The Trap of the Beautiful Ones: The "Mouse Utopia" Hits Gen Z

In this eye-opening Based Camp episode, Simone and Malcolm Collins explore how looksmaxxing (and its cousins: performative masculinity, status obesity, performative altruism, and more) functions as the modern equivalent of “gender affirming care” — a seductive but ultimately sterile trap.

Drawing on John B. Calhoun’s famous mouse utopia experiments (Universe 25), they explain the rise of “the beautiful ones”: rodents in abundance who obsessively groomed themselves, avoided conflict/mating/parenting, and became socially sterile while remaining physically pristine. Sound familiar?

From Clavicular’s extreme regimen (steroids, meth for hollow cheeks, bone smashing) to billionaire status-hoarding, kidney-donating effective altruists with no kids, and Gen Z pickup artists chasing views instead of partners — this conversation reveals how abundance creates behavioral sinks where people optimize for aesthetics, validation, or signaling instead of legacy and meaning.

They discuss why these traps feel productive (they’re often high-discipline and cerebral) yet deliver zero lasting happiness or genetic/cultural impact — and how to escape them by building a real objective function in life.

If you’ve ever felt pulled into optimization loops (looks, status, altruism, masculinity, etc.) that leave you hollow, this episode is your wake-up call. A free copy of The Pragmatist Guide to Life (ebook or audiobook) available — just DM us or join our paid subscribers on Substack/Patreon.

Based Camp - The New Trend in Male Gender Affirming Care

Episode Notes

The Gist

* Looksmaxxing is the new Gender Affirming Care

* We’ve joked about how women getting cosmetic procedures are getting gender affirming care

* But men are doing it a ton now, too, in the form of Looksmaxxing

* But gender affirming care is just one of many traps people are falling into

* And these traps all map to a particular behavioral pattern that may be consistent across any abundant mammal society—something that’s even observed in rodents (and we’ll talk about that!)

* It’s important that we talk about these traps for several reasons:

* They don’t yield lasting impact

* They don’t yield happiness or contentment

* So let’s talk about this and use looksmaxxing as a case study for how people unknowingly fall into these traps so that we can be more adept at evading them personally.

And let’s start with the rodents.

The Beautiful Ones

Between 1958-1962, a man named John B. Calhoun conducted overcrowding experiments using rats and mice in an effort to study how very high population density in an otherwise “ideal” environment affects social behavior, mental health, and population stability in rodents.

His hope was to better understand the implications of overcrowding + abundance for human society, so he gave rats and mice abundant food, water, nesting material, and protection from predators and disease—so that lack of resources was not the cause of problems—and observed how increasing population density changed aggression, mating, parenting, social hierarchies, and overall psychological functioning over time.

These experiments were far from scientifically precise and had many issues, but they yielded some really interesting patterns that you could also argue we’re seeing in modern, abundant societies.

For example, Calhoun observed some consistent behavioral groupings that are analogous to behavioral groupings in modern, affluent human groups that we talk about on Based Camp all the time.

Some examples:

* Dominant aggressive males: Highly territorial “alpha” males that monopolized prime nesting areas and mates, frequently fighting and wounding other males and sometimes attacking pups.

* “Dropouts” or socially defeated males: Males driven out of territories by dominant males who congregated in central areas, often scarred, hyper‑submissive, and involved in seemingly purposeless mass brawls; in earlier rat experiments some turned to cannibalism.

* Hyperactive or indiscriminately sexual males: Males that mounted other males and juveniles, showed disorganized mating attempts, and sometimes coupled sexual behavior with aggression instead of normal courtship patterns.

* Neglectful or “failed” mothers: Females that abandoned litters, moved pups repeatedly, stopped defending nests, or became unusually aggressive toward their own young and toward other adults approaching the nest.

* “Hermit” or withdrawn females: Adult females that retreated to empty compartments, largely avoiding social contact, mating, or pup care—effectively dropping out of normal communal female roles in mouse societies.

​We spend a lot of time talking about the human societal analogs of these rodent groupings, but today, we’re focusing in on the beautiful ones.

In his experiments, “the beautiful ones” were a subgroup of male rodents (first observed in rats and later highlighted in his mouse “Universe 25” study) that withdrew from normal social life. They spent their time almost exclusively eating and obsessively grooming, avoiding fighting, mating, and parenting, so they remained physically unscarred and well‑kept but were socially inert and did not reproduce.

Calhoun described these animals as healthy in body but “socially sterile,” seeing them as a late-stage symptom of social breakdown in an overpopulated yet materially abundant environment.

It’s Not Just Looks

People are falling into all sorts of obsessive loops, and I’ll highlight three just based on recent examples that have been shoved in front of me in the past 24 hours:

Status

From a friend (not sure if I can attribute):

“Something for pronatalists to shame: status obesity.

The idea is that the drive to eat is good. It helps us survive and pass on our genes. But the drive to eat can be highjacked and made unhealthy and make it less likely for us or our children to survive if we eat too much and become obese.

Status is similar where the drive in general is good and it evolved to be a strong drive because it is so good at helping us and our children survive. But there are people (especially at the top) who are status obese. Their drive for status, rather than contributing to their survival and their children’s survival, is actually hurting them. Super wealthy people who spend their money on plastic surgery instead of more kids for example. They are status obese, hurting their genetic line by investing in status peacock feathers instead of their young.”

Virtue Signaling / Aimless Altruism

Largely childless, single young men are donating their organs in larger numbers:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/03/12/altruistic-organ-donation/

* According to the article, these non‑direct altruistic donors “tend to skew male” and that “a good portion are in their 20s,” with another large cohort in their 50s.

* It also notes that donors are predominantly white, highly educated, and less likely to be married or have children than average.

Dating

We addressed the new trend in Gen Z pickup artists per steph’s substack essay “gen z pickup artists are taking over my city” that many of the leading gen z pick up dating coaches are optimizing around getting views, not actually sleeping with women.

* “The big names in Gen Z pickup are operating under a brand new set of incentives. The tactics they promote don’t necessarily need to work, they just need to hook the guys watching their content at home. In fact, the more insane his pickup line, the more bewildered her reaction, the better his clip will likely perform.”

* “Cold approaches are treated less like meet-cutes and more like sales performance reviews. Who cares about a mutual spark? Did he open strong? Did he display high value? Did he maintain frame? Did he get the close?”

* Example of one of these = Erick Ronaldo

Looksmaxxing as a Case Study for How People Fall Into these Holes

Looksmaxxing is on the rise

Google Trends shows how it came out of nowhere in 2023, came to a lull again in 2024, and swung back up in 2025 (interesting as some more extreme practices and figures within the movement got more interest, too)

Clavicular

Clavicular has, for many, become the new public face of the looksmaxxing community.

He:

* Started testosterone injections at ~14–15 and engages in long‑term steroid use.

* Uses meth to suppress appetite, stay extremely lean, and maintain hollow cheeks/cheekbone prominence.

* Practices “bonesmashing” (hammer/fists to the jaw/face) to induce microfractures for a sharper jawline.

* Side note: does the transmaxxing community practice of “bonesmashing” (hammer/fists to the jaw/face) to induce microfractures for a sharper jawline actually work?

* Basically, no

* Bonesmashing is based on a misreading of Wolff’s law, which says bone adapts to controlled, repetitive mechanical loading (like normal weight‑bearing exercise), not to random blunt trauma or deliberate fractures. Surgeons point out that striking your face with fists or hammers creates uncontrolled injury, so any microfractures or healing are unpredictable and cannot reliably make the jaw sharper or more symmetrical. Reviews by doctors and oral–maxillofacial surgeons state there is no clinical evidence that bonesmashing produces cosmetic improvements in facial structure.

* Blunt force to the face primarily damages soft tissue (skin, fat, muscle, blood vessels) and nerves, causing swelling, bruising, and scar formation rather than clean, controlled bone remodeling. Even when small fractures occur, they tend to heal along the original anatomy or in a misaligned way, which can worsen asymmetry or create deformity instead of a sharper jawline. Experts emphasize that when bones truly need to be repositioned or reshaped for cosmetic or functional reasons, surgeons use precise, planned osteotomies and fixation—not repeated low‑level trauma—to get predictable results.

* Claims probable infertility from years of steroid abuse

* Told the NY Times he is not particularly interested in having sex with women; rather, simply knowing he could is validation enough

These last two points are clear signs this is not extreme male peacocking in an effort to secure partners but rather a pursuit of a certain aesthetic for its own sake.

Bruno Daniel’s Theories on Drivers Toward Looksmaxxing

1. Camera technology distorts how people perceive their own faces

One surprisingly concrete driver is smartphone camera distortion.

A 2018 research letter in JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery by Boris Paskhover and colleagues modeled how perspective distortion affects facial proportions in close-range photography. Selfies taken at typical phone distance (~12 inches) can make the nose appear roughly 30% larger than it does in photos taken from portrait distance (~5 feet).

Other studies have found similar distortions in facial proportions when images are taken at close range.

Plastic surgeons increasingly report that patients bring selfies to consultations and request procedures based on how their face appears in those distorted images.

Sources:• Paskhover et al., JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery (2018) — “Nasal Distortion in Short-Distance Photographs”• Rutgers / Stanford modeling of selfie distortion

2. “Snapchat dysmorphia”: comparing oneself to filtered faces

Around the late 2010s surgeons began describing a phenomenon sometimes called “Snapchat dysmorphia.”

Patients increasingly request procedures designed to replicate filtered versions of their own faces produced by apps like Snapchat or Instagram. These filters subtly modify facial proportions, symmetry, skin texture, and eye size.

In other words, people are increasingly comparing their physical bodies to algorithmically modified versions of themselves.

Sources:• Ramphul & Mejias, Cureus (2018)• American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery surveys

3. The pandemic introduced “Zoom dysmorphia”

COVID produced another technological feedback loop.

Dermatologists and plastic surgeons began describing “Zoom dysmorphia,” where constant exposure to one’s own face on video calls increased dissatisfaction with appearance and led to more cosmetic consultations.

Millions of people suddenly spent hours each day looking at their own faces through front-facing cameras under unflattering lighting conditions.

Sources:• Rice et al., Facial Plastic Surgery & Aesthetic Medicine (2021)• Makhoul et al., Aesthetic Surgery Journal (2021)

4. Cosmetic modification among men is rising

At the same time, male participation in cosmetic procedures has been rising steadily.

Data from plastic surgery associations show growth in procedures such as hair restoration, Botox-type injections, skin resurfacing treatments, and body contouring among men.

What is notable is not just the increase itself, but the shift in framing. Instead of being stigmatized as vanity, these interventions are often framed as optimization or self-improvement.

Sources:• American Society of Plastic Surgeons annual statistics• American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery reports

5. Muscle dysmorphia and the pursuit of extreme physiques

On the body side of the phenomenon there is a related condition known as muscle dysmorphia, sometimes called “bigorexia.”

Researchers have found that exposure to idealized muscular bodies in media correlates with body dissatisfaction among men and increased risk of muscle dysmorphia symptoms. This dynamic is often associated with anabolic steroid use and extreme training regimens.

Sources:• Pope et al., American Journal of Psychiatry (1997)• Griffiths et al., Journal of Behavioral Addictions (2015)• Pope, Phillips & Olivardia — The Adonis Complex (2000)

6. Algorithmic platforms amplify extreme physiques

Finally there is the incentive structure of modern visual platforms.

Instagram, TikTok, and similar feeds reward images that generate engagement. In practice this often means highly stylized faces, exaggerated jawlines, and extreme muscular physiques.

Repeated exposure to these algorithmically selected images may gradually shift users’ perception of what a normal male body looks like.

A possible synthesis: “algorithmic masculinity”

Taken together, these dynamics suggest a possible cultural shift.

Camera technology distorts self-perception. Filters normalize altered faces. Algorithmic feeds amplify extreme physiques. The stigma around male cosmetic modification declines.

The result may be a feedback loop where some men increasingly attempt to reshape their bodies toward digitally optimized archetypes of masculinity.

One provocative framing is that some men may increasingly be attempting to “transition” not from male to female, but from ordinary male bodies into exaggerated algorithmically optimized forms of masculinity, both in looks and behavior. The looksmaxxing communities are perhaps the clearest early manifestation of this phenomenon.

Potential questions for an episode:

• Are we seeing the early stages of widespread male body dysmorphia?• How much of this is driven by platform design versus cultural change?• Why has stigma around male cosmetic modification eroded so quickly?• Are social media algorithms indirectly selecting for more extreme forms of masculinity?

Key sources:

Paskhover et al., JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery (2018)Ramphul & Mejias, Cureus (2018) — Snapchat dysmorphiaRice et al., Facial Plastic Surgery & Aesthetic Medicine (2021) — Zoom dysmorphiaAmerican Society of Plastic Surgeons statisticsPope, Phillips & Olivardia — The Adonis Complex (2000)Griffiths et al., Journal of Behavioral Addictions (2015)

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be with you today because we are going to be talking about looks maxing as the new gender affirming care. We’ve, we’ve joked about how women are getting basically gender affirming care when they get cosmetic procedures, you know, to look like young women. And that, you know, in the end it’s all just the same as being trans.

It’s, it’s pointless feckless chasing after a certain identity.

Malcolm Collins: You’re going to tie it to the concept of the beautiful ones or the mice from the the mice Utopia it spend all their time grooming. And we’re, we’re, we’re doing this because I think it’s important when people can learn that society doesn’t work.

And the type of autistic people who watch our show, I think communities like looks maxing or any sort of a maxing can feel like solutions. But they are not

Simone Collins: well. Yeah. In other words, like gender affirming care, be it looks maxing or becoming trans or getting a ton of cosmetic procedures as a woman is just one of many traps that people are [00:01:00] falling into.

Malcolm Collins: But I think as bad as l maxing, and I want to be clear that we’re including this in the looks maxing category

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Is performative masculinity, maxing.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Which

Malcolm Collins: some people also do, you

Simone Collins: know, they’re hundred percent and, and other masculine

Malcolm Collins: more good.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And I’m, I’m gonna give other examples too.

But I, I also more importantly wanna point that these are all traps that map. To your earlier point, to a particular behavioral pattern that that appears to be consistent across any abundant mammal society, which is even in observed in rodents per calhoun’s, rat and mouse experiments that Malcolm just alluded to.

And we’re gonna talk about them in greater detail. And the reason why it’s super important to talk about these traps and falling into this particular type of trap is that this, this, this, this folly doesn’t yield any lasting impact and it doesn’t yield happiness and contentment. Like even if you’re nihilistic, even if all you want is just a little bit of pleasure in this short, pointless existence you think you have, it’s not even the [00:02:00] best approach.

And so really there’s just no reason why anyone should be falling for these things, and yet they are. Massively popular outcomes. They’re, they’re extremely common. So let’s talk about this. And we’re gonna use looks maxing as a case study for how people unknowingly fall into these traps so that all of us can be more adept at evading them personally or getting out of them if we’re in them.

And I think it’s, it’s pretty easy, even like, even if your life isn’t about these things, I think even you and I, Malcolm may sometimes find ourselves unknowingly get pulled into these, it’s like a magnet that that happens in times of abundance. But let’s start with the rodents, the beautiful ones, just like you were saying.

So for those who are out of the loop on this, between 1958 and 1962, a man named John B. Calhoun conducted overcrowding experiments. He used rats and mice, and he did this in an effort to study how very high population density in an otherwise ideal environment affect social behavior, mental [00:03:00] health, and population stability, in this case, in rodents.

But his hope was to better understand the implications of overcrowding and abundance for human society. So he gave rats and mice. Endless food, like they were never hungry. Endless water nesting material and protection from predators of disease. So that a lack of resources was not the cause of their problems.

And then he observed how increasing population density changed aggression, mating, parenting, social hierarchies, and overall physiological functioning over time. Now we’ve talked about these rat experiments in the past. Commenters are always like, oh, these weren’t scientifically rigorously conducted.

And yeah, obviously, yeah, the experiments were far from scientifically precise and they’ve been issues. But this is this

Malcolm Collins: important thing about the RAD experiments. They may have been p hacked. They may not have been scientifically rigorous, but they were predictive and they were,

Simone Collins: yeah, no, they yielded super, super interesting patterns that you can also argue we’re seeing in modern abundant societies.

I think the reason why people like talking about them is a lot of the stuff that he [00:04:00] observed qualitatively. Are like super major things. For example, let, let me give you some examples of, of behavioral groupings that he saw that like we talk about all the time in humans on our podcast. Yes. To refresh your memory, so there were the, there were the dom.

So, and then keep in mind again, these, these are of these abundant rat or mouse. ‘cause he did both just like. Cities that he created essentially, and then he just watched what they did. So you know, these are, these are mice after, after they’ve reached this point where they’ve just reproduced a ton.

You get the dominant, aggressive males. These are highly territorial alpha males that monopolize prime nesting areas and mates. They frequently fight and wound other males and sometimes they attack pups. Then there are the dropouts or socially defeated males, you could call them the in insults.

They’re males driven out of territories by dominant males. They congregate in central areas, often scarred hyper submissive and involved in seemingly purposeless mass brawls. In [00:05:00] earlier rat experiments, some turned to cannibalism in the end, so dark. Then there are the hyperactive or indiscriminately sexual males.

Males that mounted other males and juveniles showed disorganized mating attempts and sometimes coupled asexual behavior with aggression instead of normal courtship patterns. Again, there’s a reason why these resonate. And then let’s get to the female rodents. There are the neglect, neglectful, or failed mothers females that abandoned litters, moved pups repeatedly stopped defending nests or became unusually aggressive toward their own young and toward other adults approaching the nest.

So again, wow. And then there’s the hermit or withdrawn females who were adult females that were treated to empty compartments, largely avoiding social contact, mating or pup care, effectively dropping out of normal, communal female roles in mouse societies. This is what I wanted to be that was my role in our rat society until I, I met you.[00:06:00]

So, go ahead. What were you gonna say? The

Malcolm Collins: way that you fix this, right. For first, first the, the core thing that he noted that I think was the most important predictive element that to me just means he, he was getting some form of useful data.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Was that as you put mammals in a utopian like environment, urbanization increases.

They, they began to congregate in denser and denser spaces, even when they had more spaces accessible to them. Hmm. And that is not a behavior that anyone would’ve predicted for humanity at the time that he was doing these experiments. And yet it is something that we’ve seen play out, but you also see these more fun things like what you’re talking about.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And so obviously we, we spent a lot of time talking about the human societal analogs of, of the rodent groups I just mentioned. But yeah, let’s go back to the beautiful ones because we’re specifically talking not about the trap of incel in modern society or the, the women who choose to not have children, or the hyperaggressive males [00:07:00] we’re gonna talk about, or the hypersexual males who start mounting other males.

We are gonna talk about the beautiful ones and the trap of the beautiful ones in, and trans maxing in other forms of this. And so what, what were the beautiful ones in the rat experiments? They were a subgroup of male rodents. First observe in rats, and then later in his mouse universe 25 study that withdrew from normal social life.

They spent their time almost exclusively eating and obsessively grooming, avoiding fighting, mating and parroting so that they, they remained physically unscarred and well kept, but were socially inter, and they did not reproduce. And you’re gonna find this is uncanny. When we get into looks maxing.

So he, he described the animals as healthy and body, but socially sterile. Seeing them as a large stage symptom of social breakdown and an. Overpopulated yet materially abundant environment. And before we go into looks maxers, I wanna point out that this is a trap that is not just about looks. I mean, using looks maxers as like our way of sort of [00:08:00] exploring how people fall into these traps.

But I’ll just give you three examples of this form of societal trap that have just been brought to my attention in like the last 24 hours just to like, ‘cause it’s all over. It’s all over the place and a lot of people are falling to this trap. So from one of our friends she texted me the other morning and just was, I guess this occurred to her, she’s just like, something for prenatal is to shame status, obesity.

The idea. The drive to eat is good. It helps us survive and pass on our genes. But the drive to eat can be hijacked and made unhealthy and make it less likely for us or our children to survive if we eat too much and become obese. Status is similar, where the drive in general is good and it evolved to be a strong drive because it is so good at helping us and our children survive.

But there are people, especially at the top who are status obese. Their drive for status rather than contributing to their survival and their children’s survival is actually hurting them. Super wealthy people who spend their money on plastic surgery instead of more kids, for example, they’re status obese, hurting [00:09:00] their genetic line by investing in status peacock feathers instead of they’re young.

And this reminds me of something that I heard among a very elite group that we, we used to mix in. There was this one guy who at this point was a billionaire. And in this, this, off the record Chatham House rules conversation. He was sort of talking about his objective function in life. And like for him it was always just like, well, just you become a, you know, get, make six figures.

And then it was, you know, become a millionaire and then become a multimillionaire. And then like, okay, well have a net worth of over 10 million, have a net worth of over 50 million, a hundred million a billion, 2 billion. Like, it just as, as he, he, he, he, I think he was going on 2 billion at that point or something like that.

Yeah. And then he was asked like, what, after that? And he’s like, well then I guess it’s gonna be 3 billion. It’s just like, like at what point, you know, like, to what end? Like

Malcolm Collins: when you do something with that, that’s fun.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, it just like, and he, he was talking in this conversation about how it was sort of, [00:10:00] he was aware of the fact that it was hollow.

I think he was aware of the fact that he’d become one of the beautiful ones, essentially like that. This is kind of this pointless. Nihilistic exercise, but he also wasn’t trying to get out of it. And, and I, I really do, I love this idea of framing to our kids something like status obesity of like, just because we’re not above shaming people for being fat to just, I was,

Malcolm Collins: I was growing up in a very fat shaming family.

I mean,

Simone Collins: my family. Right. But, but your, your family did not, did not shame status obesity and to, to shame someone for being status obese. The same way you’d shame someone for like wearing tacky clothing looking. I mean, we do that

Malcolm Collins: internally all the time. So our kids

Simone Collins: No, we do.

Malcolm Collins: We do.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I, I find it to be really disgusting behavior and I think that it is, it ruins people’s lives.

It just ruins your life. It

Simone Collins: does. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The people who have seen who strive for it, they’re never really happy. Yeah. It causes,

Simone Collins: so genuinely, I feel like there’s more correlation with [00:11:00] failure to thrive and status obesity than actual obesity.

Malcolm Collins: Such a great way to put it. And you, and you do see this in upper class circles all the time.

Oh my

Simone Collins: God. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And if you are like, or, or, or if you’re stuck in sort of a look next and you’re like, yeah, but I don’t have anything that matters to me, right? Mm-hmm. So I’m trying to construct something. Mm-hmm. And I’m like, if you want a good check out the book, the Pragmatist Guide to Life, we will give it to you for free.

Mm-hmm. It’s got an audio book. It’s on Amazon for like 99 cents if you want it. It is the book for, in an unbiased way, having somebody walk you through building something that you can philosophically, rigorously believe has purpose. Yeah. And we try, unlike who we are today as influencers, which is heavily biased, heavily, we have an ideological side.

Yeah. We did not back then. We were very, very, very ideologically unbiased back then, or at least attempted to be as hard as we could. Yeah. And, that book can be, it’s a, it’s a short book. Book. It’s a short read. Yeah, it is very [00:12:00] useful. It’s true read in terms of getting around that.

Basically what we do in it is we go over everything you could think has value. Like literally we go through every philosophically rigorous, even potentially thing that could have value. And we go through the arguments for it, and we go through the arguments against it. Mm-hmm. And so that makes it easy for you because you can be like, okay I can bite those bullets.

It’s basically like, can you bite these bullets against it? And if you can then it’s probably a, a, a good solution in terms of structuring your life around it. And now you have a purpose, something that you can structure your life around.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway, continue. Sorry.

Simone Collins: It, it actually is kind of blowing my mind.

So the difference between o like physical, food-based obesity and status obesity is food-based. Obesity is just like a, it’s, it’s a, a low grade addiction, you know, something that you can treat with naltrexone or semaglutide.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Whereas status obesity is a beautiful one’s problem. And I think what makes the, the, the disease of the beautiful ones [00:13:00] so uniquely insidious is that it is a very cerebral, high performance device in that it eats the potential of people who would otherwise be very impactful in the world.

Does that make sense? Like these are, these are not people who are like following to, like, they’re not falling to low grade, like sex addiction, gambling addiction. Food addiction, right? They, they are, they’re rising above that. In fact, in many cases, they’re extremely disciplined. You know, these, these like looks maxers are going and we’re gonna get into that.

Like, they’re going through incredible pain and deprivation to, to, to achieve it. It’s very

Malcolm Collins: similar to your time being anorexic. I mean, I think you could have you know, you had vanity, which I think you hate the way you look so much, you’d never become a look matcher. But I, you know, I can see the appeal of something like that.

Even to you.

Simone Collins: Totally. No, but the feeling of control that it, that it could bring, because for me it was always about control. And that’s what it is for most people who have anorexia.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: But yeah, so I think what’s, what’s so [00:14:00] crazy about that is, yeah, I was just thinking about like the obese people. I know many of them have kids above replacement rate.

They’re working their butts off to give those kids successful lives. And if anything, they’re obese ‘cause they’re eating their feelings and they’re, they’re very stressed as they really fight for something they believe in, right? Like mm-hmm. They, they’re suffering from a vice. They have severe problems and they’re, they’re not in control of their impulses, but like they’re still doing more than the billionaire status maxor.

The beautiful one. So I think that just to, to highlight how insidious and sinful, like per my view this particular trap is. There’s also, and I think this is really interesting, I just thought a headline of this,

Malcolm Collins: well,

Simone Collins: actually another version of this trap not beyond just status maximizing is virtue signaling or aimless altruism.

I don’t know if you saw this headline but The Telegraph had this article that it ran, it, it was on the front page of Drudge this morning.

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

Simone Collins: Titled The Extreme World of the 20 something Men Giving Their Organs to Strangers, [00:15:00] forget Giving Blood. These young people are offering strangers their body parts, such generosity could revolutionize a transplant system.

And what, yeah, so you, you’ve actually seen the, there’s, you see the occasional post about this in the effective altruists slash like. Altruistic rationalist space where like, oh, so and so gave a kidney. Like, it’s so great that they gave a kidney. And these are people who already like, are trying to be effective altruists, except they lose the plot and they just wanna like, do all the good things.

So they like donate blood and they donate plasma and they start running out of things to do, and then they just start giving away their, like, their kidney. Then they just keep going to complete strangers. And in this article they, they talk about this trend, particularly in the uk. Most of these non-direct altruistic donors are male.

Kind of like the beautiful ones. A good portion are in their twenties. Then there’s another large cohort in their fifties. Weirdly it also notes the donors are [00:16:00] predominantly white, highly educated, and less likely to be married or have children. These are, in other words, I think beautiful ones.

These are people who are stuck in an altruism trap. They’re optimizing to do good without really understanding what it is. And there are people who don’t have children, who don’t have partners who are not really making any lasting impact. ‘cause what do you do when you give someone a kidney? Maybe you’re extending that person’s life a little bit.

You’re saving them from dialysis for a little bit, but like, what is that person gonna do? And this is also a stranger. Like, you have no control over who you’re giving your kidney to in these cases. So like, I don’t know, you could be giving your kidney to like, like a retired person who’s not gonna have any impact anyway, aside from maybe, maybe babysitting a grandkid a little bit and helping that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Like I, I really don’t like it. The, the myop, the myopia of this. Like, you could instead. Go work for a startup that will build synthetic kidneys. Like we’re at that point in [00:17:00] human history.

Malcolm Collins: I love the way you see things the way I do. Why don’t you just make synthetic kidneys?

Simone Collins: We’re so freaking close that so that, and then that, that’s why I’m like, this is a sign of really, like, you’ve gone off the rails.

Like this is performative altruism. It has no point. It has no reason. It’s crazy. And then there’s also dating, and we, we haven’t run the episode yet, but we did an episode on new trends in Gen Z dating. And one of the big trends that was emerging among Gen Z pickup artists specifically, is that there’s this subset of Gen Z pickup artists that are really just trying to, like, they’re using their ray bands.

They’re recording like sessions of like coal approaches and they’re just trying to get views. Like the point isn’t too. Get women to sleep with them, per se. It’s to get, and that’s, I was to get attention, to get reactions

Malcolm Collins: of we had recorded one of our weekend episodes on this, which are for paid [00:18:00] subscribers.

If you guys wanna help us out on Patreon or Substack

Simone Collins: there you are. If you’re listening to this. Oh, sorry. No, no, sorry.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: This isn’t, this is for the main channel. Oh, awesome. Oh yeah, by the way. Yeah. We have, we run two weekend episodes every single week. We now have this big backlog. I think we have over 50 additional episodes that you have not seen.

If you wanna get your fix, if you’ve already gone through all the backlog. There’s more friend.

Malcolm Collins: If you’ve already gone through all the backlog, you have a problem. Okay. You have like an emotional problem?

Simone Collins: No, no. You’re cool. I’m

Malcolm Collins: trying to put this show has been on forever. Okay. Simon. Yeah. At this point.

But if you, if, if you have, I appreciate it. I appreciate

Simone Collins: it. Yeah. But also, like, if you wanna support us and help us out, like we really would appreciate it. It means a lot to us and it does make a difference for us.

Malcolm Collins: So, and I’m trying to, I’ve been trying to create playlists so it’s easier to do like the backlog if you ever wanna do it, of like the stuff that’s gonna be evergreen, right.

For a particular topic of interest, like, s psychology and anthropology science [00:19:00] government, and go governance theory, stuff like that. So anyway.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But anyway, so there’s also now just like trends in dating in which people are not even trying to get a partner. They’re just, you know, they’re just cold approaching for like.

To, to prove to themselves something or to, to, you know, build a career as a higher status like dude slash dating coach. That’s another example of this trap. But let’s go to, looks maxing and go into it in greater detail. Then what we’re gonna do is, is, is we’re gonna look at clavicular and sort of what he does to give you a picture of what looks maxing entails.

‘cause it’s just very entertaining. And then we’re gonna look at the various factors that are driving people into this particular beautiful one’s trap, because I think that they’re very they can give you an idea of how someone can very subtly fall into a beautiful one’s trap like status or like dating or like altruism without knowing it.

Because it can be a confluence of subtle things. And I’m gonna go through the confluence of [00:20:00] subtle, gateway drugs essentially. That Bruno Daniel friend of the podcast and of reality fa reality fabricator sent to us as he looked into what was driving people into looks maxing or what might be driving people into looks

Malcolm Collins: maxing.

We have one of our, our, our big fans into Look Mac or was into Look Mack thing. It’s funny like when we’re like, okay, when do we give our kids like human growth hormones and stuff like that, we like reach out to this fan. I’m like, I’m sure he’s done the research, right?

Simone Collins: He is so cool. No, he’s like one of my favorite people in the entire world.

I, I’m like a fan of him. I’m a fan of so many of our fans. Like, I’m just like weirdly obsessive about them and I don’t think they realize,

Malcolm Collins: well, because you don’t bother with real friends. ‘cause real friends are a scam.

Simone Collins: Well, they’re, but they’re also like. Not as well selected people who are your IRL friends are people who you just happen to run into.

The people that we come across content-wise and who come across us content-wise, like we’re all really well matched for each other because we share interests and like very obscure interests. So anyway looks, maxing is definitely on the rise. [00:21:00] It, if you look at Google Trends, and this is all linked in the show notes which you can find on Substack or Patreon.

It shows how it came out of nowhere in 2023 which is probably just when they started putting a, a name to this because, for example, the person we know who first clue us into looks like maxing that Malcolm just referred to he’s been doing this since he was a teen, you know, like using different hormones and injections and, and interventions, et cetera, like going above and beyond to make sure that, you know, he grows enough and like, looks better than he otherwise could.

So, like, this is it, it’s not like it only just emerged in 2023, but that’s when people really started talking about it online. Then it interestingly came to a lull in 2024 and then swung back up in 2025, but also in a much more extreme way. Because that is when you start to see in Google trends a spike of things like what is the word?

Where you. Hammer your face.

Malcolm Collins: Face

Simone Collins: hammer. Yeah. Whatever. [00:22:00] It’s, it’s somewhere deeper in my notes. I’ll, I’ll mention it in a little bit. And also people like Clavicular. With Clavicular being now the new 2026 face of Looks maxing, who also is just like extremely, extremely out there.

Malcolm Collins: I think, I think that clavicular is, I haven’t seen that much of his content, but he seems like so much more emotionally healthy than like Andrew Tate as like a, a young male influencer,

Simone Collins: I guess.

And No, let’s talk about what he does. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Go, go into on,

Simone Collins: I mean, he, I mean, yeah, I don’t know. Okay. There, there’s a lot, there’s a lot with him. So he, he started testosterone injections at like age 14 or 15 which I don’t. Like blame him for doing. He, he, his parents were against this, by the way. His parents were not supportive of this.

He also engages and has engaged in very long-term steroid use. He, this is where things start to go off the rails. Malcolm, he uses meth to suppress [00:23:00] appetite and stay extremely lean and maintain hollow cheeks. And that’s based, it’s, it’s very based, I think like, there’s this one clip of him on social media where he’s like chatting with a girl at a club and she’s like, like, I don’t know, do you do any drugs or something?

And he is like, or like alcohol, like, do you drink a, he’s like, well, I don’t really drink alcohol. I like mostly just do meth. And she’s just kind of like, oh, okay.

Malcolm Collins: I mostly just do meth. I mostly just do meth.

Simone Collins: Yeah. He’s you know, and also like people have come to question, you know, his, his political philosophy.

‘cause he is like, well obviously I would vote for, who’s the California Gavin Newsom over JD Vance. ‘cause he totally MOGs Vance. And I think like at one point, like he said this to like Andrew Tate at some stupid male influencer gathering in Miami, and Tate was like, child, that is not the way that you vote.

Malcolm Collins: My, I love, I love that this guy is just like living on an aesthetic.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, like I get it and I, I like the commitment to the bit, [00:24:00] but also he’s one of the beautiful ones. Like to what end is this commitment? So yes. To, to our earlier point, because I was, I was this alluded, but yeah, he practices bone, bone smashing which is when you use a hammer or fist to hit your face, to induce micro fractures to produce a sharper jawline.

Now, just to double click on this, because enough people have been talking about bone smashing where I was like, this can’t. This can’t work. Right. But also, like, I was like, well, hold on a second because this is, this is how nose jobs work. And by the way, there’s some YouTubers who’ve, who’ve done really great histories of nose jobs.

People have been using, doing nose jobs. Of course you’ve

Malcolm Collins: watched this. I love it. What on our channel, wherever you find Simone has like a really deep knowledge. It’s whenever we’re talking about fashion history.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So

Simone Collins: like, oh,

Malcolm Collins: you’re talking about.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but like people have been, have been doing those jobs for a long time, and nose jobs have always involved breaking the bones in the nose and, and strategically reforming [00:25:00] them.

So I’m also like, well, of course, but I know that facial cosmetic procedures have for a long time involved breaking bones in the face. So maybe there’s something to this, but just in case you’re picking up a hammer right now and getting ready to go.

Malcolm Collins: Most looks maxers I know are super, like, educated on this stuff.

No, I don’t think they do something that didn’t work.

Simone Collins: No, because, no, this, it doesn’t work. Okay. Just let’s get cut to the chase. It doesn’t, I don’t

Malcolm Collins: believe you.

Simone Collins: Okay. Now, oh, it, no, it doesn’t. And, and I’ll explain why. And you’re, you’re gonna understand really quickly why. Okay. So bone smashing is based on a misreading of wolf’s law, which says bone adapts to controlled repetitive mechanical loading, like normal weight bearing exercise, not to random blunt trauma or deliberate fractures.

So surgeons point out that striking your face with fists or hammers creates uncontrolled injury. So any microfractures are healing are unpredictable. They can’t reliably [00:26:00] make the jaw sharper or more symmetrical. And reviews by doctors and oral maxi maxillofacial surgeons state that there’s no clinical evidence that bone smashing produces cosmetic improvements in facial structure.

So like going down to the logistics of what’s happening here, blunt force to the face primarily damages soft tissue like skin and fat and muscle and blood vessels and nerves. This causes swelling, it causes bruising, scar formation. It doesn’t cause the clean controlled bone remodeling that they think they’re doing.

So even when small fractures occur, they tend to heal along the original anatomy or in a misaligned way, which can worsen asymmetry or create deformity instead of a sheer jawline. Experts emphasize that when bones truly need to be repositioned or reshaped for cosmetic or functional reasons, and this is comes to my my nose, job awareness surgeons use very precise planned osteo osteotomies.

Osteo [00:27:00] osteotomies and fixation. Meaning that they’re like really going in there and very strategically breaking the bone and repositioning it. They’re not just like hitting it with a hammer. So not repeated low level trauma to get predi