The Reason Gen Z Isn’t Dating

Ms. Emba is a contributing Opinion writer and the author of “Rethinking Sex: A Provocation.”

At least incels cared about getting with the opposite sex.

The mostly male, mostly heterosexual looksmaxxers — those who have come to dominate social media with their brainrotted vernacular and impenetrably captioned video clips — seem to have dispensed with relationships entirely.

In the late 1990s, self-defined involuntary celibates cared enough about love to define themselves by their lack thereof. They bemoaned the fact that their looks, they felt, prevented them from entering into romantic and sexual relationships.

Earnestness doesn’t last long on the internet.

Today’s looksmaxxers — next-gen incels schooled in Trump-era nihilism, undersocialized because of Covid-19 lockdowns and radicalized by the manosphere — are obsessed with improving their physical appearance through any means necessary. They speak of aesthetics as destiny and attractiveness (ranked, codified and debated in extreme specificity) as the measure of human worth.

Braden Peters, the 20-year-old streamer known as Clavicular, has become the movement’s breakout star. He claims to have started injecting steroids at age 14 to improve his physique, has dabbled in crystal meth to suppress his appetite and promotes the technique of hitting oneself in the face with a hammer (it’s called bonesmashing in the looksmaxxer lexicon, and there’s video of him engaging in it) to heighten cheekbones and create a sharper jawline.

But to what end? In one filmed rant, Clavicular described his life as “hell” but said he had to looksmaxx in order to “deal with the burden that women in today’s hypergamous dating market” had put on him. More recently, he confessed to The Times that knowing he could have sex with a woman was perhaps better than the deed itself. “It’s a big time saver,” he said. You could be forgiven for wondering whether looksmaxxers are obsessed with the opposite sex or scared of them.

In their focus on the self and detachment from real experiences, looksmaxxers intensify Gen Z’s generation’s approach to romance — or the lack thereof.

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