Adam Friedland Whimsymogs Clavicular

“You don’t know any shows or movies?” Adam Friedland asked Clavicular, whose real name is Braden Peters, on The Adam Friedland Show this week. “Movies are jester,” he responded. But they both had watched Moneyball, and celebrated it with an awkward high five. Later, Friedland decided to play him some music, including “Bitter Sweet Symphony” by The Verve. “I gotta show you some shit, dude,” he said, passing him wired headphones. “There’s a whole wide world out there outside of male beauty.” 

Friedland, a more mild-mannered Jon Stewart who got his start performing in comedy clubs around Washington DC, is no stranger to hosting varied guests on his YouTube talk show: basically anyone who makes news. In the past couple of months alone, he’s talked to Amanda Knox, Zohran Mamdani, Richard Kind, Olivia Nuzzi, Alec Baldwin and FKA twigs. He has a knack for charming and disarming guests—like fellow comedians Ziwe or Nathan Fielder—with his extensive preparation and non sequiturs. But his show also takes aim at politics—“Be human,” Friedland, who is Jewish, urged congressman Ritchie Torres regarding Palestinian suffering and his support for Israel in a clip that has gone viral. 

Clavicular, if you didn’t know, is a 20-year-old livestreamer and advocate of looksmaxxing, a trend/self-improvement regiment where the goal is to become more handsome by any means necessary. And this comes with a world of obtuse language—“mogging” means to outperform, “maxxing” means to optimize and “jester” means to clown around unproductively. While looksmaxxing is built upon the foundation of working out and eating clean, Clavicular and others take it to extremes by using crystal meth to suppress appetite, taking a stack of supplements and practicing bone-smashing—hammering one’s face to improve features. After blasting himself with testosterone, Clavicular’s convinced his body is unable to naturally produce it, and he believes he’s infertile.

Body fascists simply share a lot of common ground with regular fascists.

He is always on camera. At the gym, at the club, going on dates—it’s all watched by around 9,000 viewers per stream and a “Clavicular Updates” account that tracks his every move. Pursuing views has led to consequences, though: He was arrested in Scottsdale, AZ, for using a fake ID and possessing pills (the charges were later dropped); partied to Ye’s “Heil Hitler” in Miami with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and alleged human trafficker Andrew Tate, prompting the nightclub owners to apologize to Miami’s Jewish community; and, perhaps most personally humiliating, was “brutally frame-mogged” by an ASU frat leader (meaning that the bro standing next to him had a noticeably more buff physique).

“Is there a pressure there? To controversymaxx?” Friedland asked. 

“Most content creators try to clipfarm—do stupid shit to go viral—but a lot of the time I won’t really be thinking too hard,” Clavicular said. “All of those clipping accounts that went viral, none of these words are anything I understand myself. It’s just people making up random shit.” This would explain tweets that report “Clavicular was mid jestergooning when a group of Foids came and spiked his Cortisol levels,” ushering in a new wave of jargon echoing George Orwell’s Newspeak in 1984. (A recent New York Times Fashion Week newsletter described a Calvin Klein collection as “bicepmaxxing”; the Department of War said they were busy “lethalitymaxxing”).

But for all his provocations, Clavicular seems less aware of politics and more of fame. He’s not hateful like Nick Fuentes or violent like Andrew Tate, but rather someone whose fanbase coincides with that of right-wingers and is seizing an opportunity. Body fascists simply share a lot of common ground with regular fascists. Clavicular doesn’t care about transgender people, as they’re “another person to mog.” He prefers Gavin Newsom to JD Vance in a possible 2028 presidential matchup, eschewing their politics in lieu of looks. “How are you fat and expect to lead a country?” he said of the vice president. In early February, two fans approached him during a livestream, asked to take a picture with him and then one said “Heil Hitler” along with a racial expletive. “You guys are kinda cringe, bro,” Clavicular responded. Later he told the camera, “That was, like, the most gay thing ever,” his face barely moving (though maybe because of the bone-smashing).

“I’m no fan of the things this young man has said about various groups like women, the LGBTQ community and especially Jews,” Friedland said while introducing Clavicular on Tuesday, before going off script. “I didn’t know that,” he said to someone off camera. “What has he said about Jews?” The producer responded, “We’ll talk about it later.” Aligning himself with white nationalists—and gaining support because of it—rewards the dopamine rush of more popularity, more fans, and has troubling implications for what else he’s likely to do for attention. 

Throughout the interview, Clavicular talked about MeToo’s influence on how he treats women (it’s had none), carnivore diets, the research-backed claim that society rewards attractiveness, valuing beauty over kindness, and using college loans for plastic surgery (“Misappropriating the funds—it’s really not gonna get you in that much trouble, and you’ll mog”). He shared that he doesn’t like to think about politics. “These people get into these manic headspaces over nonsense,” he said before saying he hadn’t heard of Mamdani. “Dude, I’m gonna be honest, I don’t do anything besides stream,” he said when Friedland asked what he does for fun.

“The way I think about it, when I’m doing anything off-camera that’s an activity, I’m thinking, ‘I could be streaming this, getting paid.’” Through user donations, subscriptions and chat engagement, he’s made over $100k in January alone, which he highlighted on a stream. So why even have a private life?

People have raised concerns about platforming Clavicular’s unfiltered, scientifically inaccurate and dangerous beliefs through interviews in The New York Times or GQ, but trend journalism will come for anyone making a splash. With a rising cultural cache, will he influence more young men to go to extreme lengths in order to mog? Will they, too, equate beauty with self-worth, abandoning novels to hit the gym? Or will Clavicular’s naive views be criticized and chastised? Friedland hosting Clavicular doesn’t mean either will be true; just that he’s an interesting person to talk about.

(Top image credit: The Adam Friedland Show screenshot)