WEBVTT - Looksmaxxing 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:04.120 From the dark corners of the web. An emerging mindset. 0:00:03.760 --> 0:00:06.000 I am a loser if also women know wouldn't pay 0:00:06.040 --> 0:00:06.440 me either. 0:00:06.640 --> 0:00:10.879 A hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women at 0:00:10.920 --> 0:00:12.200 a deadly tipping point. 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:15.600 In Cells will be added to the Terrorism Guide. 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:18.560 I see literally zero hope. 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:23.360 This is in Cells a production of kt Studios and 0:00:23.440 --> 0:00:30.240 iHeart Podcasts, Season one, Episode nine, Looks Maxing. 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:37.400 I've written about leg lengthening, surgery, penis enlargements, and they're 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:38.200 all about men. 0:00:38.640 --> 0:00:40.400 As soon as you do that and you start to 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:42.760 look for a perpetrator for a lot of men in 0:00:42.800 --> 0:00:45.440 the lopsmaxing community, that enemy has become women. 0:00:46.000 --> 0:00:50.000 It's a kind of story about insecure young people probably 0:00:50.040 --> 0:00:53.040 not finding the best places to look in the mirror. 0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:57.800 Online I'm Courtney Armstrong, a producer at KATI Studios with 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:04.720 Stephanie Leideger, Gabriel Christia Connor Powell, and Carolyn Miller. Online 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:10.440 self improvement is everywhere, jawlines, cheekbones, hunter eyes, routines and 0:01:10.520 --> 0:01:14.240 recipes to fix a face, routines to fix a life. 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:18.839 We follow how looks Maxing, a push to optimize your appearance, 0:01:19.040 --> 0:01:24.080 intersects with insul forums nihilistic beliefs and a new transphobic 0:01:24.120 --> 0:01:29.720 trope called transmaxing. Investigative journalist Connor Powell speaks to Rupert 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:34.640 Small's CEO of Egregious, it's a UK startup that specializes 0:01:34.680 --> 0:01:39.559 in understanding social issues online. He also recently co authored 0:01:39.560 --> 0:01:43.679 a paper on looks maxing and radicalization pathways. We ask 0:01:43.760 --> 0:01:46.640 Rupert to start by describing the word looks maxing. 0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:50.640 It's kind of a belief that you know, there are 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:54.160 various different ways and methods to maximize your physical appearance 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:57.320 as a kind of methodology and a set of recipes, 0:01:57.320 --> 0:02:00.000 and if you follow them you can try and maximize 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:04.240 how good you look physically objectively and through improving their looks, 0:02:04.440 --> 0:02:06.440 the believers that they'll improve their life in some way. 0:02:07.960 --> 0:02:11.480 Connor also spoke with Simon Osborne, a freelance features writer 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:15.080 based out of London, for a different perspective. Simon often 0:02:15.120 --> 0:02:17.440 writes for The Guardian, and we asked how he first 0:02:17.480 --> 0:02:18.880 came across looks maxing. 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:22.720 I'll be honest, it was new to me, but my 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:26.799 editor at The Guardian, who I wrote this story for, 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:30.320 has teenage sons and he had heard about it, I 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:35.440 think via their online lives looks maxing is in a way, 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:40.639 it's quite simple. It's generally young men online swapping ideas 0:02:40.680 --> 0:02:43.600 for how to improve how they look, mainly focusing on 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:48.639 their facial aesthetics, but also their bodies. And it's a 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:52.320 kind of hyper masculine version of what these guys think 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:55.760 they should look like for their own, I guess, sense 0:02:55.800 --> 0:03:00.200 of security and also to attract the opposite sex. And 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:03.639 when we look at the face looks maxing means hardening 0:03:03.680 --> 0:03:08.720 the jawline. It values things like hunter eyes, which are 0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:13.400 kind of eyes that points slightly downwards towards the nose. 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:17.480 You know, strong foreheads, basically a sort of very masculine, 0:03:17.800 --> 0:03:19.480 strong man kind of look. 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:23.120 Does it also going to the sort of traditional male 0:03:23.280 --> 0:03:26.160 desire to be strong and fit as well, or is 0:03:26.200 --> 0:03:28.440 it generally sort of this facial feature. 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:32.360 It's very much sort of focused on the face, and 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:35.320 a big part of it is swapping pictures of your 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:39.560 own face for often quite harsh criticism within a community 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:43.320 that might be a forum or a reddit or It 0:03:43.400 --> 0:03:46.080 all started a long time ago, I think, on four Chan, 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:49.119 and then it's become very big on TikTok more recently. 0:03:49.400 --> 0:03:51.040 But I think it goes hand in hand with a 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:57.120 sort of general masculine look that promotes a muscular physique. 0:03:58.040 --> 0:04:01.520 Simon's mention of harsh critics wasn't the first time we'd 0:04:01.560 --> 0:04:04.720 heard that. In fact, it seems almost a tenant of 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:08.120 a lot of the online looks maxing communities. Here's a 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:12.080 clip from First at five CTV News, followed by Connor 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:15.200 and social scientist Rupert Small's. 0:04:17.120 --> 0:04:20.800 It's a term you may have never heard before, looks maxing. 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:23.280 So it looks like it's a community where you are 0:04:23.320 --> 0:04:26.599 going to maybe pick up some tips for living a 0:04:26.600 --> 0:04:30.520 healthier life, maybe modifying your appearance in some way. And instead, 0:04:30.560 --> 0:04:32.560 what many people are getting is, you know, if you 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:37.160 can't hit these benchmarks, then you should really consider self harm. 0:04:38.080 --> 0:04:41.520 Clearly, any approach that encourages someone to harm themselves is 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:45.359 deeply concerning, But we wanted to know on a broader 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:48.560 level how Rupert sees the idea of looks maxing. 0:04:50.480 --> 0:04:54.719 I think there's never anything wrong with the kind of 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:58.400 high level objectives that are there to kind of ambitiously 0:04:59.040 --> 0:05:01.920 achieve a goal. I think what sometimes can go wrong 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:04.800 is the roote we take to achieve that goal. So 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:08.800 it's almost like that I robot situation from the famous 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:11.240 film with Will Smith, where the robots are told to 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:14.760 protect humanity, and actually in order to protect humanity, they 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:17.040 figure out that if they lock us all up, we're 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:19.760 going to be safe because you just can't be trusted. 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:21.880 So I think it's a bit like that. But I 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:24.320 think what you also see, which is a bit more worrying, 0:05:24.360 --> 0:05:27.320 is that people are exploiting men. They're trying to monetize 0:05:27.320 --> 0:05:30.120 the situation, and that's when things can go bad. 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:34.120 So Looks Maxine to me is it has a parallel 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:37.800 just in the traditional female natural beauty genre, right, which 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:41.719 is like press implants LiPo. But I think what we're 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:47.200 seeing online specifically is a recruitment to a much more 0:05:47.320 --> 0:05:50.840 darker world with young men. Can you walk me through 0:05:50.880 --> 0:05:53.240 sort of what you're seeing and what your research points to. 0:05:53.520 --> 0:05:55.960 Say there's a parallel there. But where it does take 0:05:56.000 --> 0:05:59.000 a darker turn for the Looks max In community is 0:05:59.040 --> 0:06:02.800 when that starts to to maybe ideologies around the in 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:07.160 cell community, And that's actually an interesting kind of difference 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:09.240 between the two, and that you know, some of the 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:11.839 looks the men in the Loo Maxing community are being 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:16.560 diverted or kind of radicalized in a way to see 0:06:16.560 --> 0:06:19.760 it as a grievance issue rather than a way to 0:06:19.800 --> 0:06:23.880 discover their best selves. It's become a manifestation of a 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:26.560 lot of ill will and a kind of a contest 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:31.440 between men and women, and that has meant that, you know, 0:06:31.520 --> 0:06:34.479 some of the men getting involved with that community have 0:06:34.600 --> 0:06:38.680 started to exhibit violent behaviors towards women and girls, et cetera, 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:41.240 et cetera, which is not something you see so much 0:06:41.240 --> 0:06:42.080 in the other direction. 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:47.680 Rupert points out that for some looks maxing begins in 0:06:47.720 --> 0:06:52.880 a positive way, it may inspire better diet and nutrition. However, 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:56.520 he warrants that same motivation can easily start to shift. 0:06:58.200 --> 0:07:01.200 I think there's a thread to the story which got 0:07:01.360 --> 0:07:05.480 metastasized to extent and started to become exploited for ill 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:08.040 and monetized, I should say, where it became a thing 0:07:08.080 --> 0:07:11.160 of more mewing and bone smashing, and you know, things 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:14.040 came out of it which were quite overtly harmful for 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:18.040 the body. And once that started happening and people started 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:22.520 to try and I think maybe over monetize vulnerable individuals, 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:25.560 that's where you started to see indications that there was 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:28.679 at least a branch of that community which was leading 0:07:28.680 --> 0:07:29.400 people astray. 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:35.920 Mewing, as Rubert mentioned, is something that's become very popular. 0:07:36.440 --> 0:07:41.040 The hashtag mewing has accumulated over a billion views on TikTok, 0:07:41.280 --> 0:07:44.560 with millions of videos created on the topic. Here's a 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:46.520 quick explanation of what it is. 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:52.400 This one is called mewing, Okay, not meowing, mewing. Mewing's 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:54.200 been around for a while. It's this exercise where you 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:55.520 put your tongue to the roof of your mouth and 0:07:55.520 --> 0:07:58.200 you swallow, and it's supposed to like strengthen and accentuate 0:07:58.240 --> 0:08:00.160 your jawline and get rid of the double chain if 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:02.480 you have one. So the action of mewing has started 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:04.560 to trend and has been trending on TikTok. People were 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:06.520 teaching you, like, how do you get ready to double chane? 0:08:06.520 --> 0:08:07.080 All that good. 0:08:06.920 --> 0:08:10.200 Stuff here again, Connor and Rupert. 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:15.360 What's the discussion around looks maxing within in cell forms. 0:08:16.120 --> 0:08:20.840 As these techniques became more and more punitive, as they 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:23.960 became more difficult to achieve, or as they involved more 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:27.240 and more self harm, for example, bone smashing, which involves 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:30.640 hammering your jaw. I think that that kind of advice. 0:08:30.680 --> 0:08:33.280 When you're receiving it from a community you trust and 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:37.439 leave in, you can start to get almost traumatized by it. 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:40.680 And as soon as you start suffering, the question becomes 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:44.360 as an individual, who's to blame for my suffering? They're 0:08:44.360 --> 0:08:48.079 feeling alienated, they're trying to improve their situation, but they 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:51.360 realize by doing so, it's actually causing them to suffer, 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:55.120 and so they're looking for who the perpetrator is. And 0:08:55.200 --> 0:08:56.920 as soon as you do that, and you start to 0:08:56.960 --> 0:09:00.920 look for a perpetrator and adversary of some form. Unfortunately, 0:09:01.040 --> 0:09:04.040 what has come out of that scenario is that for 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:06.000 a lot of men in the lux maxing community, that 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:09.959 enemy has become women. And so there is a kind 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:12.320 of branch of the loux max community that has led 0:09:12.640 --> 0:09:15.839 quite naturally into the in cell community where women are 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:18.760 blamed for this situation they applied for all of the 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:20.599 difficulties that they're experiencing. 0:09:22.160 --> 0:09:25.640 We've heard from Luis before, he's a self identified black 0:09:25.720 --> 0:09:29.079 pilled in cell. In this conversation, he helps us trace 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:33.080 how these online communities have evolved and how an obsession 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:35.320 with looks has been part of that story from the 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:39.480 very beginning. Now many of the same ideas are resurfacing 0:09:39.559 --> 0:09:42.400 under new banner framed as self improvement. 0:09:43.840 --> 0:09:46.960 Let me actually give you, like the entire history of insuls. 0:09:47.000 --> 0:09:50.280 It's going to be very quick, so ironically, the original 0:09:50.320 --> 0:09:53.480 in cell community started by a woman, a lesbian woman 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:58.360 from Carlton University in Canada. It's called Alana's Involuntary Celibate Project. 0:09:58.679 --> 0:10:00.840 Who was the community for people who couldn't find love. 0:10:01.080 --> 0:10:03.840 And it was very inclusive, right, it wasn't just mail. 0:10:04.240 --> 0:10:07.040 And then you had other forums like love Shy, in 0:10:07.160 --> 0:10:12.560 cell support, but really, really, really the modern iteration of 0:10:12.600 --> 0:10:15.120 the incels that we all know that I'm a part of, right, 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:19.200 the black pill and lookism and whatnot. And PSL started 0:10:19.200 --> 0:10:22.280 on a forum called PWA Hate. Pwayete dot com was 0:10:22.280 --> 0:10:24.480 created in two thousand and nine by a former pickup 0:10:24.559 --> 0:10:28.840 artist called Nicolaus. They had one section called Shitty Advice. 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:31.440 And I don't know how, I don't know why, but 0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:34.600 they started talking about the importance of your looks. If 0:10:34.600 --> 0:10:36.240 you want to be a pickup artist, you have to 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:39.800 be good looking. They came up with looks theory midphace theory. 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:42.199 They would recommend each other's surgeries. 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:48.600 Luis mentioned PSL. PSL is an acronym from three early 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:55.480 in cell websites, pu Hate, slut hate, and lookism dot net. 0:10:56.480 --> 0:10:59.360 It's a ranking system many in cells subscribe to and 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:03.800 some upset. It ranks men's attractiveness from one to eight. 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:07.680 Luis continues, it's pretty funny. 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:11.440 But after that they created slut hate the promiscuous a 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:14.840 term for a promiscuous women, right, slut hate dot com. 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:17.719 And yeah, same thing. They would just talk about, looks 0:11:17.960 --> 0:11:21.800 how pickup artists suck, how women suck, how normy suck. That. 0:11:21.920 --> 0:11:25.880 In twenty eighteen they created loukism dot net. So that's 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:28.880 really the trifecta. That's where PSL comes from, PA Hate, 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:32.280 slut Hate, loukism dot net. Right now, it's just Insul's 0:11:32.800 --> 0:11:36.000 and looksmax dot org, which came after lucism dot net. 0:11:36.040 --> 0:11:37.839 It used to be known as lucism dot me. No, 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:40.880 looks max dot me. Now it's looksmax dot org. And 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:45.120 that's really the history of the insull forums. 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:52.319 Let's stop here for a break. We'll be back in 0:11:52.360 --> 0:12:17.439 a moment. Connor continues his discussion with journalist Simon Osborne, 0:12:17.840 --> 0:12:21.480 asking how he've used looksmaxing intersecting with pop culture in 0:12:21.559 --> 0:12:24.400 general and in cell communities in particular. 0:12:28.120 --> 0:12:31.000 There was a kind of almost a split where there 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:34.320 was quite a lot of stuff on TikTok which often 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:37.800 wasn't particularly dark in nature. A lot of it was 0:12:37.920 --> 0:12:42.600 just often very insecure teenage boys and young men trying 0:12:42.600 --> 0:12:46.800 to find ways to kind of fulfill this look. But 0:12:47.640 --> 0:12:50.160 I think one of the reasons it's caught the attention 0:12:50.800 --> 0:12:53.440 is that it does have a darker side, and it 0:12:53.520 --> 0:12:57.240 started in a fairly dark place, and there is or 0:12:57.280 --> 0:13:00.439 there having concerns that is sort of springing from in 0:13:00.480 --> 0:13:03.840 cell culture, and that a lot of the men who 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:08.160 are very harshly criticizing off an insecure young men on 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:11.760 this site are also you know, misogynistic. There's been a 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:15.600 lot of recent discussion about racism in lux maxing. There 0:13:15.640 --> 0:13:19.080 was a young black journalist in the US who I 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:22.560 think path jokingly tried to become the first black Looks 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:25.240 Maxer because it seemed to him to be a very 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:29.480 white pursuit, and then was very swiftly bombarded with racist 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:31.200 abuse on social media. 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:35.280 And one of the people you profiled is cream Shami. 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:36.960 Yes, well, what did. 0:13:36.800 --> 0:13:39.360 You find out about him? And what's his role in this. 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:42.560 He's a very interesting figure in that he kind of 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:45.839 lived the life and then became a big influencer in 0:13:45.880 --> 0:13:48.680 the lux maxing world. When I spoke to me, he 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:51.480 was twenty two. He had emigrated with his family from 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:56.120 Syria as a youngster from the war there and settled 0:13:56.160 --> 0:14:00.280 in the US, and he had kind of done the 0:14:00.320 --> 0:14:03.640 looks Maxing thing himself and had really changed his look 0:14:03.679 --> 0:14:07.040 quite dramatically and had a lot of the sort of 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:11.160 holy Grail features of a looks maxed person, with the 0:14:11.280 --> 0:14:13.680 cheekbones and the strong jaw and all the rest of it, 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:16.600 and very good skin. Skin is another part of this. 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:19.120 And then he started to kind of chart his own 0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:21.480 journey on TikTok and it kind of took off in 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:22.120 a big way. 0:14:24.320 --> 0:14:28.600 Kareem Shami, the self proclaimed godfather of looks Maxing, has 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:32.560 over two point five million followers on social media. He's 0:14:32.600 --> 0:14:37.320 the founder of Ascend Laboratories, which provides esthetic enhancement coaching. 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:42.600 He ties together male self improvement, visual identity and influencer commerce. 0:14:43.560 --> 0:14:49.240 Here again Simon speaking about Kareem Shami, But. 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:53.040 I also get the sense that he was slightly conflicted, 0:14:53.160 --> 0:14:56.440 because you know, His profile picture on TikTok at the 0:14:56.480 --> 0:15:00.280 time was Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, and that to 0:15:00.320 --> 0:15:02.800 me sort of aligned with a lot of the concerns 0:15:02.840 --> 0:15:09.120 people were expressing about misogyny and hypermasculinity and how Looks 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:11.600 Maxing was all part of that. He said that it 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:15.360 was just because he liked some of the way that 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:19.640 that character looked and didn't really align with his worldview 0:15:19.760 --> 0:15:23.080 or his view of women. One particular video he posted 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:25.640 of his transformation, he had really taken off as a 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:29.600 kind of big figure on TikTok under the name Syrian Psycho. 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:31.440 That was what his user name is. 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:34.920 I was looking at Looks Maxine first because there was 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:39.880 an obvious connection to Intel community. Those that are trying 0:15:39.920 --> 0:15:42.680 to sort of become the things that they hate to 0:15:42.720 --> 0:15:45.040 attract the women that they're frustrated with. And then there 0:15:45.080 --> 0:15:47.440 are those that just sort of accept beliefs, which is 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:49.480 sort of like you're never going to have a relationship, 0:15:49.560 --> 0:15:51.640 You're always going to be ugly and miserable and just 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:54.920 use that rage, live off that rage. How did you 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:58.120 find Looks Maxine within the Intel community? 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:01.000 That's sort of the word rep zen, a community of 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:03.800 people that is bigger than any sort of one element, 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:07.200 and so as far as there is an inceell overlap, 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:09.960 I think there is also a side of it that's 0:16:10.000 --> 0:16:13.080 more just about people just being kind of bitchy and 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:15.320 mean at each other in a way that maybe we 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:19.000 would often sort of traditionally associate with young women. And 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:21.000 I think part of this is that young men are 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:25.200 increasingly subject to the same insecurities and harsh lenses as 0:16:25.240 --> 0:16:28.920 women and girls have traditionally been. Really, it's a kind 0:16:28.960 --> 0:16:33.960 of story about insecure young people probably not finding the 0:16:34.000 --> 0:16:36.720 best places to look in the mirror online. 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:42.400 In fact, studies show that online feedback in the vast 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:45.320 majority of these forums is overwhelmingly negative. 0:16:46.720 --> 0:16:50.040 And you're report by dell Housie University saw researchers come 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:53.120 through thousands of comments on a discussion board of an 0:16:53.160 --> 0:16:57.160 online community that receives six million unique visitors a month. 0:16:57.440 --> 0:17:00.400 Many of the people participating in these communities are young, 0:17:00.480 --> 0:17:04.679 so they're boys who are thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, the university students, 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:07.719 they're surprisingly young. We saw no one get universal praise. 0:17:08.119 --> 0:17:11.680 We saw everybody get insults, and predominantly people are told 0:17:11.680 --> 0:17:14.240 that they're considerably ugly or unattractive. 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:20.600 My bigger concern was that really it was you know, 0:17:20.720 --> 0:17:25.080 people who were already worried about their facial features putting 0:17:25.160 --> 0:17:29.199 pictures in themselves in you know, TikTok or Reddit and 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:31.520 getting quite a lot of criticism and then just ending 0:17:31.600 --> 0:17:35.600 up feeling worse about themselves and maybe resorting to questionable, 0:17:35.920 --> 0:17:40.720 time consuming, uncomfortable processes like mewing to strengthen their faces, 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:42.919 or in the case of the guy I spoke to, 0:17:43.119 --> 0:17:46.760 you know, seriously considering paying ten thousand pounds to have 0:17:47.160 --> 0:17:49.280 surgery and to extend his chin. 0:17:50.119 --> 0:17:52.320 If we're sort of stepping back, do you think it's 0:17:52.640 --> 0:17:55.840 terribly different than what we're seeing with just women in general. 0:17:56.440 --> 0:17:58.320 No, I don't, And I think that's a good point. 0:17:58.320 --> 0:18:00.520 And for some reason I sort of seem to have 0:18:00.560 --> 0:18:04.320 developed a kind of mini specialism at the Guardian because 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:07.919 they keep asking me to write about male esthetic surgery. 0:18:08.119 --> 0:18:12.680 I've written about hair transplants and tooth surgery and chin implants. 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:17.760 With this, I've written about leg lengthening surgery, penis enlargements, 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:22.400 and then they're all about men. It's the same motivations, 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:26.239 the same people, and the same kind of pressures on 0:18:26.320 --> 0:18:30.040 them and it's young men, yeah, feeling insecure and then 0:18:30.119 --> 0:18:35.719 having that insecurity fueled by online communities. And then because 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:40.080 the demand is they're finding the outlets via searches online 0:18:40.240 --> 0:18:45.880 to get solutions to their problems in extremely competitive online marketplaces, 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:50.080 which often lead them to cut price and dodgy actors. 0:18:50.320 --> 0:18:54.040 I'm thinking of transplant surgeons charging a fraction of what 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:56.960 you would pay in a reputable clinic. 0:18:59.119 --> 0:19:02.640 Some men have sought out corrective surgeries, such as chin 0:19:02.800 --> 0:19:06.680 lengthening or jaw repositioning. These are done to achieve a 0:19:06.760 --> 0:19:11.720 more angular projected chin and jawline. Limb lengthening is another 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:14.879 area of surgery which is used to increase height. 0:19:16.640 --> 0:19:19.199 And then you end up with the nightmare stories of 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:23.840 men and young men finding that they're deeply distressed with 0:19:24.080 --> 0:19:28.800 the process and the results because they've often paid very 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:33.080 low amounts for this sort of surgery. Often, these surgeons 0:19:33.119 --> 0:19:36.520 and these markets are ones that have existed for a 0:19:36.560 --> 0:19:40.080 long time because of the demand from women, and now 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:42.919 there is the demand from men, and one you know, 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:45.080 on the one hand, women might I think we'll welcome 0:19:45.119 --> 0:19:47.680 to our world. This is what it's like. The pressure 0:19:47.720 --> 0:19:50.280 is to look certain ways, but then you know, the 0:19:50.359 --> 0:19:52.600 other way of looking at is that it's the worst 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:55.520 sort of equality, because we should be addressing the sort 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:59.119 of drivers for these insecurities and kind of trying to 0:19:59.160 --> 0:20:02.880 make people more common, whether they're male or female, because 0:20:02.880 --> 0:20:06.160 it's a pretty sorry trade. And even when you speak 0:20:06.200 --> 0:20:09.840 to people who've had surgery and chin surgery in the 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:13.320 case of looks Maxing, you know, they often say it's 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:16.200 changed my life. I feel like a new person. It's amazing. 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:19.399 But even they often say I wish I didn't have 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:21.880 to go through all this to get to that place. 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:27.560 We wanted to understand how far this can go. Rubert 0:20:27.560 --> 0:20:32.159 Small's unpacks the overlap between looks Maxing in cells and 0:20:32.200 --> 0:20:36.360 potential violence. We note again that the rate of actual 0:20:36.440 --> 0:20:40.760 physical violence based on in cell ideology is very low. 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:42.360 Here's Rupert. 0:20:43.720 --> 0:20:47.040 We're seeing a lot of let's say, co correlations between 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:50.760 that community and in cell communities and communities even in 0:20:50.840 --> 0:20:54.080 the kind of the mashooter communities and who kind of 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:57.919 lionize and celebrate mass shooting and violence towards women. So 0:20:58.520 --> 0:21:01.640 it's hard to make a a direct link and say that, 0:21:01.680 --> 0:21:05.720 you know, because this person, let's say Elliott Roger, for example, 0:21:06.119 --> 0:21:10.159 Even if we can't directly attribute Looks Maxing to Elliott Roger, 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:12.399 we can say that there's a lot of overlap in 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:15.719 those communities. They share similar content, they share memes, they 0:21:15.760 --> 0:21:19.440 share members, they share symbols and meaning together, and they 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:22.000 develop that they kind of co develop that meaning. So 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:24.840 that's as much as we can say to date, and 0:21:25.240 --> 0:21:28.439 just because of the kind of tight relationship between those communities, 0:21:28.680 --> 0:21:31.360 we can say at the very least that they are 0:21:31.359 --> 0:21:34.320 influential to each other. Just as scientists, we don't want 0:21:34.320 --> 0:21:38.240 to directly attribute violence to a specific meme, more specific post. 0:21:38.560 --> 0:21:41.920 You can see, as you say, there's the victimization, there's 0:21:42.000 --> 0:21:45.720 the what am I getting? How the self harm? You 0:21:45.760 --> 0:21:49.120 can see this sort of path to self destruction. 0:21:49.240 --> 0:21:52.840 Really, yeah, people are looking for an exit out of 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:55.280 their current situation. I think in a lot of this, 0:21:56.000 --> 0:21:58.679 and like you say, sometimes that's going to manifest in 0:21:59.040 --> 0:22:03.159 self harm for the purposes of looks Maxing. Sometimes actually 0:22:03.160 --> 0:22:05.840 people just doing self harm to exit in another way, 0:22:05.920 --> 0:22:09.560 like psychologically exit the situation because self harm distracts them 0:22:09.560 --> 0:22:12.040 from another pain somewhere else. And if you're in a 0:22:12.080 --> 0:22:15.760 position of as I think a lot of in cells 0:22:16.040 --> 0:22:17.800 are in a lot of you know, members of the 0:22:17.840 --> 0:22:21.600 looks Maxing community, they're in a position of really really 0:22:21.640 --> 0:22:25.080 needing support to help them get themselves out of what 0:22:25.119 --> 0:22:29.520 they experience as a really painful situation. Ultimately, it's all 0:22:29.600 --> 0:22:32.840 born of a form of desperation to get out of 0:22:32.880 --> 0:22:34.400 what is a very difficult situation. 0:22:35.240 --> 0:22:37.760 You mentioned that you looked at the algorithm and the 0:22:37.840 --> 0:22:41.280 sort of adjacent words, and how does the blackpill fit 0:22:41.320 --> 0:22:43.280 into looks Maxing from what you can tell. 0:22:43.320 --> 0:22:45.960 I guess maybe the reason you're asking this question is 0:22:45.960 --> 0:22:50.520 that you might see looks Maxing as an innately hopeful 0:22:50.760 --> 0:22:53.520 ideology or belief system where you know, if you do 0:22:53.680 --> 0:22:57.000 something regularly, if you're persistent about it, if you put 0:22:57.040 --> 0:22:59.560 work in, you'll be able to look better and that's 0:22:59.560 --> 0:23:01.960 going to help improve your life. I think the answer 0:23:02.040 --> 0:23:04.240 to that again like, what is the link between luks 0:23:04.240 --> 0:23:08.520 Maxing and black Pile? Again, it's a past dependent state. 0:23:09.880 --> 0:23:12.920 To better understand how these ideas take root in real life, 0:23:13.040 --> 0:23:15.240 we spoke with a man who goes by mister East. 0:23:15.840 --> 0:23:20.000 He's a self described black pilt in Cel Mysteries. Explains 0:23:20.040 --> 0:23:23.040 how these beliefs shape the way he sees dating success 0:23:23.240 --> 0:23:27.480 and the world around him. 0:23:27.640 --> 0:23:31.040 Certain traits you have, such as looks, wealth, they make 0:23:31.080 --> 0:23:35.000 it more likely for you to succeed within a certain context. 0:23:35.400 --> 0:23:40.640 Dating romantically, I just recognize that despite what popular consensus 0:23:41.080 --> 0:23:45.400 believes about so called romantic and like just general success 0:23:45.440 --> 0:23:49.640 within like socializing in general, it does really heavily depend 0:23:49.800 --> 0:23:54.520 on your looks and your ability to socialize. However, for 0:23:54.960 --> 0:23:58.560 some people that might not work because of their ethnicity, 0:23:58.600 --> 0:24:01.119 because of their looks, because of their might. No matter what, 0:24:01.520 --> 0:24:04.359 a lot of the stuff that they learn might not work. 0:24:04.680 --> 0:24:09.440 The general consensus within societies that be nice, be respectful, 0:24:09.880 --> 0:24:13.520