The Reason Gen Z Isn't Dating

[Coventina]

At least incels cared about getting with the opposite sex.

The mostly male, mostly heterosexual looksmaxxers — those who have come to dominate social media with their brainrotted vernacular and impenetrably captioned video clips — seem to have dispensed with relationships entirely.

In the late 1990s, self-defined involuntary celibates cared enough about love to define themselves by their lack thereof. They bemoaned the fact that their looks, they felt, prevented them from entering into romantic and sexual relationships.

Earnestness doesn’t last long on the internet.

Today’s looksmaxxers — next-gen incels schooled in Trump-era nihilism, undersocialized because of Covid-19 lockdowns and radicalized by the manosphere — are obsessed with improving their physical appearance through any means necessary. They speak of aesthetics as destiny and attractiveness (ranked, codified and debated in extreme specificity) as the measure of human worth.

Braden Peters, the 20-year-old streamer known as Clavicular, has become the movement’s breakout star. He claims to have started injecting steroids at age 14 to improve his physique, has dabbled in crystal meth to suppress his appetite and promotes the technique of hitting oneself in the face with a hammer (it’s called bonesmashing in the looksmaxxer lexicon, and there’s video of him engaging in it) to heighten cheekbones and create a sharper jawline.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/opinion/gen-z-dating-clavicular.html?

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