Editor’s note: This column is a work of cultural criticism and written as a first-person account of Clavicular’s visit to Syracuse. While it is a reported effort, it includes the opinions of the writer.  It’s 10:30 p.m. on a Friday night and the crowd is waiting for Clavicular, the 20-yea r-old liverstreamer and manosphere influencer, to show up and take the College Welcome Week stage at Jammers Sports Bar Restaurant in the village of Van Buren, New York, population 14,000. It’s a strange scene — a dozen middle-aged locals sit at the bar nursing Michelob Ultras while a couple hundred excited college-age partygoers mill about taking selfies. They look rather out of place in Jammers, a massive suburban sports bar with a just-installed $500,000 sound system and more televisions than a Best Buy, located on the far side of what was once the most polluted lake in the country, two interstates and five highway exits away from the traditional red solo cup-style frat house activities of Syracuse University, the seventh-ranked party school in the nation. The party was supposed to take place at the Westcott Theater, an old arthouse theater turned concert venue just a few blocks up from the university. The Westcott is facing legal troubles though — due to repeated unlicensed events, inadequate security staffing, and safety concerns following recent stabbings, brawls and shots fired outside the theater, last week the city ordered the venue temporarily closed. The legal dispute is tense and ongoing — on Thursday night, the police shut down yet another unpermitted event at the theater — so it’s not surprising that a few hours before the Clavicular party was set to begin, ticketholders received a text message stating the venue had changed. The given reason, “due to overwhelming demand,” is a little iffy though, considering that only a couple hundred college kids even turned up. The Westcott’s listed capacity is 700 people. “Only a few dozen of these kids are old enough to drink,” says the security guard checking IDs for this hastily-assembled 18+ event. That doesn’t faze the broccoli-haired young men who make up the majority of the crowd. They give each other elaborate handshakes, dole out fruit-flavored nicotine pouches, and respond in kind to any of their kin shouting Let’s goooo! in this room or the banquet hall next door. Small groups of young women with vapes in hand wander about, amused at the boyish antics around them. They’re all waiting for Clavicular, the ascended Chad himself, to step onstage in just a minute and brutally mog them all. That is, after all, what Clav does best. Much like the Westcott Theater, Clavicular — born Braden Eric Peters in Hoboken, New Jersey — is no stranger to controversy. He is the chiseled face of “looksmaxxing,” a movement within the misogynist manosphere that preaches improving one’s physical attractiveness by any means necessary. Think “bonesmashing” (hitting oneself in the face repeatedly with a hammer to create micro fractures in the cheekbones that will heal to look larger, sharper, and more masculine), using methamphetamine to curb the appetite, and taking cocktails of gray-market peptides that go far beyond FDA-approved GLP-1s. He says his testosterone use — which he began injecting at the age fourteen without parental or medical guidance — has rendered him infertile, but for a looksmaxxer, that’s a benefit — it means he can slay more Stacys.  Obviously, looksmaxxing has its own vocabulary, born out of incel (a portmanteau of “involuntarily celibate”) forums and “blackpilled” (nihilistic) Discord chats. “Maxxing” can be applied as a suffix to basically anything: “gymmaxxing” is spending a lot of time working out, “wealthmaxxing” is making tons of money, etc. The same goes for “mogging,” or looking better than someone: “heightmogging” is being taller than someone, “framemogging” is being more muscular, and so on. “Ascending” is increasing one’s attractiveness or social status. “Jesters” are haters and unserious people. Ugly people are “subhumans.” “Chads” are looksmaxxed alpha males, while “Stacys” are their female, lust-deserving counterpart. The language frequently veers into pure misogyny; for true believers, most women are “foids,” or “female humanoids,” not quite fully human. Where his language is misogynistic, Clavicular’s behavior is anti-social — he’s advocated online for other looksmaxxers to “take the sociopath pill”. There’s the time he livestreamed himself running over a man with his car, then saying, “Is he dead? Hopefully.” Or the time he sang along with the Kanye West song “Heil Hitler” at a Miami club with Andrew Tate, accused of sex trafficking by U.K. prosecutors, and white nationalist Nick Fuentes. Or that he’s being sued by another influencer, who accused him of sexually assaulting her as a minor and injecting her in the face with a fat-dissolving drug on his livestream, according to a lawsuit filed in Miami-Dade County court. Or the sheer efficiency with which he performs his main trick: looking at a person and telling them everything that is wrong with them according to the PSL scale, a pseudoscientific rating system for face attractiveness reminiscent of old racist head-measuring systems like phrenology. Peters began his journey to becoming Clavicular as a high schooler forced into online school during COVID-19 lockdowns. While other kids played Minecraft or helped their parents with a newfound sourdough bread hobby, he discovered looksmaxxing on incel websites, and spent his transformative years becoming Clavicular. To the outside observer, he seems ridiculous, a caricature of a sexist clown in a circus full of bullies. But to young people — especially teenage boys — he’s a ubiquitous role model of success in the heady post-Covid, Trump 2 years: brash, uncaring, vain, and stupidly uncurious. He’s the perfect tool for the manosphere to ensnare teenage boys in its misanthropic grip. Go ahead, ask a 13 year-old boy about Clavicular. He’ll probably know everything. Friday night’s party at Jammers was organized by Blackout Bangers and Cuse Welcome Week. Their website proclaims their events to be the “Official Syracuse Welcome Week,” but when asked for comment, Syracuse University Vice President for Communications Sarah Scalese clarified: “This is not an SU-affiliated event.”  It’s true — there are students from a bunch of local colleges here, and a fair share of locals not in school at all. Will, a 20 year-old rodeo worker, says, “I’m just here to take a picture with Clav.” To see how far away Clav is, a group of polo shirt-wearing bros check his livestream on Kick, a streaming platform with lax content moderation and direct gambling integration that is the preferred home for controversial streamers banned from more mainstream platforms like Twitch.  Clav is streaming from a bowling alley at Destiny USA, the fifth-largest mall in America. His whole retinue is there — security guards, camera guys, managers and assistants, his on-again off-again girlfriend, a woman in a low-cut dress he and his crew refer to as “Tits” (real name Maya), and a few other young women he picks up along the way. “You’re hot, but I wouldn’t marry you,” he tells one. When he sees a Wendy’s, he jokes to another, “Do you like Wendy’s STDs get transmitted to you?” (Say it aloud, slowly.) The men in the crew laugh. The women do not. Next he hits up a few bars in downtown Syracuse, starting at Mully’s, an old standby Irish sports bar in Armory Square — Bill and Hillary Clinton even visited once. Clav orders water and a Red Bull, then sits at the bar and waxes philosophical about looksmaxxing. “You can’t even conceptualize wanting to go out and mog because you’re a girl,” he tells Maya.  “Syracuse is giga-filled with Stacys,” he says as he nears Sassycuse, a nominally Western-style saloon named after a style of honey-mustard sauce. A horde of college kids bum-rush him from across the street. One young woman comes right up, says “I’m obsessed with you,” and kisses him. The crowd goes nuts. “CLAV IS MODERN DAY JESUS” someone spams in the Kick chat. Back at Jammers, fans discuss their interest in Clav. A young man dressed up as a wizard, seemingly already drunk, explains his getup: “Because tonight is an abstract night, in an abstract period of our lives, with abstract people around us, and an abstract host — it needs an abstract ass wizard.” His girlfriend, dressed as Mrs. Claus, adds: “I’m just trying to catch him doing coke.” Another young guy in a shirt declaring “I [heart] BEING A BLACK WOMAN” chimes in: “He’s sexy as hell. He’s god. He’s who we all want to be.” A young woman wearing sunglasses — at night, indoors — agrees. “He’s sexy,” she says, “but I don’t agree with his views on women.” The empty banquet hall at Jammer’s Sports Bar Restaurant, where Clavicular appeared on Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. Credit: Jakob Maier | Central Current From the bar, patrons have to walk past long rows of empty tables covered in black tablecloths, which are pushed together to make room for the dance floor at the far side of the long, rectangular banquet hall. There’s a DJ booth set up on the stage, from which two DJs have spent the last ten minutes trying to fire up the crowd. It gives the impression of a high school dance — empty tables pushed to the side of the cafeteria, chaperones wearily sipping punch, the cool kids awaiting the arrival of the quarterback while everyone else just plays along because, well, what else is there to do? Finally, at 11:49 p.m., Clavicular arrives. He enters from the back of the stage as Rihanna’s “Only Girl (In the World)” plays. The crowd erupts. The show begins.  Here’s what happens: Clavicular’s team quickly fills the stage with women in miniskirts and floppy-haired wannabe Chads in Fred Perry polos. Clav doesn’t take the mic and he doesn’t DJ. He doesn’t do much of anything really; he mostly sings along to club hits from the late aughts and jumps back and forth. The crowd loves him, and just like downtown, everyone wants to snap a photo with him. He statusmogs the crowd. They cheermaxx him.  It goes like this for thirty-four whole minutes, until Clav decides he wants to go back downtown. Just like that, for those who spent $50 on a ticket and $50 on an Uber ride to the town of Van Buren, New York, the pilgrimage to see Clavicular is over. Within two minutes, the DJs are playing to an empty dance floor. The ending of the night for pretty much everyone is less than charmed. After dapping up some Syracuse police officers who beep him from their patrol vehicles, Clavicular and his bodyguards are threatened by a man in Sassycuse who claims to have been manhandled by security. “You’re in my city,” he says to them, “You will die out here.” Drinks are thrown, shirts are ripped, and Clav ends the night playing pinball at Al’s Wine Whiskey Lounge. For some of the revelers at Jammers, meeting Clavicular isn’t quite what they had hoped for. The man in the “I [heart] BEING A BLACK WOMAN” shirt is livid  —  Clavicular’s “boys” kicked him out of the bathroom. The DJs are miffed too. “He kept telling me to play house music,” says one. “But that would have killed the vibe.” During the set, Clavicular called them a slur for people with intellectual disabilities and complained even after they put on what he wanted. The Kick chat took Clav’s side, of course: “GET THE DJ KIRKED,” they kept saying. “ORDER A HITMAN TO SKIN THE DJ.”  The manager of the Westcott Theater, charged with second-degree obstructing governmental administration after Thursday night’s show was shut down, sticks around and thanks the security guards. One of the bartenders, asked if staying open so last minute for a mostly under-21 event was worth it, shrugs ruefully. “We made maybe $50 apiece,” she says. “But that’s okay. $50 is $50.” What is there to be learned from this story? The rise of the manosphere has terribly damaged an untold number of men and boys with stupid, cruel ideas taught to them online by men who have advocated for sociopathy and been accused of sex crimes. The things that draw people into the manosphere — misogyny, yes, but also loneliness, genuine economic anxiety, effective marketing and social media algorithm manipulation by bad actors — are unlikely to lose strength in the coming years. And Clavicular is only 20 years old. Who knows what will happen next? Will, the 20 year-old rodeo worker who just wanted a picture with Clav, closes out the party at Jammers talking about how looksmaxxing could help him get a job at the local Novelis aluminum mill. He actually ended up onstage during the DJ set, and finally managed to get a photo with Clav in the parking lot before he sped off downtown. On the stream, Will is beaming, ready to ascend. “Yo Clav, you’re the fucking man, bro,” he tells his chiseled hero. “I love you, bro.”  The post The night mogging, maxxing and the manosphere came to Syracuse appeared first on Central Current. ...read more read less