Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Chris Revelle | Celebrity | February 24, 2026
Have you ever smashed your face with a hammer? Clavicular has. Born Braden Peters, the 20 year old “looksmaxxxer” began practicing “bonesmashing” as a teenager. He was tapping his facial bones with a hammer to change his face shape so often that his mom had to take his hammer away. He still hits himself in the face with a hammer, but now he does it with legions of fans watching. Any old time a meteor wants to come hurtling out of the sky at us would totally work for me, by the way.
“Looksmaxxxing” is the fashionable nickname for eating disorders marketed to young men. The goal is to achieve such a low body fat percentage that everything from abs to cheek bones pop more. Starvation and striking the face with a hammer are just two of the ways to achieve this. Peters claims to have dabbled in meth to make his face more gaunt. He calls it “leansmaxxxing.” Everything can be thought of as “maxxxing.” Skin care is “softmaxxxing.” Weight-lifting is “hardmaxxxing.” Telling jokes or being silly is “jestermaxxxing.” Earlier this year, Peters was profiled by the New York Times. He also walked in New York Fashion Week.
Before the current war of the looksmaxxxers, Peters experienced such a meteoric rise promoting misogyny, toxic gender roles, and self-harm, that he was among the manosphere’s finest who had a well-documented weekend in Miami. In company with proud neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes and credibly accused human traffickers Andrew and Tristian Tate, Peters rocked out to Kanye West’s “Heil Hitler,” and engaged in such edifying discussions as why it’s “pointless” to take a woman to dinner or spend time with one at all. Their combined internet following soaked it in, cheering on Peters as he told a pair of women he met that they were old.
The irony is impossible to miss because it’s so unsubtle and absurd: these heterosexual men have internalized every poisonous idea offered by the manosphere so completely that they seem to genuinely hate women, and themselves. To them, women aren’t worth spending time with, and their own bodies will never be worthy of appreciation if they don’t radically alter them. Women are to be hated because they’re the supposed source of the body standards these men pursue, but this means the hammer-smashed faces and meth-slimmed bodies aren’t for women, but for other men. Not unlike drag queens in this way, looksmaxxxers engage in outsized gender performance. Very unlike drag queens, however, looksmaxxxers don’t perform for love, art, or money. With the attention of women so devalued, these men perform to assert dominance over one another.
The term, “mog,” comes from the acronym AMOG or “alpha male of the group.” To mog someone is to outdo them as a man, in whatever form that might take. In a recent video, Peters was seen interacting with an “ASU frat leader,” and was “framemogged,” or outdone by the frat brother’s more muscular frame. If you watch the clip, you might think you’ve seen two men making small-talk, but simply being in close proximity to a more muscular body shamed Peters in the wild eyes of the internet. Such a slight could not go unaddressed. Enter Androgenic.
Androgenic is a 24-year-old Australian man who makes looksmaxxxer content. Stepping up to defend his role model, Androgenic traveled to the United States to find the ASU frat brother and demand a “mog-off.” While preening in the states, an unknown hero snatched Androgenic’s ballcap off his head, revealing that there was a wig attached. The mog-off thwarted, Androgenic has retreated, claiming that he’s been public about wearing a wig for a while. One imagines all involved will mog each other until one is declared the King of Mog Mountain.
The drag queen comparisons are impossible to ignore when there’s a literal wig-snatching in a looksmaxxxer feud. It’s tempting to view this comparison as malicious, as if it’s an insult to Peters and his ilk to be so similar to drag artists. They’d likely be affronted by an association with something so high-femme and queer, but they should be so lucky. More salient though is how looksmaxxxers and drag artists are both responding to the static gender roles of society. Hitting himself in the face with a hammer can be seen as Peters’ desperate attempt at gender-affirming care. It’s notable that Peters claims to have started hormone treatments at age 14. For his gender-affirming care, Peters is profiled in newspapers and invited to walk runways, but for others seeking the same affirmation, they’ve got a much rougher road.
