In the past year as I look online, I keep seeing the words mew, mog, and looksmaxxing. At first, I thought they were just more nonsense internet jargon but as I looked deeper into their roots, I learned it was much darker.
Looksmaxxing is a self-enhancement trend that has been circulating the internet since 2010 but has had a huge surge in popularity in the past couple of years. To most people, it falls under the category of “brain rot” which are nonsensical words used exclusively on social media, mostly originating from AAVE (African Amerian Vernacular English).
Looksmaxxing originated on “manosphere message boards” (aka incel* forums) under one of the three “pill ideologies.” According to incels and many alt-right conspiracy theorists, every person can be categorized as falling under one of three pills: blue, red, or black.
Blue-pilled people are supposedly being brainwashed by the “woke media” into thinking that men hold the power in our society. In contrast, red-pilled people have “woken up,” and realized that female oppression is a myth and that our society is dominated by the sexual desires of women who secretly desire traditional gender roles.
Within the red pill ideology, incels believe that physical appearance dictates all relationships. They see themselves as genetically inferior men with physical features that repel women. Chads or alphas are the beauty standard for them, the ideal Aryan man –white, tall, and chiseled.
This beauty standard comes directly from Eugenics, scientific racism, and Nazi ideology. The appearance-based social hierarchy is called Lookism. Some incels have a nihilist worldview in which they don’t see any possibility for self-improvement, relegating themselves to a life of involuntary celibacy (black pilled) while others believe in extreme “self-improvement” to increase their chances on the “sexual market”– looksmaxxing.
Looksmaxxers may dip their toes into a variety of different health/wellness trends —the carnivore diet, extreme fasting, – but they are best known for popularizing mewing, a tongue exercise developed by orthodontist John Mew in the 70s. By pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth, mewing supposedly enhances the jaw-making it look more masculine. John Mew’s work has been largely discredited but his practices have continuously been shared on looksmaxxing forums and have become a joke in many online spaces.
For years there’s been a huge focus on how social media affects young girls, understating the impact on young men. There are two different ways to look at looksmaxxing, on one hand, it’s finally allowing men to take part in self-care without being emasculated, but on the other, it can quickly lead a man searching for skincare advice down an alt-right conspiratorial rabbit hole. Men washing their faces and moisturizing is awesome, but I fear that the overall ‘manosphere’, doesn’t give men advice rooted in true self-improvement, or respect for others, it instead tells men that they cannot be loved unless they adhere to a specific standard of masculinity.
The popularity of looksmaxxing shows that these concepts surrounding ‘manhood’ and masculinity are no longer confined to niche internet subcultures, they have become mainstream. The world of podcasting is the biggest example of how the ‘manosphere’ has taken the world by storm. Joe Rogan, host of the #1 podcast on Spotify, is a prime example.
Freshman Walker Spencer, a frequent Joe Rogan Experience listener and self-described conservative stated, “Some of the things that he says [are] ….definitely unhinged.”
“He talks about how UFC fighters are the ‘most masculine men on earth’–it could be true but as a UFC fighter you don’t have to be masculine,” said Spencer.
Joe Rogan’s views on masculinity are absorbed by millions of viewers (80% men) and it’s hard to imagine that they aren’t internalized by some.
A young boy hearing that it takes beating someone up in a cage to be “masculine” could easily get the wrong idea about what it means to be a man.
“I think that they try to promote – the more muscular you are the more manly you are doesn’t have to be necessarily true,” said Spencer.
When people promote these “macho-man” ideals using niche language, it affects those who consume it.
“If young men are reading articles or opinion pieces or social media posts that are sensationalizing or using terminology that they suddenly find to be the norm rather than played as a fringe idea, they might see it as a normal statement,” said Adam Pinkerton.
For Spencer, manhood is about something different. He says that he looks up to his uncle who “goes out of his way to help people.”
Instead of masculinity being all about mogging, looking better than others in a photo, ‘hunter eyes’, and 2% body fat, what if true “manhood” is about being comfortable within yourself, helping others, and standing up for those who can’t. Looksmaxxing might feel like a joke or just another dumb trend, but in reality, it’s a terrifying example of how the misogynistic ideas of incels have come into the mainstream.
