The Only ‘maxxing’/‘mogging’ Explainer You Need

Here’s your quarterly dispatch on internet lingo so the middle schoolers on your block start respecting you. A bunch of manosphere slang recently rocketed to the mainstream, propelled by a looks-obsessed influencer named Clavicular who walked in New York Fashion Week last week.

The livestreamer’s lexicon revolves around two words:

• Maxxing, a suffix that means optimizing for whatever word you slap “-maxx” onto, e.g., “looksmaxxing” for improving one’s physical appearance, “jestermaxxing” for acting silly to get laughs, or “lethalitymaxxing” if you’re an official US Department of Defense X account.
• Mogging, the act of one-upping another person, aka the end-goal of maxxing. Standing next to someone more muscular than you? Congratulations, you’ve been “frame-mogged.”

To achieve his looksmaxxing dreams, Clavicular has said he started taking testosterone around age 14, plus steroids, fat dissolvers, and sometimes meth to suppress his appetite. He also wears shoe lifts and *double checks notes* hits his face with a hammer in a scientifically dubious attempt to accentuate his bone structure. He makes $100,000+ per month streaming on Kick, the New York Times reported last week.

He’s big in right-wing circles. Clavicular recently hung out with fellow manosphere figures Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate at a Miami nightclub, where they chanted along to the Ye song “Heil Hitler.” He’s also repeatedly used the N-word in his videos, and he calls allegations of racism in looksmaxxing “dumb.”—ML