[Hook & Introduction]
Fellas — I want you to sit with something for a second.
There are young men out there right now — teenagers, early twenties —
who are picking up HAMMERS.
And hitting themselves in the FACE.
On purpose.
Because they believe — they genuinely believe —
that the shape of their cheekbones determines whether they will EVER have sex.
This isn't fiction. This is not a dark sci-fi plot.
This is a real trend called BONESMASHING.
And it is the most visible symptom of something much deeper going on with an entire generation of men.
The New York Times ran an opinion piece on March 3rd about this world.
Christine Emba writes about what she calls the "looksmaxxing" movement —
and fellas, I need you to understand what we're actually looking at here.
Because on the surface, it looks absurd.
But underneath it — there is something that should make every one of us stop and pay attention.
[Why It Matters]
Here is the stat that should wake everybody up.
According to the 2025 National Dating Landscape Survey — a nationally representative study of over FIVE THOUSAND young adults —
published by the Institute for Family Studies in February 2026 —
only 31% of unmarried young adults between 22 and 35 are actively dating.
Let me say that again. THIRTY-ONE PERCENT.
Three out of four women haven't been on a date in the past year.
Nearly two out of three men haven't either.
And yet — 86% of these same people WANT to get married someday.
They want connection. They want love.
They just — can't get there.
Only a third of young adults expressed ANY confidence in their dating skills.
Only 34% felt confident discussing feelings with a potential partner.
And only 25% felt confident approaching someone they were interested in.
This is a generation that wants intimacy — and has NO IDEA how to get it.
And into that vacuum — into that desperate, aching void —
looksmaxxing walked in.
[5 Conversation Starters]
1. The top looksmaxxing influencer is a 20-year-old named Braden Peters — who goes by the name CLAVICULAR online.
According to The New York Times, by February 2026, he was earning MORE THAN $100,000 A MONTH from his Kick live streams.
He started taking steroids at AGE 14 — self-administered testosterone he bought online with no medical supervision.
By 2025, according to Wikipedia, his body can no longer produce testosterone naturally.
He suspects he is now INFERTILE — at 20 years old.
2. Bonesmashing is based on something called Wolff's Law —
the scientific principle that bone adapts and remodels under mechanical stress.
Looksmaxxers interpret this to mean: hit your face with a hammer, your jaw gets stronger and sharper.
But plastic surgeons are VERY clear on this.
Dr. Ben Schultz from LifeBridge Health says the practice is NOT supported by scientific evidence.
Profile Aesthetic's expert explains that bonesmashing causes uncontrolled blunt force trauma —
leading to microfractures, swelling, scar tissue — not bone sculpting.
At best you get lumpy, asymmetrical disfigurement.
At worst? Fractures requiring complex surgery.
According to a 2024 paper published in PubMed from the University of São Paulo's Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery —
this is being flagged as an urgent medical concern.
3. Clavicular told The New York Times that just the POSSIBILITY of sex with a woman —
quote — "might be more satisfying than the act itself."
He said it's "a significant time saver."
Think about that for a second.
A 20-year-old has concluded that FANTASIZING about sex is more appealing than actual sex.
Because he's decided real women are too much of a risk.
This isn't self-improvement. This is self-exile.
4. The looksmaxxing world has its own language for women.
They're called — I want you to know this — "foids."
Short for "female humanoids."
That's not an accident. That language reflects a total psychological distancing from women as actual human beings.
Gen Z writer Mana Afsari wrote in The Point magazine that she observed right-leaning young men at a party who found it MORE comfortable
to talk ABOUT women in abstract —
as archetypes who would inevitably cause them pain —
than to actually talk TO the real, available women in the same room.
Think about what it takes to get to that place.
5. Looksmaxxing isn't a fringe subculture anymore.
According to The Conversation — published March 9th, 2026 — looksmaxxing has mainstreamed onto TikTok and AI apps.
One influencer in the space racked up over 100 MILLION views in 2025 alone.
And the ideology — the idea that a man's "sexual market value" is determined by physical aesthetics —
started in niche incel forums but is now hitting the feeds of mainstream teenagers.
The BBC called it a trend where the quest for self-improvement can quickly become something much darker.
Healthline called it a "social media-driven body dysmorphia trend."
[Context & Key Insights]
Let me give you the full picture of how this happened.
Because these guys didn't just wake up one day and decide to hit themselves with hammers.
NYT opinion columnist Christine Emba lays out the sequence perfectly.
COVID lockdowns hit when these kids were 14, 15, 16 years old.
The exact years you're supposed to be awkwardly learning how to talk to girls.
Learning how to handle rejection. Learning how to read a room.
Instead — they were isolated. Online. With infinite access to the most extreme content available.
Then came the collapse of courtship norms.
Dating apps turned attraction into a sorting algorithm.
#MeToo created genuine confusion — many young men became afraid that any approach might be seen as threatening.
Online manosphere content — the "anti-simping," the "body count" discourse — filled that fear with rage.
And porn did what porn does — it replaced messy, vulnerable, REAL human connection with something frictionless and controlled.
On top of all that — the Young Men Research Initiative found in May 2025
that 27% of men aged 18-29 have NEVER been in a serious relationship.
For men aged 18-22, that number jumps to 40%.
Now here's what makes looksmaxxing different from the incel world most of us know about.
Incels — for all their toxicity — still WANTED connection.
They were angry because they wanted love and couldn't get it.
Looksmaxxers have gone one step further.
They've decided: forget love. Forget connection. Forget vulnerability.
Just OPTIMIZE. Become physically perfect. ASCEND.
And the pain and the loneliness? Just run it through a self-improvement framework.
Make it PRODUCTIVE.
Clavicular describes his own existence as "hell" —
and says he is compelled to looksmax to cope with what he calls the "burden of women's hypergamous dating."
He's not angry at women. He's just... decided they're not worth the risk.
And 100,000 people a month are paying to hear him say it.
NPR reported in January 2026 on the surge of "bigorexia" — muscle dysmorphia —
where young men who are objectively fit look in the mirror and see someone weak.
Dr. Jason Nagata from the University of California, San Francisco says:
"In many instances, an individual's physique is actually normal or even objectively muscular."
The issue isn't their body. It's what's happening in their mind.
And the more extreme the content these guys consume, the worse it gets.
As one researcher put it: "The more extreme the images you share, the more social and financial rewards you gain."
Meaning the PLATFORM rewards escalation.
So you go from moisturizing to jawline exercises to steroids to HITTING YOUR FACE WITH A HAMMER —
because at every step, the algorithm hands you more followers.
[Practical Takeaway]
Fellas — if you have a son, a nephew, a younger brother, a kid in your life —
and he's somewhere between 13 and 25 —
he has ALMOST CERTAINLY encountered this content.
Maybe just the soft version — fitness tips, grooming advice, frame theory.
Maybe the harder stuff.
Here's what NOT to do: mock it.
You will lose him immediately.
Because buried inside all the toxicity, there is a real and legitimate pain.
He IS being told his worth is determined by his looks.
He IS navigating a dating culture that's more confusing than anything we faced.
He IS lonely in a way he doesn't have language for.
So start there. Start with that.
"Man — the dating world sounds genuinely hard right now. What's it actually like for you?"
Not a lecture. A CONVERSATION.
One of the key findings from the Institute for Family Studies survey:
the biggest barriers these young adults report aren't lack of desire.
They're CONFIDENCE and BAD PAST EXPERIENCES.
49% cite lack of confidence. 48% cite bad past experiences.
These are coachable things. These are things a man in their life could actually help with.
That's us, fellas. That's our job.
[Audience Reflection]
Here's the question I want to leave you with today.
When you were in your early 20s —
did you have a man in your life who taught you that being REAL was more attractive than being perfect?
Who showed you that vulnerability was strength?
Who modeled what a healthy relationship with a woman actually looked like?
If you did — you're lucky.
A lot of these young men DIDN'T.
And they found Clavicular instead.
So the real question is —
who's that man for the young guys in YOUR life?
[Community Engagement]
Drop it in the comments —
What's the biggest thing you wish someone had told you about women and dating when you were 18?
I want real answers. No performance.
What actually would have helped you?
Because those answers? That's the CONTENT these young men need to hear.
That's the antidote to bonesmashing.
Share this one, fellas — because somebody in your feed has a son or a nephew who needs to hear this conversation.
This is what morning accountability looks like. Real talk. Real issues. Real men.
[Empowering Close]
Look — I'm not here to condemn a 20-year-old kid who hit himself in the face with a hammer.
I'm here to understand him.
Because a young man who is so invisible, so convinced he is worthless and unloved —
that he is willing to break his OWN BONES to get someone to notice him —
that young man needs more men around him. Not fewer.
He needs to see what it looks like when a guy in his 30s, 40s, 50s is THRIVING —
not because he has a perfect jawline —
but because he put in the work to become someone real.
That's the looksmax that actually works, fellas.
Build your character. Build your emotional intelligence. Build your PRESENCE.
Nobody ever got a great relationship by smashing their face.
They got it by becoming someone worth knowing.
We're out here doing that work every single morning.
Wednesday, March 18th, 2026. Show 3006. Let's go.
This is Men in the Loop — your daily morning accountability partner, your daily morning motivation —
where real talk meets real men, real fitness, real healthy lifestyle, real business, real technology, real AI conversations, real BAPL energy.
Start your day right, men. See you tomorrow.