like the YTT. Yeah, it's, it's, Teta yTT's satire of like the Hitler youth movement, like Boy Scout version. And in that movie, I bring it up, Because in that movie, the two kids who are the, who you care about the most, including one who worships Hitler, is being mocked because he's a nerd and he's small

and he's not the, he's not like, he is not fitting the stereotype. So that's what's odd about this too, is like some of these people will never fit the stereotype that they are trying to. There's like that part of it too. So, yeah, I mean, it's very much connected to that social Darwinistic idea.

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to this amongst right wing politics is Christianity. Like we're seeing these two, these are two kind of opposing forces that are emerging in this world. On the one hand we have this looks maxing thing. It's all about self-obsession, it's all about superficiality, it's all about competition. And then the countervailing force is,

is, you know, this rise of Christian values. And what is it called, Tyler? like the woman who stays home, what's I called? The trad wife. Like these seem to be in conflict with each other or competing with each other on some level. It's the fight for the soul of this weird consensus, right? That has like put us in this mess now.

There's the roots in violence, the roots in self-aggrandizement as well as self-hatred. It's like a kind of a weird thing. And then there's this more holistic, but still, I mean, you can't, take away violent from the white Christian kind of ideal. There's always been violence underpinning it. But like when you look at that world, they're much more focused on constructing some world, a new world. This one is like breaking yourself down and breaking everything down to the individual.

So it's like these two weird reflections of conservative America. It's all about individualism and whatever it takes, and it's constructing this familial ideal because that's the right way to live. It's very interesting. It's definitely those are the ideals. I was thinking about that article because he brings up this John B. Calhoun experiment in 1968,

where he built a large enclosed, like cage for a mouse colony with abundant food and water, no predators, lots of space for nesting. And at first the population flourished. But later in the experiment, a group of the male mice kind of came, like separated from the others and focused all their time on grooming, sleeping and eating and maintaining clean, unscarred bodies

and just being the perfect mouse. And they disengaged from the community and they stopped reproducing and eventually the entire population collapse. collapsed. So this, this navel gazing, as you said, this sole focus on how you look and how you think you're being perceived ends up, not just in the Dorian Gray way of kind of making you into a monster in some way. It actually, from a social, the social cost is immense because it, it furthers the isolationism and it furthers the competition. It furthers all the things that are trying to pull

apart. I mean, say what you want about the Kirk's turning point. They are trying to build a community. You know, they are. And if you agree with them, you can be in the community. It's like, there is a constructive element. I'm not saying I agree with everything. But like, they're, they're trying to build something. And this is, and this is not. Yeah. The mouse experiment makes me think like, oh, if you meet everybody's needs, then left to our own devices, it all goes to shit because we just become self-obsessed and we concern ourselves with things that don't matter.

Like, there's no looks maxing going on on the precipice of World War II. No. It's like, this is not happening. You know, like when there's real problems and we have to come together to solve them, we don't have time for nonsense like this. But when you look at looks maxing,

it's black pill nihilism, we're doing it for the lulls or whatever, or, you know, Christianity, family values, traditionalism, these are very different movements, but essentially what's similar or shared about them is that they're both solutions to this search for meaning. And, you know, like if you took this mouse experiment, just imagine, you know, 10, 20 years from now,

or whenever it is when, you know, AI takes all the jobs and we, and I assume at some point we'll need universal basic income or something. Right. And we just get money in our account every month and we don't have to work and we have to figure out, like, what's the crisis of meaning then? It's, you know, you think it's an epidemic now?

Like, we have to figure out how to make our lives feel meaningful without having work as an outlet or a vehicle for that. This is only going to exacerbate this very, you think LuxMaxing is bad now? Like, what's it gonna look like when AI is controlling everything? And we are left with nothing but free time. Right, I mean, it's terrible, right? But then back to these two things, Christianity and looks at it's,

they're both searches for meaning. They're both answers to this search for meaning, right? this crisis of meaning that we're having, like what does my life mean? Oh, it's about physical appearance. Oh, it's about the nuclear family or it's about my faith or there's different avenues for all of this.

And I suppose when you look at it through the lens of like the right wing, it's not by accident that this is happening under the leadership of one of the most, as Chatterton Williams said, like the most narcissistic and superficial president in US history. It's like, okay, well, who's at the top?

What does that guy stand for? Okay, downstream of that. That's what we're seeing happening with young people. But I think fundamentally, in this crisis of meaning, what you're trying to solve for is certainty in an uncertain world. Like what is certain?

It's like, oh, here are some rules I can hang my hat on. Like this is what's important, like this competition among men for looks or, you know, faith in my, my, my nuclear family and my sort of status within my community. But we have to find, not that, you know,

that's all good, like if you, you're faith-based life, fantastic, but with respect to looks maxing, like we need to provide an antidote to this for young men and on ramp to, you know, get them off of this track, this pipeline that leads them towards more dangerous ideologies. Yeah, and the dangerous, I mean the dangerous, most dangerous ideology

is like, can be looks maxing itself because some of these young people are getting told to go into ropes maxing. There's no hope for you and encouraging self harm and worse. And so, this fatalism. Yeah. This is what you look like, there's nothing you can do, there's no hope for you.

Like this is, this isn't, you know, this is just a horrible violence. It's horrible. I mean, I have a five-year-old. It terrifies me to even think about like, and what, so what's the solution? I mean, I think some of this is coming from just the very real thing is that guys want to be with a woman. We want to have sex. We want to, we want to fall in love.

And, you know, in the old days, you had to learn how to kind of make yourself attractive to women in whatever you had. And sometimes that took longer than others, you know, and some, it was easier for some than others. And it's always been that way. But now it's like you said, this gamified version of it, and it's so much more twisted. So like, how do we get out of it? Like what's the solution?

I think in order to answer that question, we first have to look at the tectonic shifts in our media economy. It wasn't so long ago, Adam, when you and I were younger, that when we looked around at people who inspired us, it could be rock star, it could be, you know, a movie star, it could be a scientist or an astronaut or somebody like that. But these are people who distinguished themselves

by doing something excellent, right? They earned through their toil and their talent, they're stationed in life and, you know, have done something, you know, worthy of note. They have accomplished something, right? At the same time, it's funny because we're all, we were talking about this earlier, like, the world is so self, so obsessed with, like, startup culture and entrepreneurship and, like, see, like, the pinnacle is, like, becoming a CEO, right? But when we were kids, like, CEOs were dorks, you know, it was like, Lee Ayacocca was like the, you know,

like the example of the successful CEO. None of us were like, I want to be a CEO. I still don't want to be a CEO. And I don't want to be, I don't want to go to the internet. Everyone seems obsessed with becoming a CEO. I know, this is like, this is a very unique thing of our time. Yeah. But that turned, we went from that into a celebrity obsessed culture where the earning ratio was reduced because of things like

reality TV, like you just had to be famous. And there were many vehicles for getting famous and not all of them, by necessity, required that you achieve something noteworthy. You know, there was a broader, a wider path towards celebrity status. And the goal then became to become a celebrity. And if you could become that, then doors would open

and you would have a great life. That was the idea. Now we've migrated even beyond that, where it's just about attention. It's not even necessarily celebrity, it's about getting a lot of attention. If you can get the most attention, then you can make money and you can do all these other things, right?

And by proxy, I suppose, like live a happy life, right? But the incentive structure built around getting attention is a very unhealthy one. The way you get attention is by doing outrageous things or having an insane point of view or being contrary. or conspiracy-minded, or there's different variations of this,

but you can go from obscurity to getting extreme attention almost overnight. And I think that is warping to the brain of, to anybody, but particularly to the brain of a young person. So their ambition goes from, I wanna be in the rock band or I wanna be this great athlete to, wow, if only I was like so-and-so, and have the attention,

that becomes like that. Well then it became like, then I wanna be a celebrity, then it became I wanna be an influencer. And now it's just, it's not even that. It's like how do I get a bunch of attention immediately? Right. You know, and not for nothing, like if you're really good looking,

if your looks maxing, probably easier to get a lot of attention. Or if you're making videos about like taking a hammer to your cheekbones and why this is a good idea, that's probably gonna get a lot of attention also. Yeah. So we're upside down. You know, our, our, our, our moral compass is, you know, spinning round and round and can't find its true north right now.

And, you know, there's a lot of, you know, confused young people in the wake of this. So when I think about my own work, the premise of this show is and always has been, like how do you unlock your best and most authentic self? That could be interpreted on a superficial level. How do you, how do you like look your best

by eating the right foods or losing weight, extending that to things like morning routines and daily workout routines and daily nutritional plans and everything from your journaling practice to your mindfulness practice. But essentially the deeper you delve into this and what hopefully I've modeled over the many years of doing this is that this is not a superficial exercise

that your best most authentic self requires a deep examination of mind, body, and spirit. And to be, become more self-actualized by necessity requires self-transcendence. You have to graduate from your self-obsession into a life that is premised upon something bigger and more important than yourself. Looks maxing is the ultimate expression

of self-obsession on some level. There could be no more superficial pursuit than this. Self-transcendence is the opposite of that. and in between, there's all kinds of practices to get you there. We're all on the spectrum between these two polarities, I think. But to me, that's how I've always interpreted it. And you begin wherever you're at. If you're a looks maxer, maybe the path towards greater self-actualization starts with brushing your teeth or, you know, combing your hair,

or even figuring out how to present yourself in a way that. that makes you feel better about yourself and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But ultimately we have to progress up the Maslow's hierarchy of needs in our quest for expansion and enlightenment. And those things start to fall away and become less important. But I think at a base level, if you're dealing with somebody who has zero self-esteem,

doesn't see any opportunity for themselves, doesn't have the self-belief to take the initiative in life, This is a person who's gonna be susceptible to the wiles of the social media influencer looks maxer. And that person might only be able to, you know, hear the most basic level stuff, you know, and to that person, it might be revelatory to begin with their appearance, you know,

so that when they look in the mirror in the morning, maybe they feel a little bit better about themselves. But the point is that you build on that and you're constantly graduating, you know, to different levels like, okay, what's next, what's more. It's an ongoing search for meaning and meaning, you know, will continue to allude those who look for it in the context of their own self-regard and self-obsession.

I want to just to add on to that. What you're talking about is a way to have a more meaningful life and a healthier life could begin with a looking in the mirror assessment. But we're talking about a healthier life. A healthier life would never include using steroids, which some of these teenagers do. But maybe eat some healthier food and like lose a little bit of weight and the bags under your eyes go away. Like I'm talking, I'm not talking about like your jawline. I'm just underlying. I'm just saying that's for actually further separation. It sounds like it's starting in the same place, but it's actually not because

is your intention is always better health. There's always a deeper intention from the get-go when you look at it from this point of view. When you look at it from looks-maxer point of view, it's just how to get something, some weird metric, and it's by any means possible. It's appearance over substance. You know, it's all about aesthetics and appearance.

And, you know, I'm saying that substance is what matters. And I think, you know, if you're, are just trying to short, shortcut yourself to something. Like, yeah, it's like, oh, how you look on the surface. It doesn't matter if there's any depths to you. It doesn't matter what you actually stand for or say or what your values are. It's just like what's on the surface level. Like, good luck.

Good luck in life. You will not find meaning or happiness or fulfillment or satisfaction. You can chase that as long as you like, but it only goes in one direction and it ain't good. If you want to find meaning, if you want to resolve your own personal crisis of meaning and you want to find real fulfillment and a path towards happiness and a sense of satisfaction with your life, you are going to have to plumb the depths

and find something of substance to sink your teeth into. And wherever you find yourself, whatever your lot in life, this shift has to take place from aesthetic dominance to some degree of functional competence and character-based value. So what are your values? What are you not good at?

What are you good at? Where does your curiosity lead you? Start with your curiosity. Find something that excites you enough to learn more and develop some degree of skill and competence in it. That's the ultimate self-esteem builder. Looking in the mirror is always going to be an empty promise. And the more you look in the mirror,

the more faults you're going to find in yourself, the more you're gonna compare yourself to other people, the more you're gonna gamify your life, and the shittier you're gonna feel. And there's no way out of that trap. The solution is to get outside of your self-obsession, invest yourself in something that has meaning outside of your own personal stake in gain,

and putting your phone down, going outside, being in a community with other people, looking to enter rooms with how you can contribute rather than what you're going to extract in this gamified zero-sum idea of what life is because that's not what life is. And finding meaning and value in your relationships and in cooperation, not competition.

And also it's like, to be honest, to try to appeal to some sort of construct of beauty, you're often not beautiful. I mean, you're often not. You're often either beautiful in an obvious way that is common or you don't actually get there at all. Well, anybody who cares that much about their appearance is ghoulish.

Yeah. And true beauty is reflected, you know, in the person who's really engaged with life and, you know, has that sense of fulfillment that is, like you can read it on their face. It's not about the angle of their whatever. It's about like the way they carry themselves. Their sense of self that is evident.

Like when somebody walks in the room who's really happy with their life and is contributing and feels good about what they do, that is infinitely more attractive than the person with the sculpted eyebrows that creeps you out. Like this whole thing is, is like gross and creepy and weird

and very like American psycho, clockwork orange. And like anybody who has fallen into this trap, get the fuck out of it. Like this is not a path to what you think it is. No, I mean that's the true ascension when you find somebody who has got- It was like this idea of ascension as part of this whole world.

Right, right, like so basically clavicular tries to help. I can't believe we're talking about this guy. This guy apparently is a coach and he gets people to do these things. a lot of this hard maxing, which is the steroids and the crystal meth and the hitting yourself with a hammer. What are we even talking about?

This is so insane. It's insane and it's called ascension. But- Yes. Here's how you ascend. You do crystal meth steroids and you like bang a hammer on your like- Because their face looks different. What is even happening?

I know it's hard to, it's hard to imagine why, how we got here, but we got here. I mean, I think it all boils down this motherfucker right here, dude. This thing right here. It's the phone. It's the phone, man. It's the phone.

That's what did it. That's what got us here. The idea that that phone gave birth, that these ideas even exist, let alone have captured, you know, the attention and fascination of millions of young people

is so disturbing to me. Well, that's the... Like, what have we brought? And where is this leading us? This episode is brought to you. you by one skin. As a very proud Gen X elder, I promise you no male that I knew when I was growing up ever talked about taking care of their skin. Nobody. Not just because it wasn't cool or considered a vanity thing. It just wasn't a thing at all. So I would say that I'm late to this game,

so you don't have to be. And what I've realized is that I'm not too late because one skin is this line of skin care products that leverages this breakthrough peptide. They call it OSCE. one, which is the first ingredient shown to target senescent cells, which are a key driver of skin aging. This product, the topical supplement for the face, I use this every day, it's based on a decade of longevity research that clinically validates this peptide as supporting smoother, firmer, healthier-looking skin. And I can tell you that that pretty much mirrors my personal experience. As somebody who's turning 60 this year, after decades of sun, salt, and chlorine, exposure, OneSkin really has made a difference in the health and appearance of my skin.

So check it out. For a limited time, try OneSkin with 15% off using code Richroll at Onskin.co slash richroll. The crazy thing about all of this is that it's pitched as a way of getting ahead in life. Like if you are worried about your lot in life, here's how you get an advantage. and you're being sold a fucking lie. This is not the answer. No. But the good news is there is an advantage. It's never been easier ever to get ahead of other people

because everybody is so distracted by the phone. Put the phone down, read a book, go outside, make friends, build something, do shit together, push heavy weight around, get your heart rate up, you know, commit to doing something hard, set a goal for yourself and commit to achieving it, push your body, invest yourself in something that is actually a steam building,

contribute to somebody else, show up for another person, do a favor for a friend, touch grass, go out of your way to see people and say yes to new experiences. That's it. That's it, man. That is the solution. to all of this. While everyone else is scrolling, if you can put the phone down and just make your

life a little bit more analog and service-oriented and constructive with a growth mindset, there's absolutely no limit on what you are going to be capable of achieving because everyone else is handicapped. Right. So that is the answer. And you don't need to be sold a $99 or a $9,99,000. course to do that. All you have to do is summon the courage and the discipline to put the fucking phone down and start living your life proactively with a degree of intentionality,

mindfulness, curiosity, and intentionality. Well said. Because what that gets you is that feeling of self-confidence, that glow that you were talking about earlier, like where you can feel that presence of somebody when they come close to you. You have to earn it. You have to earn it, but it's...

You could put lotion on your face and like wax your eyebrows and do whatever crazy shit these people are telling you to do. It's not going to make you feel better. The only thing that is going to give you that feeling of personal satisfaction is when you go and get out of your comfort zone, do something hard, achieve something,

fail, make mistakes, learn, do it again. This is how you do it. You have to earn it. You have to put yourself in a situation that is a bit uncomfortable and see yourself through it. That's how you build a self-esteem. You build self-esteem by performing esteemable acts on behalf of yourself and on behalf of other people. And the attraction that you're seeking is not a superficial result of all of this bullshit you're being pitched. Attraction is the byproduct of living a meaningful life.

Figure out what's meaningful to you. What are your values? Write them down. What is meaningful? Pursue that. Work hard towards it. Put yourself in those uncomfortable situations where maybe you're going to fail

or you're going to get rejected and invest yourself there. If you do that, you will become much more attractive than you ever will through this other nonsense. It's not the glow up. It's the glow in. The way that mods are attracted to light,

you have to glow inside. And if you glow in, then you become attractive. Then you're the attractive, then you're like the tractor beam and people come to you and opportunities come to you. I will say that in my monologue about how it's never been easier to distinguish yourself because of the mass distraction that everybody's experiencing right now,

at the same time, it is more difficult to, go outside and make friends and be with friends and do things together and cultivate community because we don't really have the third spaces that we used to have. I mean, they're not completely gone, but if you're a young person, you know, there isn't the youth centers and the YMCA's

and the faith-based organizations and all the like that young people used to gather after school. So that is a challenge. I'm not, you know, not recognize. recognizing that, but that doesn't mean that it's not possible. You just have to really, you know, if you want to commit to something, that is a worthy commitment to make. There's a great parents article, like a parents magazine article about this,

and it includes a couple of tips for parents. So I'm going to just read off a couple of tips that we're in there for people. So parents, if you have, you know, tweens and teens that you want to monitor this stuff, The main thing is you gotta have some sort of surveying control of the social apps. It's harder to do that because these kids know how to create fake accounts, but if you can somehow survey what they're getting

on social media or elsewhere. That's really hard. I know it's hard. It's really hard. Like your kids are young. Like I'm just telling you, like they get to a certain age. Like you're locked out, dude. It's really difficult to have that certain.

And you don't, you also don't want to be the pay where the kid is like, oh, my parents look at everything that I'm doing, like you're breeding distrust there. And I don't know, I'm not saying I have the solution to this, but I think a lot of parents are gonna hear that and be like, yeah, that's not gonna work in my case. Okay, that's, so that one, this is coming from the article. So this is good, because, so the other one they recommend is-

What article? Where was this? Parents magazine. Mm-hmm. The other one is called, they say, talk about it. And combined with an activity of some kind to bring it up to create a strength board of like a whiteboard of what you're good at and kind of like talk about that with them openly, validate their experiences,

and fact check some of these ideas together. How much of that do you think could go? Or is that too much to ask? I think these two points of advice are in conflict with each other. If you're the parent who's monitoring their social media, then that's a cross-purposes. with the goal of open communication.

Because then they're like, they don't trust you. You know, you're why, they're gonna keep, they're gonna have a Finsta account where the real shit's going on, you know? And that's breeding like secrecy and lying and all the like. Yeah. But that second piece of advice, I think, is much more valuable,

which is the goal is always to have the channel of communication wide open. And the only way to do that as a parent is to establish trust over a long period of time and create a non-revelling a non-judgmental environment where the young person feels safe talking about these things. Most young people, especially when the teen years

kind of enter the picture, the last people they wanna share this kind of stuff with is their parents. And part of that is healthy. It's healthy individuation. You want your child to like, develop some independence and not be so reliant upon the parents. And these are like kind of embarrassing. kind of embarrassing things to talk about.

And you know, there's, there's very few people in that age bracket who are gonna just bring this up with their parents, hey, like I'm thinking about like banging a hammer to my, you know, cheekbones. Like any kid who would be considering that is in a pretty lonely, desperate state who I would imagine is already like quite withdrawn. And that communication channel with the parents

or the whoever is the authority figure in their life is probably not awesome at that point already. but the underlying principle is correct, which is open communication, how do you get there? You've got to love your kids unconditionally and not judge them. So when they go and they make a mistake or they fuck up or they do something you told them

they shouldn't or can't, you can't come down like a ton of bricks on them. You've got to be like, okay, let's figure it out. Like why did you feel like that was, you know, like tell me what was going on. Like try to understand, not judge. And I think over time, you can create a more welcome mat for those types of conversations. But you also can't demand them or solicit them.

Like the kid is in control of how much information they're going to share. And they decide when they're going to open up. And sometimes you just got to put the time in until finally they're like they start telling you about something that happened at school. And you have to make sure that you're really present and available for that conversation. And this is something I learned from Lisa DeMore, the parenting expert, the Ask Lisa podcast, part of our network. And her whole thing, like if you want to just

have one takeaway from this if you're a parent, the retort or the response to all of this is always just, you know, tell me more. Like, oh, tell me more, tell me more about that. Like, be curious, you know, be non-judgmental and just be like, oh, wow, really? Like, tell me about that. Like how did that feel for you?

Yeah, except if they're in therapy, they're gonna recognize that therapy talk and then your mom's gonna- but there's a way of like just being like, oh, really like, I mean, you can use different phraseology, but the spirit is like, you know, is just be interested, you know, not look to like make a declarative statement

about right and wrong with everything here. It reminds me of that Netflix show, adolescence, you know, which is very much about the parents, you know, missing the signals and not being able to detect code the vocabulary of young people. Like the teachers and the parents had no idea

what was going on because there's a whole language happening, a whole like, you know, it wasn't looks maxing, but this is kind of like an example of like something that's going on that I would imagine, you know, a lot of parents of young people might have no idea that this is going on, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to do this podcast. Hopefully some young males watch or listen to this,

but hopefully a lot of parents who have, young male children, adolescence teenagers or the like. The idea behind this is to, you know, kind of hopefully educate and clue in some parents out there who might have no idea that this is the kind of thing that's going on. And if you don't, you're not alone. Like, the internet is a scary place. There's lots of weird shit going on.

And this is a weird thing. But it's not just a small corner of the internet. Like there are millions of young men who are falling under the, influence of this right now. So it's worthy of this conversation, I think. I agree, it's great, great to talk about it. I just wanna urge people who are looking themselves in the mirror, looking at themselves a certain way.

Your quirks, the things that you think are not ideal, suboptimal, whatever it is. I mean, our quirks, we're all a bunch of quirky, imperfect motherfuckers, and that's kind of the beauty of it. And, you know, you know, you know, that great phrase, perfection is the enemy of the good, is pretty apt for this.

And it's like, it's like, the goal is to see the beauty in yourself, not to make yourself beautiful. If you're in high school right now and you're watching or listening to this and you're measure- How did you find us? Yeah, first of all, like, how did you do that?

What are you doing here? If you're here, the algorithm did something that, you know, like pulled a magic trick. But I'm sure you've heard this before, but I'm just gonna say, say it again because it's fucking true. If you're looking around and you're like, I'm not the quarterback, I'm not gonna be, you know,

the king of the prom or I don't look like these guys wearing letterman jackets or whatever it is, right? I'm telling you, you don't wanna be those people. No, it's better not to be. I turned 60 this year, later this year, and I'm here promising you that, the most interesting, the coolest, the most accomplished, the most attractive people that I have had,

the honor of meeting or hosting on this podcast. I've been doing this podcast for 13 years, we're almost at a thousand episodes. I've had some of the most insanely charismatic and compelling people on the planet sit across from me. Not one of these people was the quarterback on the football team or the prom king. They were all the misfits and the outcasts

and the quirky weird nerds who had interests that nobody else, you know, kind of had. And they were left to their own devices and lost in their imagination to like gaze at their navels and wander around lonely, like reading poetry or, you know, listening to Fugazi or whatever it is. And these experiences become formative in, you know, kind of crafting the uniqueness

that makes people not only special and accomplished in their own right, but beautiful. And that is the true standard of beauty, the true standard of beauty should be inhabiting the fullness of who you are. It's self-accepting of your unique gifts that you have to share and standing tall

on your own two feet. even if you're not six foot four and just owning your place with like real self-esteem, self-esteem that you earned out in the world by not apologizing for who you are or how you look, but instead having the gumption to plant your flag and be the freak that you are. Because I'm telling you, like later in life,

all of these painful experiences that feel like they're never gonna end are just, blips on the radar and data points that if you use them properly, can become powerful tools, if not superpowers and helping you craft an identity that feels right to you and becomes a gift for the rest of us. Very well said. The last thing I can contribute to this is if things were,

going so well at home, I wouldn't have been to 50 countries plus, you know, in six continents. I wouldn't have gone out looking and trying to find my place and find who I am and find happiness. And that external search then led to the internal search. And so like, you know, things not being A plus in your head and heart and in school and at work, it could be just a catalyst to to all of this that you're talking about. And so that we have to keep that in perspective too. It's like a perspective shift in multiple ways. And I'd encourage you to do it

rather than fall into the trap of supposed quick fixes or demonization of women and girls or yourself, even worse, demonization of yourself and who you are and how you look, because it's much more interesting to be interesting. Yeah. And the most interesting person is always the person who is most interested in other people in life,

in what you're doing. You know what I mean? Like so get interested in your own life and in the lives of other people and in the world. The search for meaning, that's innate to being human. We're all on a search for meaning. Yeah.

But what I'm telling you is you're not gonna find the answer looking in the mirror. End of the podcast. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive,

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See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.