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The internet is ablaze with the latest moral panic about the so-called “manosphere” and the grotesque extremes some influencers have embraced, and conservative voices like Andrew Klavan are doing the public a service by calling out nonsense while defending common-sense masculinity. Klavan’s recent reaction videos show a clear-eyed disdain for the absurdities of looksmaxxing culture without surrendering to the left’s instinct to cancel and caricature every young man who seeks to improve himself.
At the center of the controversy is a figure nicknamed Clavicular, a stream-first influencer whose public stunts—hammering at his own jaw, boasting about steroid and drug use, and monetizing reckless “protocols”—have rightly alarmed parents and decent people. The mainstream press has obsessed over the spectacle, but the danger isn’t just the shock value; it is young men being driven toward risky self-harm in search of identity and status.
What pushed this fringe subculture into the headlines was a December interview on a right-of-center platform where internet slang and bedside-psychology met real politics, and clips of the exchange went viral. The knee-jerk reaction from the establishment press has been to paint the entire phenomenon as an epidemic purely of toxicity, but that misses the deeper story: millions of young men feel adrift in a culture that has hollowed out decent pathways to manhood.
Wired, Vox, and a dozen other outlets have dutifully documented the spread of “maxxing” language into mainstream feeds, framing it as a symptom of a decaying moral order—and they are not entirely wrong about the danger. Yet their solution is almost uniformly censorship, derision, and infantilizing pity rather than the one thing that actually works: demanding responsibility, restoring institutions, and offering real outlets for ambition. Conservatives should oppose harmful trends, but we must do so by offering alternatives, not by delegitimizing every young man who dares to compete.
There is a larger cultural takeaway here that the left refuses to confront: when you dismantle family, faith, and robust civic life, young men will seek substitutes—sometimes noble, sometimes ugly—for purpose and recognition. Klavan and others on the right are right to mock the theater of bonesmashing and clip-hungry stunt culture, but their rebuke should be coupled with policy and community efforts that rebuild mentorship, apprenticeships, and the dignity of honest work.
Finally, conservatives must resist the temptation to join the cancel chorus and instead lead a conversation that is frank, disciplined, and restorative. Defend free expression and the ability to critique, but also fight for stronger families, better education that teaches virtue alongside skills, and community institutions that give young men the roots they are missing—only then will the siren call of dangerous internet fads fade.
