More Than Skin Deep: The Dark Side of Looksmaxxing - Part 1
Recommended prerequisite reading – Incels Parts 1-4.
“Clavicular” is a good-looking young man. He’s only 19 years of age, but with a chiseled jaw, broad shoulders, and well defined facial features, he definitely appears to be much older. He sits confidently in the studio of the highly renowned YouTube podcaster, Michael Knowles. His voice unwavering, his posture and demeanor pristine.
“I’m an accelerationist,” he proudly declares.
And yet, as Knowles correctly points out, he doesn’t seem to have a solid grasp of what accelerationism means. Clavicular goes on to explain that gender norms and degeneracy, among other things, are going to cause the collapse of society - an outcome he concludes is inevitable and should be embraced. But Clavicular isn’t really an accelerationist. Not intentionally, anyways. Clavicular is simply an unfortunate example of what happens when a terminally online young man is indoctrinated and groomed into a state of degeneracy by subversive, malign actors. Clavicular’s particular poison is a concept known as Looksmaxxing.
The official Incel Wiki page defines Lookmaxxing as “any attempt at improving one’s appearance,” ranging from “soft” approaches like grooming, diet and exercise all the way to extreme or “hard” approaches such as plastic surgery and anabolic steroids. Michael Knowles pushes Clavicular to defend his extreme approach to aesthetics, which include abusing methamphetamine and even “bonesmashing” – literally striking himself in the face over and over in the belief that it will remold his cheekbones.
But the dangers lurking within the Looksmaxxing community are more than just skin deep. The movement’s largest website, Looksmax.org, is only one small part of a dark network of sites that push socially dejected young men to sadistic and subversive outcomes disguised as solutions. The owners of these sites profit every step of the way. They’ve built a monopoly on suffering.
Cope or Rope
The looksmaxxing community is part of the broader “Incelosphere”. For our purposes, we can define the Incelosphere as the network of websites, forums, and chat rooms that orbit around the world’s largest incel forum - incels.is. For the uninitiated, “Incel”, short for “involuntarily celibate”, is a term colloquially used to describe a man who cannot find a romantic partner, despite trying. Sexless young men who are very near rock bottom are drawn to the incel community in a desperate attempt to reclaim some semblance of control over their lives in a society they blame for all of their problems.
Incels.is is at the epicenter of this insidious network of websites which exist to funnel incels into various exploitative subcommunities. The two men who founded incels.is have already been publicly exposed by the New York Times as Diego Galante from Uruguay and Lamarcus Small from Alabama. In recent years, Galante has taken a backseat to Small, who has repeatedly attempted to publicly undersell his role in the network. Despite his denial, Lamarcus Small’s company, Vokl, LLC, is the registered owner of the domains of all the websites outlined in this article series, according to Whoxy.com.
Thus, the incel community, which is considered by many countries (including the US and Canada) to be a significant domestic terror threat, is not an organic, leaderless online movement. Rather, the vast majority of the incelosphere rests in the hands of Lamarcus Small, who is more like an entrepreneur than an incel, and who certainly isn’t looksmaxxed.
Vulnerable young men are lured to Small’s websites via several routes, including by social media influencers in the so-called “Manosphere”. Of note, recent years have seen a steep rise in the popularity of TikTok and YouTube personalities who promote Looksmaxxing, like Clavicular. Such personalities are responsible for bringing thousands upon thousands of new visitors to Small’s sites with each video they post.
New visitors are filtered according to their specific vulnerabilities and funneled into various subcommunities where they can be further exploited. This exploitation can take many forms – black market sales of illicit substances, terrorist indoctrination, mass shooter encouragement, pedophilia, and suicide encouragement are among the most nefarious.
The incel/looksmaxxing rabbit hole is a very dark one given the connection to the suicide-for-profit website, Sanctioned Suicide. Sanctioned Suicide, also founded by Small and Galante, is an internet forum known for suicide discussion and encouragement. Small and his supporters try (poorly) to pass the website off as a place for honest and open discussion of suicide, but in addition to posting detailed instructions, tips, and stats on various suicide methods, Sanctioned Suicide is also home to “sellers” of poison and suicide kits, which they peddle to people at their lowest in hopes of turning a profit off of their deaths.
Sanctioned Suicide came under renewed media and legal scrutiny in 2023 following the arrest of a Canadian man named Kenneth Law. Now linked to hundreds of confirmed deaths, Law is only one of several sellers on Sanctioned Suicide who advertise and sell suicide kits and poison to people who express the wish to end their lives.
Lamarcus Small and Kenneth Law have both referred to themselves as pro-natalists, claiming that the activities on the site are legal and comparable to doctor-assisted euthanasia. However, unlike doctor-assisted euthanasia, Sanctioned Suicide doesn’t limit its services to the sick and dying. The site users are frequently young and in the throes of a mental health crisis. Among the confirmed victims linked to the site are teenagers as young as 15 years old.
Diego Galante once bragged that his main websites - incels.is, Looksmax.org, and NEETS.me - acted as a way to intentionally funnel vulnerable people to Sanctioned Suicide, leading some detractors of the network to label it a ‘death cult’.
“It’s the cycle of inceldom: First you go to incels.is, then you either try your luck at looksmaxxing or give up and go to [Sanctioned Suicide].”
– Diego Galante, co-founder of incels.is and Sanctioned Suicide
In another notorious tweet, Lamarcus Small boiled down the options available to incels as “cope or rope.”
“What do you propose young men do if they can’t find a girlfriend? Cope and remain angry? What other options are there?”
– Lamarcus Small, co-founder of incels.is and Sanctioned Suicide on the topic of suicide.
Within Small’s network, incels are presented with proposed solutions to their perceived problems. They can looksmax (improve their looks using extreme measures), statusmax (improve their social or financial status), even pedophilia is on the table (young girls have a much harder time saying no, especially when groomed.) And if all those solutions fall flat, Small has another solution - Suicide.
Lamarcus Small tries to paint himself as a noble pro-natalist, but the truth is that he uses Sanctioned Suicide the same way he uses all of his “men’s rights” websites – To make money. Users pay sellers on Sanctioned Suicide hundreds of dollars for a fatal dose of poison. Other sellers peddle “exit bags” full of inert gas and market them as a painless way to go, claiming that the quick action of the gas means the user is less likely to have time to change their minds.
The sellers are referred to by letters such as “A”, “B” and “D”, whereas the chemicals they sell are given letters such as “SN” and “N”. The most heavily promoted suicide method is a common meat preservative called sodium nitrite – a substance which was relatively unknown as a means of suicide to first responders and police prior to its emergence in the Sanctioned Suicide scene.
Sellers and veteran members of Sanctioned Suicide attempt to alleviate the suicidal users’ fears by telling them sodium nitrite is a “painless” method. According to common literature this is not the case. There have been cases of users posting minute by minute updates of their excruciating deaths by sodium nitrite on the forum while other members encourage them to keep going. Similarly, deaths from sodium nitrite poisoning have been live streamed by members in Discord servers and later posted to the site in an attempt to lend credibility to this dubious suicide method. In reality, the odds of surviving a sodium nitrite poisoning after excruciating and sometimes life-altering medical intervention are high.
Posts on Small’s sites – particularly incels.is and looksmax.org, are often labeled with the tag “suicidefuel” as an indicator that the poster is contemplating suicide. Suicide threats are extremely common on the forum. In response, comments from “super-users” and even site moderators have been known to advertise Sanctioned Suicide in a sick cross-pollination scheme that has sent more than a couple of incels to their ultimate deaths by suicide. Some users also urge suicidal members to film their deaths or commit suicide while live in Discord calls. At least one prolific user of incels.is was known to be an O9A satanist intent on selling the idea of ritualistic murder and suicide to incels.
The incel forum frequently promotes suicide, or “Ropemaxxing”, and even post links to Sanctioned Suicide to direct users to the site. Looksmax.org, which heavily pushes body dysmorphia and the blackpill ideology onto young men, has a similar connection to Sanctioned Suicide. On both sites, users expressing genuine suicidal ideation are met with referrals to Sanctioned Suicide and recommendations of sodium nitrite as a painless way of committing suicide.
Though there is no conclusive proof that Lamarcus Small benefits directly from the sale of lethal substances off of Sanctioned Suicide, the site has been known to ask its suicidal and desperate users for bitcoin donations. An analysis of the BTC wallet posted on Sanctioned Suicide shows signs of “coin mixing” or “tumbling” of the bitcoin after receipt, obscuring the original source and making it more challenging to trace the ultimate destination or purpose of the funds. Small also makes money off of advertisements and site traffic, and in an expose by The Daily Mail, the reporters noted they followed him to his bank and watched him make a sizeable cash withdrawal.
Accelerate the Collapse
One thing is for certain: Lamarcus Small has built a monopoly on the suffering of young men, and the evil isn’t limited to suicide. Militant accelerationists, Order of Nine Angles satanists, and even foreign terrorists such as ISIS have infiltrated Small’s sites, posing as incels in an attempt to radicalize its userbase. Militant accelerationism is a decentralized movement of violent extremists who advocate for and incite acts of terrorism against the West as part of an effort to “accelerate” societal collapse (The “militant” prefix is important to distinguish it from the “contemporary” accelerationism attributed to the technocratic writings of Nick Land.)
Militant accelerationists teach that sewing chaos and terror into society will accelerate the inevitable collapse. They encourage acts of domestic terrorism to hasten the process. These acts often take the form of attacks on infrastructure, such as disabling power substations, derailing cargo trains, and committing mass shootings.
These terrorists have recruiters who make posts on websites like incels.is encouraging mass violence as a way of accelerating societal collapse, after which, they claim, incels will be free to rape, torture and otherwise harm women as they see fit. Promoters of accelerationist violence are known to disguise themselves as fellow incels and encourage their peers to join Discord servers and Telegram groups where more specific and individualized attack planning may be taking place.
According to counterterrorism analyst Jade Paker, accelerationists infiltrated incels.is because they viewed the maladjusted inhabitants as pathetic, low tier individuals in society. The benefit of this was two-fold. First, the high incidence of mental illness and neurotypical symptoms combined with pre-indoctrination and a negative worldview naturally made them more vulnerable and accepting of extreme ideologies. Second, Jade speculated that fostering an environment of fear around incels, who are by definition weak and ineffectual males, was simply something that the accelerationist thought was funny. They did it as a “meme”.
Perpetrators of mass shootings are highly glorified in incel communities and are often given the Terrorgram-associated designation of “Saint” preceding their name. Mass shootings and other acts of terrorism are frequently promoted on Small’s sites as a way to get revenge on society. Moderators of the forum have engaged in pro-murder discourse and have even authored long posts about how murdering innocent individuals will spark chaos and hasten the inevitable collapse of society, after which incels will be able to rape, torture and murder women without consequence.
In February of 2021, an agent with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York filed a complaint with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York which stated, “Incels have conducted at least five lethal attacks in the United States and Canada since 2014, resulting in 28 deaths.” The complaint pertained to a self-described incel named Malik Sanchez who had been making fake bomb threats to citizens of New York while livestreaming to YouTube. Sanchez later pleaded guilty to the charges. Other incels have perpetrated similar acts involving walking up to random women and making threats and other statements supportive of incel-related violence.
Lamarcus Small and his supporters have repeatedly insisted that no mass shooters have ever been associated with, or users of, the incels.is forum. This is indisputably false. Our research indicates that there has been at least one confirmed site user who has committed a mass shooting as well as several others who were stopped by law enforcement prior to carrying out an attack, including one which I personally prevented. Incels.is moderators attempt to complicate research efforts by purging accounts associated with mass shooters immediately after news of the shooting breaks.
Users of incels.is and Looksmax.org also frequently advocate for pedophilia and child sexual abuse. Child pornography has been posted to these forums on several occasions before being moderated and removed. Other non-pornographic material in which underage girls are sexualized and degraded is far more common. This type of content is often posted in an effort to persuade incels that pedophilia and hebephelia are practical solutions to their involuntary celibacy.
The infamous late pedophile Nathan Larson was closely tied to Lamarcus Small and used his sites to promote his sick worldview, often accompanied by lengthy diatribes attempting to persuade incels to “ascend” by grooming and sexually abusing children. Larson was arrested in 2020 for kidnapping a 12-year-old girl who he had groomed on one of his websites. He died in prison in December of 2021 while awaiting trial.
Larson used Incel Wiki, incels.is and Looksmax.org to identify members interested in pedophilia and funnel them into his newly created websites, some of which were hubs for the sharing and distribution of child pornography. “The Larson Networks”, as police would later call them, were a frequent posting topic on sites managed Small. Larson went so far as to advocate for forced pregnancies and subsequent sexual abuse of infants on Small’s forums.
Upon Larson’s arrest, detectives found evidence suggesting that he operated a network of websites encouraging, and facilitating sharing media of, pedophilia and child rape. They also seized computers and 17 hard drives with more than 10 terabytes of capacity from his home. Police acknowledged that Larson’s sites contained copious amounts of child pornography and were being used to groom children.
In 2019, one Looksmax.org poster compiled a list of incel forums which included embeddeed links to Larson-owned child pornography sites (now thankfully defunct). These links remain on sites owned by Lamarcus Small to this day, even after Larson’s arrest and subsequent death.
Another Looksmax thread from December of 2020 laughingly discussed the presence of “girls” on the site rapey.su, and confirmed there was child pornography on the site as well. A super user and moderator of both incels.is and Looksmax.org named “True-Cel” tried to defend the photos on the site as being simply “chicks that look like they’re underage” to which another user replied that the link contained videos of 4-year-old girls being sexually assaulted.
***
In just a few short clicks from Michael Knowles’ YouTube video with Clavicular, I found myself inside his Looksmaxxing Discord server. Within it, mentions of Lamarcus Small’s Looksmax.org website and links to various thread are littered throughout the general chat. Discord moderators frequently link the site to curious users as a primary source for all things looksmax related. Clavicular even has a dedicated role for verified members of the website.
But Clavicular isn’t popular among all users of Small’s website. He’s a particularly hated figure on incels.is, where users have accused him of driving “normie” traffic onto their forum.
Truth be told, Clavicular could easily find himself on the wrong side of the incelosphere and land himself in hot water. Other so-called “TikTokcels”, like the popular TikTok looksmaxxer Dillon Latham, have had their lives turned upside down by angry forum members after being doxed.
Now that all of the backstory is out of the way, we will take a closer look at Looksmax.org in Part 2.
does anyone know why the play button to listen to it on audio is not showing? I like to listen to these in bed as I fall asleep (so I can have nightmares!)