Internet vernaculars of body modding: Clavicular’s algorithmic rise
Where it all started: chromeheart600’s tweet set off many other people because of the hyperspecific looksmaxxing vernacular used in the post.
@chromeheart600 posts > @jaubreyYT commentates > @taylorlorenz3.0 takes a screenshot and re-posts on IG > I screenshot it and put it in my blogpost
taylor lorenz’s shitposting instagram is a fair reflection of what is happening in the usamerican memetic internet. lorenz’s most recent post is a collection of screenshots from the platform formerly known as twitter. these screenshots are in turn commenting on a screen recording of a ‘kick’ livestream by bodymodding (‘looksmaxxing’) influencer and provocateur ‘clavicular’. aidan walker, fellow meme researcher, describes him as such “Clavicular is a dude named Braden. He started posting on the internet as a teenager. So when he was around 15, 14, he was on these looks-maxxing forums, which—some of it overlaps with 4chan. Not all of it is 4chan. But he’s out here talking about body modification, essentially”.
he livestreams on kick. kick is an australian livestreaming platform backed by an online casino and emerged as an alternative to twitch, boasting less moderation and better revenue structures for creators, with a heavy emphasis on ‘gambling’ as a central element of the livestream experience. gambling is a thing to do and to watch on kick, there’s even a specific ‘slots & casino’ livestreams category on the website.
you can watch people play browser-based slot machines. i personally don’t really get the appeal of watching something so (1) boring and (2) ugly. in natascha schull’s ‘addiction by design’ a slot machine addict explains why someone may decide to play slots for hours: he says that rolling symbols and looping flashes that you see in the screen of this gambling contraption have an entrancing affect. i get that, but why would you watch someone else pull the lever and turn the symbols though? do people use it as a way to stay off of IRL slots?…
slots and wheels of fortune are the most obvious and immediately visible manifestations of gambling on kick. of course there is, as there always is, a more esoteric layer of gambling on this website - this happens in the social laboratory of the ‘chat’, or the livestream chat/comment box. the chat is where the audience and content creator use, test, agree upon, and valorise in-group terminology. in the most traditional sense, these are slang words. realistically, they work as financialised tokens of sociality. in parasocial contexts, where content creators can extract tithes from their audience, these vernaculars can appear to accrue value and be used to scam audiences out of money (see: fuckmattshea memecoin).
vernaculars appear as neologisms, memetic and templatic phrases, throwbacks and remixes. vernaculars are used by in group members, these social groups may use specific language and in jokes which brings them closer together as a community through the creation of a common lore. most social groups maintain their existence under the radar of normative, mainstream monocultures. their vernaculars may never escape the confines of their sociolinguistic domain… sometimes, though, for reasons that are ultimately unknown (to me that is, most of the time) vernaculars are adopted into ‘the normal world’. the normans and normettes start using them IRL.
this has been the case of ‘looksmaxxing’ within youth culture, with popular creators such as ‘clavicular’ (from the beginning of the blogpost) venturing into the real world and normalising truly OTT in-group vernaculars, saying all kinds of problematic stuff and spreading unhealthy amounts of body-obsession and narcissism among viewers of english language livestreams (it’s not just usamerican youths, usamerican media has been exported to many parts of the world with immutable effects on culture. only now: livestreams > hollywood).
this was the first week where i could not avoid memes and screenshots about clavicular’s chat vernacular (‘none of these words are in the bible’ core) in my daily scroll. as a part-time-normette, i came to the conclusion that, looksmaxxing vernacular will probably be partially adopted into health and wellness spaces as livestreams take over TV for newer generations. no one watches telly anymore…
there’s also something to be said about the algorithmic value that memetic vernaculars (as in the case of looksmaxxing subculture and clavicular’s chatbox) have today. easily identifiable, seo-friendly terms, phrases and memes work for algo-silos and can help carry your content to the explore page, fyp, the timeline. this matters quite a bit when contemporary popular culture is mainly funnelled through algorithmically curated feeds.
clavicular’s entrance into my consciousness happened via this process: algorithmic insertion straight to the dome. i tried for a long time to not see this stuff, i specifically avoided anything related to sincere looksmaxxing creators but i learned that you just can’t escape looksmaxxers: they will find you in the timeline. they swim to the top of the algorithmic muck because of their easily recognisable meme-words.
screenshot of a tweet by @bubbleboi on the website formerly known as twitter. the tweet explains some of the looksmaxxing vernaculars used by clavicular and his audience.
