Articles

Looksmaxxing And The Business Of Insecurity

Something unsettling… is happening… or evolving.

Everything we do is measurable and shareable.
Our productivity.
Our steps… our sleep… our stress…
Our faces?

The rise of looksmaxxing is being framed as another strange internet trend… but there’s a lot more to it (and most of it is disturbing … and accelerating faster than most people realize).

Young men analyzing jawlines…
Cheekbones… eye angles… body fat percentages.
Trying to “optimize” their appearance like it’s a landing page.
On one level, this sounds harmless… and, frankly, maybe a little needed.
Go to the gym… eat better… dress well…
Take care of yourself.

That’s not new… more like life skills for a workforce that never wants to leave their condo… or parent’s house (and is increasingly learning how to perform life through a screen before actually living it).

Because this didn’t come out of nowhere.
Looksmaxxing has roots in the darker corners of the internet… forums tied to the manosphere… incel communities… spaces where attractiveness is treated less like a preference… and more like a rigid hierarchy.
And now… that thinking has gone mainstream.
At algorithmic internet speed.
And… it pushes toward extremes…
Because the algorithm doesn’t reward healthy… it rewards noticeable

And that’s where looksmaxxing becomes the next layer beyond skincare, haircuts and fashion.

The culture bends towards steroids… implants (jaws and beyond), lengthening surgery (choose a limb or other part)…
experimental supplements.
Even DIY techniques to literally reshape bone (some of which cross the line into self-harm disguised as self-improvement).
This isn’t self-improvement anymore.
It’s self-modification in a world driven by an algorithm that will keep showing you a better version of someone else.

Over… and over… and over again.

Your face becomes a node… a score.
Your attractiveness becomes a KPI.
Your identity becomes something to iterate on.

Like a product.

Remember the old digital adage that if something is free, you are the product?
We’ve spent years talking about how social media impacts girls and body image.
What we’re seeing now is the evolution to the other side of that equation.
Boys are entering the same system… but through a different lens.
And it’s not “be beautiful.”
Be dominant… be desirable… be chosen.
… Or be invisible.
And underneath all of this isn’t vanity.

It’s anxiety.

A generation of young men trying to make sense of shifting social norms… changing expectations… and a world where status feels harder to define.
Look no further than the new documentary on Netflix by Louis Theroux, Inside The Manosphere.
Everything in that documentary now feels like the phase before looksmaxxing… the ideology before the optimization layer.
We’ve gone from content and influence to control… or at least the illusion of it.
If relationships feel unpredictable…
If success feels uncertain…
At least your face feels like something you can optimize (much like buying toilet paper during Covid).

But here’s the problem…

When the internet turns identity into a competition…
It never stays casual.
And when the baseline becomes perfection…
Everyone starts to feel like they’re losing.
Because nobody actually knows what “perfection” is… and the “influencers” espousing the definition will keep moving the goalposts (because their business model depends on it).
So, here’s the question… what happens to a generation of young people (because even though this is a mostly male trend it affects everyone)…

What do we do in a world where we’ve now trained and taught everyone that who they are… is never quite enough… and the work they’re doing is about to be taken by a large language model … and the platforms shaping that belief are the same ones profiting from fixing it?

This is what Trudie Mason and I discussed on CJAD 800 AM.

Mitch Joel · Looksmaxxing And The Business Of Insecurity – The Elias Makos Show – CJAD 800

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Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.