Spend money to improve your life, not to make it look better to others.
Too often in a world dominated by social media, visibility is mistaken for security.
Rich-looking lives are often financially brittle.
A month ago, a good-looking young guy popped into my Twitter feed. There was a video of him sitting on Santa’s lap, requesting “double chin surgery.”
Intrigued, it turns out this fellow is a popular Twitch streamer named Braden Peters, A.K.A. Clavicular. He is the leader of a group of young men connected to the internet, called Looksmaxxers. They’ve dedicated their lives to looking as attractive as possible.
There are no boundaries to their quest. Their north star is “looks are all that matter.”
To say they go to extreme lengths to fulfill their goal is an understatement.
Clav has made some interesting lifestyle choices.
According to the Free Press:
At just 20, “Clav,” as his fans often call him, says he is infertile—that his body produces no natural testosterone—due to years of anabolic steroid abuse in pursuit of bigger muscles.
Others do things like “bone smashing.” We’re not discussing the Spanish Inquisition.
Want a chiseled look?
Try hitting yourself in the face with a hammer for one minute each day in the same place. Hammer blows create microfractures that supposedly enlarge the bones of the jawline and cheekbones, giving them a chiseled appearance.
This hardmaxxing knows no bounds.
How about this method to achieve hollow cheeks?
So I started meth like a week ago because I wanted to get hollow cheeks, but now my heart has been acting really weird,” a recent post on one looksmaxxing forum reads. “My bpm has been randomly rising by like 30 when I have been just chilling. I’m kinda worried, should I get myself checked by a doctor or something?”
My days of Mogging and looksmaxxing are over. I have no desire to bone-smash or do Crystal Meth for weight loss, and would be pretty happy if my hair would stop growing out of my ears.
What I do know is that some tend to follow our friend Clav’s advice concerning their money.
Regarding personal finance, the most dangerous investments are often the ones that photograph well.
Those who prioritize looks-maxing over wealth-maxing often buy things they can’t afford to impress others.
A looksmaxxed balance sheet resembles something like this:
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Luxury car (depreciating)
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Large home, high fixed costs
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Thin emergency fund
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High leverage
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Low liquidity
They tend to spend rather than build with boring assets like low-cost index funds and a high-yield savings account for their emergency fund.
Looksmaxxing is deceiving. It’s a gilded version of wealth. The items you don’t see under the chiseled features include missed compounding, reduced flexibility, and the inability to say “no.”
The price of looks-maxing is not what you spend, but what you never build.
In a world obsessed with looking rich, the ultimate advantage is not needing to look like anything at all.
In the end, the Buddhists are right. Craving is the source of all human misery. Looks-maxxing is no different.
River Page sums this up perfectly.
Where does looksmaxxing end? When do you stop being a teenager? When you sit down for dinner with your first girlfriend? When you’re lying in an early grave due to complications from God knows what? The trouble with the pursuit of physical perfection is that you will never, ever be satisfied. Beauty, if you can achieve it, either by the grace of God or a hammer to the face, is fleeting. Our bodies are programmed to gray, to wrinkle, to sag, to break, to rot. Only the young die pretty.
My advice is don’t bone-smash your face or your finances.
Getting older beats the alternative.
