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00:01:51.740Hey, it's Bridget. Just wanted to give you a quick heads up that this episode gets into some conversation about disordered eating and self-harm.
00:02:03.340There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:02:07.160i'm bridget todd and this is there are no girls on the internet
00:02:14.280i think it is time that we talk about looks maxing and a specific looks maxing
00:02:22.700influencer named clavicular mike you and i were just talking about this before we got on the mic
00:02:28.600together you and i talked about clavicular and whether or not we were going to do an episode
00:02:33.160about him kind of a while ago he's been on my radar for a little bit that's right yeah you
00:02:39.200brought him up a while ago and obviously he has kind of blown up in the news over the past
00:02:46.680week two weeks i'm not sure exactly the timeline and it's seems like it hasn't really gone
00:02:52.500great for anyone although maybe he would disagree maybe he would say it has been great for him and
00:02:58.020he's really blown up his profile. Yes. So the reason that I wanted to start there is because
00:03:04.880when he first started popping up on my radar, it was, I would say like late 2025, and he had not
00:03:12.860yet really blown up. I was aware of him just from the work that we do and talking about what's
00:03:17.900happening in different gendered circles of the internet. So I was pretty aware of him and looks
00:03:22.420maxing. But honestly, I made sort of an editorial judgment call of whether or not he was going to be
00:03:28.600somebody that we talked about on the podcast. At the time, I looked at his follower counts on
00:03:34.140platforms, streaming platforms like Kick, and I thought, OK, this person is not a nobody. He's
00:03:40.520definitely a niche somebody in this pocket of the Internet. But comparing him to some of the other
00:03:46.680incel, manosphere, extremist influencers that we do talk about, people like Andrew Tate,
00:03:52.420fresh and fit, he was pretty small. When I was working at Ultraviolet, specifically doing work
00:03:58.160around myths and disinformation, we had this internal thing that we call a threat matrix that
00:04:02.920determined when and whether and how we would talk about specific pieces of disinformation,
00:04:09.000because we found that not every piece of harmful content really warranted blowing it up and talking
00:04:15.380about it. And so we would have this way of saying, OK, well, this piece of harmful content exists.
00:04:20.780It's out there. It's not really making it into mainstream circles.
00:04:23.520So let's keep an eye on it versus let's talk about it and risk amplifying it more.
00:04:30.080Yeah, that makes all the sense in the world.
00:04:32.560You know, people who are creating misinformation.
00:04:36.520And this is something that I've studied for the past several years, how health misinformation spreads online.
00:04:41.280People who are creating it want to get it in front of people.
00:04:44.520The point of making it is so that people see it and it affects people.
00:04:48.960And then, you know, there are various reasons why they might want to do that. And so then if you're somebody who is trying to push back against that, either because you want to promote good health information or you're concerned about democracy and trying to push back against false political narratives or whatever, it makes a lot of sense that you want to be thoughtful about which stories you highlight because attention is the whole name of the game. And, you know, it's like the Barbra Streisand effect.
00:05:17.720Exactly. And I wanted to start there because I think that exact tension and dilemma has to be
00:05:23.700part of the conversation about influencers like clavicular and how we talk about movements like
00:05:29.360looks maxing. So I want to get into all of this. But first, I want you to imagine a 20-year-old
00:05:36.700woman. She grew up online. She's deeply insecure about her body, but she does not refer to that0.97
00:05:42.180as an insecurity. She calls it a lifestyle. She streams herself. She teaches her growing teenage
00:05:49.660following, which pills to take to suppress appetite, which injections they should be getting,
00:05:55.320how to change the way their body looks through self-harm practices. She films herself physically
00:06:02.480hurting her own body, but calls it self-improvement. She has a paid membership for other girls who want
00:06:09.560to do what she's doing, and she's made a ton of money off of it. At one point on camera, on a
00:06:14.940live stream, she injected her underage boyfriend with an unlicensed substance to change the shape
00:06:21.340of his jaw. So if that was going on, I want you to think, how would we, how would media, how would
00:06:28.300all of us be talking about her right now? It's a great question, and I think the obvious answer
00:06:34.400that we would be talking about her very differently.
00:06:37.460There's clearly a gender difference0.96
00:06:40.440in the way that the media has been treating this man
00:07:05.240So Luxemaxing is one of those things where on its face, it actually doesn't sound bad.0.54
00:07:11.200It sounds like the kind of advice that we often give young men who might be having trouble or issues with self-esteem.
00:07:17.400You know, things like focus on yourself, work on yourself, focus on your posture, have good hygiene, things like that.
00:07:23.660So on its face, it's these things like getting a better haircut, getting better skin care, going to the gym, focusing on good posture.
00:07:30.900When it went viral in 2022 and 2023, it was mostly these self-deprecating memes about jawline exercises and something called mewing to make your jaw and your face look more chiseled.
00:07:45.920So the important thing to know about looks maxing is that it's the gateway.
00:07:50.860It is how millions of young boys and men got introduced to a subculture that has very different values underneath.
00:07:59.200There's a whole kind of glossary of terms that are associated with it.
00:08:03.460Terms like soft maxing, which is low risk stuff that you do to your body.
00:08:07.960Haircut, posture, skincare, gym, mostly normal stuff.
00:08:11.520Then there's hard maxing, permanent, dangerous body modifications.
00:08:16.000Things like bone smashing and steroids.
00:08:19.000There's phrases like ascending or to ascend, which is climbing higher in a physical hierarchy of men.
00:08:25.660Or mogging, which is dominating somebody visually, like winning genetically.
00:08:30.180If you had a side-by-side, you kind of think of it as like back in the day, those magazines, who wore it best?
00:08:36.320A side-by-side comparison where somebody is dominating visually.
00:08:40.120There's also your SMV or your sexual market value, which is a number assigned to your attractiveness, basically like a credit score for your face and body.
00:08:49.320Mike, we talk about this on the show a lot, how you and I live in very different internet media ecosystems.
00:08:55.240Has any of this made its way across your desk?
00:08:58.300Honestly, only in the most superficial ways.
00:09:01.860Like I'm vaguely aware that this general category of stuff is out there and that young men are engaging a lot in content about their looks and their fitness.
00:09:18.500in ways that connect with value systems a couple steps away
00:09:24.360that are pretty questionable, if not outright objectionable.
00:09:29.180But the actual content itself, I really haven't seen much of it.
00:09:33.120You know, I think the various algorithms of whatever social media platforms I'm on,
00:17:52.580I heard that mogging before, but maxing, yeah, definitely familiar with and have been seeing it pop up in more and more types of conversations where it's just taken as like a given that this, oh, this is like a good thing.
00:18:11.300Yes, I did see a video where Clavicular is at a party and he walks up to a woman sitting by herself and he says, so you're really by yourself maxing right now.
00:24:08.100And you see that fact represented in the ideology about men performing gender for other men
00:24:15.800rather than trying to attract women all the time when you look at their content.0.76
00:24:20.400We talked about this in a news roundup, but when Nick Fuentes was live streaming from this party bus in Miami, it's Nick Fuentes with a bunch of other like cliniculars there. It's all these other extremist in cell adjacent male influencers. They're on a party bus. They have women on the bus, but the women are just sort of sitting together by themselves.
00:24:46.320None of the men are talking to the women.
00:24:47.560The women are sort of on their phones and talking amongst each other, essentially being
00:26:02.900the scammability of it, I am sure, is a huge part of the appeal for the people that make this
00:26:10.740content. Yes. And again, I mean, if I had to give you one top line, so what, of why I wanted to
00:26:16.400bring this conversation to the podcast, it's that the whole thing is a grift the same way that0.63
00:26:22.360lifestyle, MLM, selling leggings or whatever the hell else to women is a grift where it's like,
00:26:28.780Oh, you can have this lifestyle. You can be this kind of woman. You can be a boss babe who was able to make her own money, but also stay at home with your littles, mama bear, through selling this thing and giving your attention and your deference to me, the expert woman who was really gamed at the system.1.00
00:26:43.940It's the same thing just for men. And so my question is, I think we've seen a lot of critical reporting on that kind of dynamic when it is geared toward women.0.74
00:26:54.860I think that we should be attaching that same lens to what is very clearly the same kind of thing, only being directed at men.
00:27:03.220In the Manosphere documentary, I'm so glad that they dug into one of these pieces is that it's also very clearly a financial grift for these guys where it's not just hit the gym, do this to your face, look this kind of way.
00:27:19.120It's also, you need to be rich, but not rich because you worked a regular job or went to college, rich because you got rich outside of the system without a boss. I can teach you how to do that via investment, you know, online stuff, question mark, give me money.
00:27:38.320And I loved how Louis Thoreau was like, OK, this Manosphere influencer, Tiki Taki, told me that he was going to make me rich through my investment.
00:31:52.200Senior lecturer Jamila Rosedale of the Australian College of Applied Psychology found that TikTok algorithms specifically convert young men into incels through repeated exposure to this looks maxing content online.
00:32:05.200A Common Sense Media report found that 73% of teen boys regularly encounter masculinity content pushed into their feeds without seeking it.
00:32:14.040And importantly, it's not on its face like looks maxing content.
00:32:18.580It's content about things like building muscle, working out, making money, fighting or weapons.
00:32:24.520Yeah. And this is a point that I make when I'm doing talks about health misinformation.
00:32:31.920It's just exactly like you just said. It's other types of content related to, you know, fitness or sports or weapons or fighting or anything like that.
00:32:41.040And it's it's not like people are going up seeking health information.
00:32:44.580They're just consuming it as content, often without really consciously thinking about it.
00:32:51.180Yeah, I think I talked about this on the podcast before, but we're talking about the way that this content is specifically gendered.
00:38:11.440I am going to call him that, his real name, for the rest of this episode.
00:38:14.900I'm not going to use his stage name, Clavicular.
00:38:19.160I see Peters as both a very serious perpetrator of harm, both harm to himself and harm to others,
00:38:26.900and also a clearly troubled person who has been sort of failed by people around him.
00:38:35.420And that might be a controversial take. I think that both things are true. I want to be clear that I'm not saying that Peters is not responsible for his own behavior. We will get into some of the behavior that he has done that is very harmful.
00:38:49.560But my larger question is that there are people involved in this situation who I believe should know better, who are, I would say, in some ways, profiting off of making content about clearly somebody who I would say is not well.
00:39:08.020So to say that a different way, you're not going to engage in responsibility maxing where one person or group is exclusively responsible.
00:39:18.220You're actually saying that two things can be true at the same time.
00:39:22.160Yeah, and I might be mogging the New York Times a little bit here comparing our different senses of responsibility and ethics when it comes to writing about complex subjects.
00:39:33.440OK, so let's get into Peters's origin story. He was born in December of 2005. Do you know that Janine Garofalo joke that I love where she's she's talking about she's talking about meeting somebody who was born in 1999 and she says, I was already a blackout alcoholic with an eating disorder and you were just joining us. When I find out somebody's born in 2005, that's kind of how I feel.
00:40:44.6402005, I was in college in North Carolina, probably leading some sort of campus protest
00:40:51.440as an excuse to get out of a class and try to like bully my professor into counting
00:40:55.280to get his credit probably what i was doing so it's 2005 peters is born he grows up in hoboken
00:41:04.480new jersey his dad is a businessman his mom is reportedly a bodybuilder i've seen some fuzziness
00:41:10.780around that claim that might be something that she's sort of trying to use as a little bit of a
00:41:15.880an origin story mythos now peters told gq that his childhood quote was probably the same as anyone
00:41:22.480else's. His later accounts, though, tell a different story. So by Peters' own account during
00:41:28.900COVID, he was online up to 14 hours per day. He describes himself as just sort of rotting in his
00:41:37.340room, not being social and really struggling. And that is when he found Looks Maxing Forums.
00:41:43.180So before his 15th birthday, he ordered testosterone online. He told the New York
00:41:50.340times that finding testosterone, quote, it's like a cheat code. Why would I not do this?
00:41:56.780His parents found his stash of drugs and confiscated them, but he kept buying more and
00:42:02.340more. At one point, he is sent to live with his grandmother. So now it's the fall of 2024.
00:42:08.540He enrolls at Sacred Heart University. He gets expelled three weeks later after campus police
00:42:14.800fine testosterone in his dorm room. He says that he was reported by a rival looks-maxing
00:42:22.540forum user, and that's why he had this trouble with the law. He briefly works in a restaurant
00:42:28.220and then pivots to doing content full-time. And this is when he becomes clavicular. So the reason
00:42:35.560why I'm calling him Peters and not clavicular is because his name is not arbitrary. Clavicular is
00:42:41.840a reference to the clavicle, the collarbone. And that is one of the primary metrics that looks
00:42:47.060maxing communities use to assess your frame or the perceived masculinity of your bone structure.
00:42:54.020Again, goes back to that phrenology bit that we were just talking about. So calling yourself
00:42:58.780clavicular is really a statement of a specific kind of ideology, which is like why I'm just
00:43:04.500going to call him Peters. So when you get into that origin story, you know, a lonely kid
00:43:09.820dealing with the isolation of COVID, spending 14 hours a day online.
00:43:14.380To me, it is hard to not read Peters' story as one of radicalization,
00:43:21.100that he found these forums, the kind of extreme nature of them
00:43:24.980that you and I were talking about when we first started the episode, Mike,
00:43:28.280leading him down this increasingly extreme radical pipeline.
00:43:33.580Yeah, you know, thinking about a 15-year-old kid that,
00:43:36.880If he was born in 2005, he would have been 15 in 2020 when COVID started.
00:43:42.100You can't help but feel kind of bad for him.
00:43:44.700Yes. I mean, again, I want to, I'll probably say this a hundred more times.
00:43:48.300He is somebody who has been responsible for great harm, both to himself and to others.
00:43:52.500I will be honest and say in doing this research,
00:43:56.580the more I looked into him past what I already knew from his content,
00:44:02.260the more I am like, this is somebody who is not well.
00:44:05.560It is a little bit hard for me not to feel a bit bad for him personally. Again, I bet it's not to absolve the things that he has done and the ideology that he is clearly spreading. But yeah, it's just a little bit hard for me not to say like this is definitely an unwell young person.
00:44:20.120Yeah. And our goal here in this episode, I think, is not to absolve him from blame or anything like that, but really to understand what his weird place in culture means for all of us and for other young people, I think, who are vulnerable to the same type of content, many of which now created by him.
00:44:47.420Yeah. And that's my thing is that I don't really expect an unwell 20 year old to be living by certain standards. I should be able to expect it from The New York Times and other mainstream outlets who cover him.
00:45:04.380We shouldn't be able to expect it from the people who run social media platforms and algorithms, right?
00:45:09.820I think it's about not just putting the scrutiny on Peters as an individual, but asking what people and institutions with power have enabled this.
00:45:18.600Because I really do think that's part of the conversation that we're sort of not having.
00:45:23.760Yeah. And so I guess just before we get to that, did you want to talk a little bit about what some of his content does look like?
00:45:33.260Sure. So the core of his content is evaluating faces. He got big evaluating the faces of strangers on campus, celebrities, viewers who submit their photos, and he rates them through his looks maxing system.
00:45:48.780He famously gave Michael B. Jordan one of, according to me, the most handsome people I have ever witnessed.
00:45:56.720So Michael B. Jordan is like objectively one of the hottest men alive.
00:49:35.380But I don't think that these kids are wrong for being attracted to this because there
00:49:40.340is a grain of truth there that society has sold that college and a good job is a recipe for life
00:49:47.320success that is clearly not the case for most of us right and so like again i can understand why
00:49:52.700this is so attractive because there's a grain of truth to it yeah you know once again there's a
00:49:58.680grain of truth in there that then gets uh distorted and used to sell snake oil and in this case the
00:50:09.380snake oil includes self-harm. In November 2025, Peters films himself injecting fat-dissolving
00:50:16.460peptides. So he dissolves these fat-dissolving peptides into his then 17-year-old girlfriend's
00:50:22.360jaw on a live stream. Medical professionals flag this immediately as the unlicensed practice of
00:50:29.880medicine on a minor, but no criminal charges followed. He's been arrested twice, once in
00:50:36.920Florida for a battery charge after provoking a fight between two women and then posting it online
00:50:41.580to exploit them. This was after a video surfaced of him in Florida shooting a gun at an alligator
00:50:48.640that was already dead just to, in his words, test to see how dead it really was. When I first heard
00:50:54.220about this, these two things happened around the same time. So I was like, oh, did he get arrested
00:50:58.100for the alligator shooting incident on video? The alligator shooting actually did not yield
00:51:03.620charges. The New York Times reported that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
00:51:08.820said on social media that it was, quote, looking into the incident after the video surfaced.
00:51:15.320He was also arrested in Arizona for possessing a controlled substance, including Adderall and
00:51:20.220an oral steroid, but prosecutors declined to press charges. So none of these incidents had any kind
00:51:26.900of like real negative impact on his career, obviously. In my opinion, these incidents,
00:51:32.500if anything, they only helped him grow a bigger profile. Each time he was arrested, it made
00:51:37.520headlines. Here is how the New York Times titled a piece about his arrest after the fight video.
00:51:43.300Clavicular, an internet narcissist, is arrested after posting a fight video. And then the subhead
00:51:48.320reads, the influencer, known for promoting handsomeness, is accused of arranging a brawl
00:51:53.920between two women. Separately, the authorities are investigating a video of him shooting an
00:51:58.400alligator that appeared to be dead promoting handsomeness that doesn't sound so bad yeah that's
00:52:04.340what i'm saying and again in this episode there is a tension because listen i am not someone who
00:52:11.520thinks that figures like this should not be written about or talked about because when we
00:52:18.060don't when we ignore them we just allow their platforms to grow and grow and investor and
00:52:21.860However, describing him as an influencer who is known for promoting handsomeness, in my opinion, is not a very responsible way to write about this particular figure, particularly a figure who pretty explicitly is dealing with self-harm and body dysmorphia.
00:52:42.600And so I started with that comparison of how the media would talk about this if we were talking about a woman.
00:52:48.520If a woman who explicitly was dealing with disordered eating and self-harm around disordered eating and body dysmorphia was being written about this way,
00:52:59.160I don't think they would describe her as an influencer known for promoting hotness or known for promoting being attractive.
00:53:06.220I think they will be describing her in a very different way.
00:53:08.640So the question remains, like, why the choice to describe him as an influencer known for promoting handsomeness when his whole thing is, in fact, self-harm and body dysmorphia?
00:53:18.940And something else that I think is important to understand about Peters is, and looks maxing more broadly, and also just like most of this manosphere, incel stuff, I mean, you're going to, I'm not saying anything that's super groundbreaking, is that it's both political, obviously, and objectively, while also framed as not political.
00:53:44.040Peters actively tries to distance himself from incel ideology and the politics around it.
00:53:50.540He has publicly said that he is not political.
00:53:52.780He has described look-smaxing as simply self-improvement, something that helps men ascend out of being incels, not something rooted in it.
00:54:03.000But then when you look at who he actually hangs around and spends his time with, it becomes very clear, right?
00:54:10.320The New York Times reported that Peters has socialized with people like Nick Fuentes, who is a white nationalist commentator, Andrew Tate, who we know was accused of rape and human trafficking.
00:54:20.900We've talked about it on the pod before, but there's that video of all of them on the party bus and then going to a nightclub in Miami, chanting to the Kanye West song, Smile Schmittler.
00:54:30.800You know, the phrase I will never say on this podcast because I just know someone's going to clip it and be like, oh, she said it.
00:54:35.940After that clip circulated, Peters met with prominent Jewish club owners in Miami and then posted on Instagram, quote, no more politics, just mogging, which is a very interesting response to being filmed singing Schmile Schmittler in a nightclub.
00:54:53.660it also makes me want to know more about those club owners who met with him like it's notable
00:54:59.840that he's not meeting with like faith leaders or community leaders no it's club leaders club
00:55:08.280owners club owners you know probably didn't appreciate the sentiment but did appreciate
00:55:13.400the publicity yeah i mean i'm gonna go out on a limb and guess yeah and then there was this viral
00:55:20.84060 Minutes Australia interview that happened just two days before Peters overdosed. So
00:55:27.200correspondent for 60 Minutes Australia, Adam Hegarty, asked Peters in this like one-on-one
00:55:32.800sit-down interview what I thought were entirely reasonable questions given everything that we've
00:55:38.940discussed. He asks, does Peters identify as an incel? Peters objects to the question. He denies
00:55:46.720any connection to incels, and again, framed looks-maxing as the opposite, something that
00:55:52.360helps men move beyond this incel label. When Hegarty followed up by then asking about his
00:56:00.180relationship with figures like Andrew Tate, Peters then accused the interviewer of making
00:56:06.000the interview political. He then makes a pointed personal attack, saying, oh, well, if you want,
00:56:13.260I can help you find out who your wife cheated on you with, which is a line that he had used
00:56:18.600in an earlier interview with Piers Morgan and then walks off set. Side note, my theory that
00:56:24.240if you watch Bravo's Real Housewives or reality TV, you understand so much about people like this,
00:56:30.240where Phaedra Parks on Atlanta Housewives was known for rehearsing reads in her head and then
00:56:37.080just trying to figure out which one might work in a given circumstance. And when one works,0.78
00:57:11.680I'm not married. He doesn't have any kind of fallback for that. He's just like this interview
00:57:15.560is over and starts taking off the wires to leave abruptly. Sad. It's just a sad response. And
00:57:22.280those seem like totally reasonable questions. Yeah. But again, they're not reasonable if you
00:57:29.480need this ideology and this worldview to be not political. His spokesperson told people about this
00:57:36.520interview, quote, Clavicular is young, but he understands the media and he can spot a dishonest
00:57:41.220reporter when he sees one. And so this reporter wasn't dishonest. And that is really the pattern.
00:57:47.140You know, looks maxing went from incel forms to TikTok by shedding the language of incels and
00:57:54.200just repackaging it as, you know, acceptable, reasonable self-improvement. And I think that
00:57:59.640Peters does that same thing personally. He keeps that ideology, ditches the label and then has to
00:58:05.700attack anybody who draws the obvious connection. This is kind of a tangent, but it's something that
00:58:11.480I see more and more of where people who are objectively doing things that are clearly
00:58:17.040political get to just call it nonpolitical. And people will accept that. You know, we saw just
00:58:22.880this weekend Joe Rogan, who has described himself as things like, quote, politically homeless,
00:58:29.260you know, has really been talking critically about Trump despite explicitly endorsing Trump on his
00:58:35.680podcast and having Trump on the podcast, he time and time again will be like, oh, well, I'm I don't
00:58:41.940really have a political home. Just last week, Rogan was front and sitter behind Donald Trump
00:58:49.180as he signed legislation about psychedelics into law. It's like how athletes will go to the White
00:58:55.900House, like in the aftermath of the U.S. men's Olympic hockey team winning gold over Canada.
00:59:01.280some of the players were photographed wearing Trump hats, like red MAGA hats.
00:59:08.040And so these are oftentimes the same people that want to say, oh, I'm not political.
00:59:12.380So not even making a judgment about whether or not they should do this,
00:59:16.660you don't get to wear a MAGA hat and then also say that you're not political.
00:59:20.300And so I guess I wanted to point out this trend of how people who are objectively
00:59:26.300aligning themselves with a very specific political ideology, then kind of get to have it both ways
00:59:31.880of saying, oh, well, people just look for anything to make it political. No, you're making it
00:59:36.320political. At least just own that you are making things political. Comedians like Joe Rogan do
00:59:41.340this all the time and it burns my beans where just own that you are aligning with a specific
00:59:46.900political ideology and have that be that. Don't try to sell me that you're not being political
00:59:51.200when you're so clearly being political. Don't say that it's us on the left who make everything
00:59:55.600political. You're wearing a Trump hat. That's political. Yeah. And it's not new. It's almost
01:00:01.760like it's a shorthand way to just write off any accountability for one's actions. Be like, oh,
01:00:08.200well, let's not get political about this. I'm just saying some things that perhaps have
01:00:13.880ramifications, but don't be political. Don't hold me to account for what I've said or done.
01:00:20.200Yes. And I think it's just so easy for them to be like, well, right wing white people stuff. That's not politics. That's just common sense. You know, good old fashioned common sense. Black leftists. Now that's political. Right. It's always back to that Carlin routine with me. It's just a way to be like, my stuff is stuff. Their stuff is shit. Oh, my worldview and ideology. That's not political. That's not politics.
01:00:47.500their worldview and ideology. Now, that's political and that's bad. They make everything
01:00:53.140political. I think it's grounded in this idea of wanting to have it both ways, wanting to,
01:00:58.580you know, align with power and who's in the White House and Trump and all of that,
01:01:05.240have the power of that while still getting to have the veneer of, oh, I stay out of politics.
01:01:10.240I don't want to make things political, yada, yada. And I think that Peter's and this the way
01:01:15.600that the looks maxing ideology has been able to shed this very specific grounding in a very
01:01:22.280specific political ideology is exactly that. And I think that is a little bit of what's happening
01:01:27.680here, because in my opinion, I think when looks maxing was written about as just some reasonable
01:01:36.440self-improvement trend on TikTok, as opposed to the actual roots that it has in noxious ideology
01:01:43.280that it does have, I think it was a kind of way of both laundering the ideology via traditional
01:01:50.820media and also boosting the celebrity of figures like Peters. And so that is sort of the meat of
01:01:57.640what I think is happening here. So it turns out that I have so much more to say about this. So
01:02:03.000this is going to be a two-part episode. Next week, we'll talk more about traditional media's role in
01:02:08.220amplifying Peters and what it means for all of us. So let us know what you thought about this first
01:02:12.940part of the conversation, and don't miss part two.
01:02:19.740Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi?
01:02:23.260You can reach us at hello at tangody.com.
01:02:25.560You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangody.com.
01:02:28.980There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd.
01:02:31.720It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
01:02:34.440Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer.
01:02:36.500Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.
01:02:39.100Michael Amato is our contributing producer.
01:03:41.740Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
01:03:50.400Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.