In Defense of the ‘-maxxers’—and men in general

The virality of “looksmaxxing” by Kick-streamer Clavicular has escaped into mainstream culture. And with it, the vitalist-aesthetic has infected our world.

You can be “healthmaxxing” by choosing a whole foods diet. The Department of War wants its soldiers to be “lethalitymaxxing.” Did you make a popular side dish for the Super Bowl Party? That’s called “yummymaxxing.” Others are calling to overturn the go-go-go lifestyle — start “slowmaxxing.” Chipotle workers are getting in on the trend by “proteinmaxxing” your slopbowl.

The term may be new, but “maxxing” is a familiar cultural pattern of striving against the conditions of the present moment.

And maxx-speak is not confined solely to memes. You can “framemog” the “incels” while “Chadfishing” the “foids” attempting to avoid a “cortisol spike” as they are “jestergooning.”

These neologisms of narcissistic immaturity have even made into how top White House officials react to Supreme Court decisions:

“Trump has already maxxmogged by finding multiple alternative bases for the tariffs, thereby reclaiming aura and rugging premature celebration by jestergooning Democrats,” AI czar David Sacks wrote.

The New York Times, GQ, Rolling Stone, Daily Wire, and countless Substacks have already done the hard work (sarcasm) of giving the “think piece” treatment to the latest cultural phenomena.

But the “looksmaxxing” culture is the old logic of early internet biohacking.

Muscle enhancers, peptide stacks, surgical jawline corrections, hair transplants, orthodontic reshaping, dermatological regimens — a random bodybuilding forum will have untold numbers of threads that will give the best Chinese supplier for your enhancer of choice.

The “manosphere” umbrella — pick up artists (PUAs), men-go-their-own-way (MGTOW), and men’s rights activist (MRAs) — already has a rich history of bucking cultural norms.

So for the coming-of-age young male, this is normal.

There is a long discussed “crisis of masculinity” in the West and the incomprehensibility of solving it gives rise to ever more new phenomena.

Men now enroll in and complete college at significantly lower rates than women, and than men in previous generations. A substantial portion of working-age men, particularly young men, remain detached from stable employment. At the same time, deaths from suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol-related disease have continued to cut down the members of this demographic. The popular caricature of the socially-stunted man living in their parents’ basements isn’t far removed from reality.

As mentioned, the cultural critics cycle through a tired scrutiny. For them, “looksmaxxing” is simply male chauvinism or the next evolution of so-called “toxic masculinity.”

But actually, what “maxxing” shows us is that resolve remains. Men want standards. Standards for the world — and for themselves.

In a very real sense, the danger for men is passivity. Our hollowed out culture has produced a flattening of virtue. And now a recovery requires a transvaluation — a moment given new ground for “maxxing.”

“Under peaceful conditions, the militant man attacks himself,” Nietzsche accurately articulates.

These “maxxers” are expressing the masculine instinct to convert frustration into production. The impulse may appear meaningless, but in a social landscape flirting with self-destruction, self-mastery can be the first act of resistance.

Our age insists on dissolving form, wherein the “maxxers” answer with a creation of their own. Some of it is grotesque. Some of it is comic. But, ultimately, it is necessary. What men all share is a desire to know their worth, to improve, to ascend. Their reflexes are correct. The “maxxers” sense the void before them.

And they ask: Can self-improvement widen into self-command? Can it yield to virtue?

The error, then, is not that the “maxxer” strives, but that he has yet to decide what ends are worthy of striving toward. What should be commendable, though, is that they are stepping forward, beyond the pull of pervasive nothingness, into a field of possibility they must construct for themselves.

Any attempt to generate meaning where none has been reliably offered is better than the alternative.