A young man, around 19 years old, balls his hand into a fist and punches himself in the face along his jaw and cheekbones.
Another picks up a hammer and repeatedly hits his chin, leaving a trail of red marks.
At first glance, these TikTok videos seem like an alarming form of self-harm, but the young men involved in these unsettling posts market them as quite the opposite.
They perversely claim that what they are doing is a form of self-care, called ‘bone-smashing,’ that makes their bone structure sharper.
Indeed, this disturbing practice is one of the darkest extremes of a trend called ‘looksmaxxing,’ which first emerged in the 2010s but has since ballooned in popularity, with hundreds of thousands of American men following the most popular influencers online.
Now, the Daily Mail can reveal the ugly truth of this sinister phenomenon after speaking to multiple medical and mental health experts, investigating the most popular looksmaxxing websites that have tens of thousands of members and interviewing a 24-year-old who spent thousands to transform his face – only to be left temporarily disfigured.
Looksmaxxing, the umbrella term for trying to make yourself as attractive as possible, is, at its most basic level harmless: men aim to improve their personal hygiene, go to the gym and develop a skin care regimen.
But as they are sucked further into the aesthetics trend, the practices get progressively more extreme – using steroids, chemical peels, having cosmetic surgeries or procedures, and even trying risky at-home fixes like ‘bone-smashing.’
Looksmaxxing, the umbrella term for trying to make yourself as attractive as possible, is, at its most basic level harmless: men aim to improve their personal hygiene, go to the gym and develop a skin care regimen. (Pictured: 21-year-old Ahmet after looksmaxxing).
As they are sucked further into the aesthetics trend, the practices get progressively more extreme – using steroids, chemical peels, having cosmetic surgeries or procedures, and even trying risky at-home fixes like ‘bone-smashing’ (pictured here).
Board-certified plastic surgeon Dr Lara Devgan told the Daily Mail that drastic looksmaxxing like bone-smashing is ‘extremely unwise, highly dangerous, and betrays a total lack of understanding of the complexity of facial anatomy.’
It can lead to ‘a fracture, a muscle injury, a nerve injury, a vascular injury, a hematoma, patient, facial paralysis, the list goes on and on,’ she added.
Rather than helping young men, Dr Devgan thinks looksmaxxing takes advantage of their natural insecurities.
‘I think that some of these darker corners of the internet prey upon insecurities of a patient population that is not knowledgeable about all of the harm that they can do to their bodies,’ she said.
And experts tell the Daily Mail that the target audience is getting younger and younger.
‘It starts with boys, probably as young as 13,’ sociologist Dr Jamilla Rosdahl from the University of Melbourne said, calling for parents and schools to educate children about the dangers of looksmaxxing.
‘It’s boys in high school who start off by just wanting to perhaps build more muscle,’ she said. ‘But with just a couple of clicks they are taken down into sort of more radicalized attitudes and ideas.’
One of the most popular forums, Looksmaxxing.org, has over 66,000 members and more than 19 million posts.
When the Daily Mail signed up to see inside the forum, the content was shocking. There are pages and pages of schoolboys as young as 13 posting photos of themselves and asking other users to ‘rate me’ and ‘how can I improve?’
The replies are brutal. In response to one entry, someone wrote, ‘I would roidmaxx if I were you,’ suggesting he start taking steroids.
In response to another ‘rate me’ post, someone wrote ‘surgery will save you. Getting rich and learning how to get surgery should be your main goals.’
In other posts, commenters suggest the poster is ‘too ugly’ to improve how they look, and they suggest they contemplate suicide – which they refer to as ‘roping’ – instead.
And it takes an extreme toll on some users’ mental health.
In one post viewed by the Daily Mail, which was penned in March, the user says he was just ‘born inferior’ and adds ‘it’s over… either I rope within the month, or I seclude myself completely from social interaction.’
‘Roping’ is a slang term in the looksmaxxing for suicide by hanging.
And there is a certain callousness with which other users handle these issues. Under that post, the first comment was ‘dnr’ meaning, did not read.
The community has developed its own language and bizarre scales for attractiveness. If you’re rated a one to three out of 10, then you’re termed an ‘incel,’ a four is a ‘low tier normie,’ five is a ‘mid tier normie,’ then ‘high tier normie,’ followed by ‘Chadlite,’ ‘Chad’ and, for the most attractive people, ‘Gigachads.’
The forums encourage young men to obsess over the minute details of their appearance, sharing home-made manuals for measuring different distances between your features and formulas for what they claim are the most desirable ratios and angles.
When the Daily Mail signed up to see inside the forum (pictured), the content was shocking. There are pages and pages of schoolboys as young as 13 posting photos of themselves and asking other users to ‘rate me’ and ‘how can I improve?’
The forums encourage young men to obsess over the minute details of their appearance, sharing home-made manuals for measuring different distances between your features and formulas for the most desirable ratios and angles. (pictured: Ahmet after looksmaxxing).
Plastic surgeon Dr Akshay Sanan told the Daily Mail that he can always tell when his patients have tried these methods.
‘They come in talking like they’ve read a surgical textbook,’ he said. ‘They’re getting their information from Reddit forums, Instagram, TikTok.’
‘If they’re talking about specific angle measurements, or saying, ‘I want my eye canthal tilt to be a certain way,’ that, to me, is a red flag,’ he added. ‘Those specific measurements should be reserved for surgical textbooks and surgical conferences.’
Both Dr Sanan and Dr Devgan believe looksmaxxing is driving more and more men to contemplate plastic surgery.
‘In the past two or three years the number of young men coming in has skyrocketed,’ said Dr Sanan.
Lewis Friedenthal, 24, from New York, told the Daily Mail that he got sucked into the world of looksmaxxing in 2022.
‘I definitely felt insecure about my appearance. I felt like the outside wasn’t reflecting who I was inside, which was this super outgoing bubbly confident person,’ he said. ‘Every time I would see pictures of myself I would get upset.’
He had always cared about how he looked, and had dabbled with cosmetic procedures like filler before, but after discovering looksmaxxing, he started spending more and more time online obsessing over his facial ratios and what procedures he thought he needed.
‘I spent more than I would like to admit,’ he said. ‘I would look up procedures during my free time at night, at least an hour a day. It’s a rabbit hole.’
He started booking appointments for more serious operations – he has now had two nose jobs, chin and jawline augmentation, filler and Botox.
In total, Friedenthal estimates he has spent $75,000 on surgeries and procedures – money he saved himself and was given by his parents.
‘I’ve had procedures done that I wasn’t happy with at all, and didn’t give me the outcome I wanted, and then I was out of money, and not happy,’ he said.
Then, in November 2023, when he got filler in his jaw, it went horribly wrong: ‘I looked swollen, I looked heavier, and then I had a delayed reaction to the product as well, where, because there was so much put in at once, I would get nodules, and I had to get it dissolved and injected with steroids and all these things.’
Lewis Friedenthal, 24, from New York, told the Daily Mail that he got sucked into the world of looksmaxxing in 2022. (Pictured: Before and after shots of Friedenthal).
When Friedenthal (pictured) got filler in his jaw, it went horribly wrong: ‘I looked swollen, I looked heavier, and then I had a delayed reaction to the product as well, where, because there was so much put in at once,’ he said.
It was a wake-up call. He booked himself in to see a board-certified plastic surgeon Dr Jennifer Levine, who made him realize that the procedures were not only unnecessary but could actually make him look worse.
‘For someone like me, I want every single thing perfect,’ he said, ‘but Dr Levine reminds me, you don’t need it.’
Now, Friedenthal warns other young men to stay away from the obsessive side of looksmaxxing.
‘I think knowing what you want and doing research on what you want, so that you go to a doctor being able to properly describe it is important,’ he said, ‘but trying things at home, like bone smashing stuff or things like that is super dangerous.’
Some looksmaxxing creators have recognized the risks, too.
One of the most prominent names in looksmaxxing, Ahmet, 21, who posts his content under the name Adix, is trying to create a healthier community for his 250,000 TikTok followers.
‘I was never a fan of that side. I’ve seen the dark side when it goes wrong, because people were harming themselves, or people were trying to inject stuff into their face,’ he told the Daily Mail.
Instead, Ahmet tries to focus on the positives of looksmaxxing.
‘I realized it’s an amazing niche where men try to look and feel better. I was always the guy posting non-toxic content and also giving real advice and simple advice and really trying to help people and improve them,’ he said.
Ahmet is also concerned about the social impacts of looksmaxxing. He says there are close links to the incel – meaning involuntary celibate – community, and that men who struggle to find a partner even after trying looksmaxxing will often start to blame women instead.
‘There’s lots of hate speech, there’s lots of misogynistic stuff,’ Ahmet added. ‘I was always suggesting my viewers and my followers did not go on that side.’
Ahmet (pictured before looksmaxxing) tries to focus on the positives of looksmaxxing. ‘I realized it’s an amazing niche where men try to look and feel better,’ he said.
Ahmet (pictured after looksmaxxing) is also concerned about the social impacts of looksmaxxing. He says there are close links to the incel community, and that men who struggle to find a partner after trying looksmaxxing will often start to blame women instead.
Searching for someone to blame, the deep-rooted self-loathing morphs into an immense hatred for others, posing a risk not just to the obsessive bone-smashers, but to the world around them.
‘In a lot of these looksmaxxing forums with just a couple of clicks you will be taken to misogynist beliefs and the glorification of violence against women,’ said sociologist Dr Rosdahl.
‘It creates hatred, competition and anger.’
And that, perhaps, is the sickest irony – his pursuit of beauty has, in turn, made some young men far uglier.