A 25-year-old Australian influencer who goes by the name Androgenic has defended his conduct after video showed him offering an Adderall to the “looksmaxxing” influencer Clavicular before he slumped over and suffered an apparent overdose on Wednesday.
In a broadcast on the livestreaming site Kick, the pair of advocates for extreme beauty improvement measures were partying with friends at a Miami nightclub, when Clavicular appeared to slump over and become unresponsive. During the stream, Androgenic was heard asking Clavicular if he wanted to take an Adderall, a prescription amphetamine, which he did not take.
In a post on X, where he was subject to intense criticism from Clavicular’s fans, Androgenic defended his actions.
“I hadn’t seen him in this state before and he went from speaking to being fairly unresponsive in mere seconds,” said Androgenic, whose real name is not known. “Within a minute we all realised the situation, turned the stream off, picked him up and rushed him to the hospital.
“You guys should realise that stimulants can attenuate respiratory depression in some cases, but I didn’t push for it once I realised he was unresponsive.”
Clavicular recovered and was promoting an appearance at another club less than 24 hours later. The 20-year-old blamed his self-diagnosed autism for his drug use.
Androgenic did not respond to a request for comment.
Recent virality
Androgenic broke into mainstream discourse in February of this year, when a clip from a livestream went unexpectedly viral. In the clip, Androgenic and some friends are standing outside a club in Brisbane when a passerby reaches over and snatches the hat off his head, which comes off along with his flowing tresses. The clip has frequently been circulated in a context that implied Androgenic’s decision to wear a wig had been exposed, or his lack of hair revealed.
In fact, the streamer had been open with his audience about recent surgeries, including a hair transplant, and his recovery process. He had appeared in many videos showing his scalp and wig. Shortly after the incident he posted a discussion attempting to leverage this viral moment, which was the largest exposure he’d had to date, to bring more followers to his looksmaxxing and biohacking content.
Since then, Androgenic has become more well known for his presence alongside other looksmaxxing personalities, including Clavicular. He has around 177,000 followers on TikTok, and around 80,000 combined across X, Instagram, YouTube and Kick.
What Androgenic sells
Aside from the kind for celebrity entertainment provided on Kick streams, Androgenic is mostly concerned with providing advice to young men on how to look a certain way to be maximally attractive to women. On YouTube, TikTok and other platforms, he covers topics such as weightlifting, genetics and peptides, documents his personal procedures and recoveries, and responds to “copes” and criticism. He offers a $50 per month membership that promises access to “65+ science-based looksmaxxing modules”, which is advertised with photos comparing Androgenic as a skinny child to images of his now massive frame and significantly different face.
Androgenic, like other influencers, has been accused of providing misleading or dangerous information. In many videos, he appears to read from studies or AI-generated scripts, cherry-picking data. For example, in a video this year, he uses evidence from studies on the effect of steroid use on reproductive health, and information from ChatGPT, to conclude that with proper precautions you are “pretty much going to be immune from permanent sterility”, which does not reflect the science.
He is also a proponent of “bone smashing”, which he claims exploits the “subperiosteal haematoma pathway” to promote bone and scar tissue growth that lets you intentionally shape your cheekbones and jaw. While he claims that this works and that nobody yet knows why, medical experts have been warning for years that the practice is dangerous, does not work, and carries a high risk of permanent disfigurement.
“Damage to the cheekbones will probably lead to bruising and swelling, which may in turn damage the eyes, as well as the nerves in the face, potentially leading to facial paralysis,” said Adam Taylor, director of the clinical anatomy learning centre at the UK’s Lancaster University, in an article when this trend emerged three years ago. Smashing the jaw may result in untreatable damage and bleeding, tooth loss and nerve damage, Taylor said.
Looksmaxxing stardom
Looksmaxxing as a community and a movement has followed a similar path to other online influencer cycles. It began in a small corner of the internet, but has been propelled through largely negative attention, with its most notable personalities feeding off the views generated by controversial stunts.
Many of Clavicular’s most viral and most viewed moments paint him in a negative light, or are circulated by users critical of his behaviour. This includes a clip of him losing a wrestling contest after issuing an open challenge, clips of him becoming furious with women for acting inappropriately or ignoring him on stream, and clips of him refusing to engage when challenged by journalists. But all of these incidents raise his profile overall, and give him more access to the smaller percentage of the population that are likely to earnestly listen to him.
“The pathway [to looksmaxxing] feels like a bizarre reality TV show. Smacking your own face with a hammer repeatedly, and all sorts of things like that, are really odd”, Curtin University professor of internet studies Tama Leaver previously said.
“I think there’s a good proportion of [Clavicular’s] audience that are just bemused … and another proportion that take it absolutely seriously.”
Androgenic appears to be on a similar path, with his views exploding in numbers since the “wig-snatching” incident, meaning his overall exposure has increased even if the bulk of commenters are making fun of him. And unlike Clavicular, Androgenic’s content has a mix of relatable, reasonable discussion mixed with more extreme suggestions and aspirational outcomes, so he could end up commanding his own niche.
But as the discussion and infighting among Clavicular’s fanbase after his medical scare can attest to, the online tribes that make up these influencers’ core audiences can be extremely fickle.
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Tim Biggs is a writer covering consumer technology, gadgets and video games.Connect via X or email.
