Have You Heard That the New Way to Get Famous Sucks?
Anybody can become famous now. But also, anybody can become famous now.
Every once in a while, my social media and news feeds will get taken over by Some New Guy. That’s how I know that I am washed; if I weren’t, I’d be more connected to the places from which these New Guys emerge, and their sudden rise to fame wouldn’t seem so out of the blue.
The latest of these New Famous Guys to pop up seemingly everywhere I look online is Clavicular. If you haven’t heard of him, or the internet circles of hell that made him famous, I’m sorry to have to bring him to your attention.
Clavicular is an influencer who became famous for “looksmaxxing” (I am once again sorry), a trend that originated on incel message boards in which idiots go to extreme measures to maximize their perceived physical attractiveness. Clavicular is famous for being one of the most extreme practitioners of the trend.
His controversial methods include “bone smashing,” a practice of hitting your own bones with a hammer (or fist, if you’re a wimp) in order to make them grow back stronger (this is, in one of the most no-duh things I ever have to point out, a scientifically unproven practice), microdosing crystal meth to curb his appetite, and abusing steroids to the point where he has beome infertile by the age of 20.
These extreme measures are different from, let’s say, a movie star taking steroids to look like a human action figure, a model starving themselves to be as thin as humanly possibly, or a blues guitarist selling their soul to the Devil so they can really make that six-string sing. Let me be clear, those things are also bad, but at least they had a point. At least being a famous movie star or model is sacrificing your health for an artistic achievement. The point of looksmaxxing is just…to maxx your looks. It’s the next rung down on the ladder of “famous for being famous” that the internet and its ability to turn anybody with a phone into a “celebrity” has lowered us.
Oh, he’s also a Nazi with the stated goal of hoping to influence others politically by becoming more attractive. So, yeah.
Of course, he’s now claiming to be “apolitical,” a classic move for right-wing grifters. Pretending to not be interested in politics as a way to influence young males is a tried and true trick of internet hucksters. Clavicular has now been profiled in Wired, Complex, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, The New York Times, and other mainstream media outlets. His profile continues to grow. He’s now all over the feeds of washed uncs like me.
There are a lot of disturbing things about Clavicular and his rise to fame, and how he chooses to use his platform (remember, he’s a Nazi). I’m not here to talk about all of them. There are more serious people with more serious brains to talk about the more serious aspects at play. I’m here to compalin about some of the less serious, but still culturally relevant and disturbing factors of Clavicular’s fame. One clip that came across my feed particularly made me mad. It came from his recent appearance on The Adam Friedland Show:
Clavicular tries to shame Adam by calling out his “jestermaxxing” for his use of self-deprecating humor, and then shows absolutely no self-awareness when, with a straight face, he claims to do nothing besides stream because when he’s doing anything off camera, he thinks he could be “streaming this, getting paid.” Adam plays up his (very real) disgust at this idea, leading Clavicular to double down on his terrible philosophy.
This short clip captures everything I’m trying to say about how this new route to fame sucks. Clavicular’s extreme level of onlineedness has detached him from reality to the point where any level of human behavior or activity seems pointless to him if he’s not somehow cashing in, WHILE ALSO looking down at people as “jesters” for putting in effort at anything other than how they look. It’s a perfect pathological storm of internet-brain that combines a nihilistic disdain for caring about anything, a refusal to accept the validity of any line of thinking that differs from your own, and an extreme need for the approval of others in the most superficial way possible.
Maybe, just maybe…Clavicular knows there’s a ticking clock on his type of fame. So his saying that doing anything other than streaming would be a waste of his earning potential is his way of trying to strike while the iron is hot, still exists at all, and hasn’t disintegrated into a pile of dust. Even if that’s the case, he’s ruined the rest of his life in order to cash in! He’s pushed his body to the max, doing immeasurable damage, all for the sake of attention (and money, of course). When the clock runs out on his fame, what will he even have left to enjoy? Will he even be able to take pleasure in anything at all, or has he programmed himself out of feeling anything? What’s the fucking point of it all?
In theory, the internet has made it possible for anybody, anywhere, regardless of their status or connections, to become “famous.” In some cases, this has given opportunity to talented and unique individuals who might never have been discovered previously. In reality, it has led us down a path to where the most extreme, shocking, loudest voices with the dumbest ideas get boosted by the algorithm into our feeds, and our brains accept them as being worthy of attention because of how we’ve been programmed.
We’re used to there being some level of gatekeeping between us and what we consume. Our brains think that if a signal is being boosted, it’s been somehow vetted on some level, and somebody in charge of things decided that it was fit for human consumption. Yes, the gatekeeper system had its own terrible flaws, and attracted people who abused their powers (perhaps a world in which a select few are chosen as famous and put on pedestals, giving them lives of fortune and fame while the majority struggle to survive, and a culture that celebrates and chases that is…bad?) I don’t want to ignore those very real problems and the terrible things that people who abused that system did…but at least (and I mean this only in terms of people who did not use that system to abuse other people) there was some kind of barrier of entry to fame. The people who became famous had to have some level of skill, or charisma, or family connection to another rich or famous person (give me nepo babies over people famous for posting any day).
We’ve created a new type of celebrity who has absolutely no shame. They don’t care about anything other than being famous, and they don’t care how they achieve it. What’s the point of being rich and famous if you don’t also enjoy the spoils (living your life! doing cool shit!) I used to joke that if I were a famous actor and made a crazy amount of money to be in a movie, you’d never see me again after that. That I’d take my $50 million (or however much) and just travel and chill and do whatever I wanted, I’d be set! But at least the people who keep making movies well past the point of ever needing another dime are making movies! They’re creating art — even if it is just mindless action crap. I can’t believe I’ve been reduced to being on the side of mindless crap and nepotism!
The internet has created “creators” who don’t even produce mindless crap — they latch on to ideas and regurgitate memes, word for word, with nothing added or commentary provided. It happened slowly, and as a comedian, I’ve noticed it's creeping into the world of jokes. People have lost touch with the idea that a joke has “a writer” that it belongs to. Intellectual property only seems to matter when said property belongs to a mega-corporation. The normalization of taking other people’s ideas and work has led to the use of AI to steal other people’s labor and effort in the “creation” of their own posts. These people don’t respect actual creativity or the work that goes into it. The finished product is all that matters to them. They only care about The Post. They’ll do whatever it takes for attention to hold onto their level of internet fame for as long as they can.
As I mentioned earlier, this also leads to the amplification of extreme and dangerous ideas, as nihilistic opportunists who don’t care about anything other than their own fortune will say anything to gain and retain an audience. Their attempt to capture the ears of those who already believe their rhetoric has the side effect of also gaining the ears of impressionable young people being fed their garbage on social media. Far-right, hateful ideology is spread from people who don’t give a shit about the poison they inflict on the world around them to the next generation, who can’t yet understand how they’re being manipulated by the biggest grifters on earth.
What’s the solution? I don’t fucking know. Blowing it all up and starting over seems extreme. Dismantling the idea of celebrity altogether seems like a tough ask (although the idea that anybody can become famous could potentially be the first step on the very long path to people not caring about fame anymore…) Inventing time-travel to go back to the invention of the internet and making the exact opposite decision than we did the first time about everything that governs it and the information we put into it seems like it might work. Being mindful of what we give our attention to and the signals we choose to boost seems like a start. Rejecting nihilism and embracing the idea that we should care about things and feel things and share that care and those feelings with each other also seems good.
I don’t know what else will work. But I know it’s not hitting ourselves with a hammer so that our bones will grow back stronger. It’s definitely not that.
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