Social media has produced some wild and downright dangerous trends as more and more deranged humans chase their daily dopamine fix.
Who could forget when those without functioning brains were eating Tide pods for social clout?
And now what these Gen Z males are doing to appear “masculine” will strip you of any hope you had left for humanity’s future.
Gen Z men are spending thousands on new “looksmaxxing” trend
While some social media trends involve viral products, food, or travel destinations, others involve the desire to achieve a certain aesthetic.
Now, some Gen Z men are forking over thousands of dollars on a viral trend called “looksmaxxing.”
The odd trend encourages young men to try all sorts of things ranging from extreme diets to weird tongue exercises and plastic surgery or Botox.
The goal of the trend is to help these men achieve a perfectly chiseled face and body.
Dr. Jennifer Levine, a plastic surgeon in the Upper East Side, said her practice gets a lot of men “seeking facial balancing.”
“For most, this involves creating a strong jawline and a sculpted look,” she said.
Dr. Levine claims that she has seen a whopping 400% increase in young men in their 20s coming to her practice to get jawline treatments since 2020.
“Having a square jawline is considered masculine. Think [Patrick] Bateman [from American Psycho]. Definition and angularity are the goals,” she added.
According to Lewis Friedenthal, a 23-year-old living in Tribeca, he wanted to look more like Australian fashion model Jordan Barrett than actor Patrick Bateman.
“I wanted a sharper everything,” Friedenthal claimed. “I was looking at all these male models and popular looksmaxxing threads. I wanted bone structure like them.”
Originally, he said he tried some “softmaxxing” methods to achieve the look without having to get surgery, including tongue exercises called mewing and chewing “mastic gum” to help sculpt his face.
Later, he shelled out $1,000 on Botox treatments to help lower his eyebrows so they would look more symmetrical.
Friedenthal claimed that his eyebrows were “super uneven” and he wanted them to “be straighter and lifted at the end.”
“Men want that hunter-eye look,” he suggested.
Just one of several trends for young men
The “looksmaxxing” trend is only one of several “maxxing” trends that young men are being lured into on social media.
Another trend called “smellmaxxing” involves spending hundreds of dollars on designer colognes.
“Gymmaxxing” involves young men becoming obsessed with working out and producing whatever they deem to be their ideal physique.
A 23-year-old man named Kareem Shami is part of the “softmaxxing” community on TikTok, where he has amassed over 1.5 million followers.
The San Diego resident uses the handle @syrianpsycho, a reference to his home country of Syria and the aforementioned Bateman.
He says he felt like an outcast as a teenage immigrant, so he started investing his time and money into skincare and working out, claiming it helped him focus on “what he could control.”
“It’s essentially self-care – it’s anything you do to improve your presentation and the way you appear,” said Shami.
While some aspects of the trend are harmless, only time will tell if some of the things these young men do will have lasting repercussions.
US Political Daily will keep you updated on any developments to this ongoing story.
