I Interviewed Clavicular

stream sniping 4 journalism

Bonjour Bonjour Bonjour from Paris. Ok, first of all let me address my prodigal son-esque return to your inboxes. I’ve been traveling for work for the past two weeks. I was in Monaco for the Grand Prix, then St. Tropez, then Marseille for the second edition of Marseille Slow Fashion Week. Fully owning that I’ve been neglecting this newsletter… BUT… all I can say for now about where I’ve been is that I’m very excited to upgrade my storytelling from a phone/computer screen to something… much… larger. While I was in Monaco and St. Tropez I did write about all the outrageous and bizarre things I saw the wealthy and the wish-to-be-wealthy do. Should I publish? Alix Earle and friends were there as well, and seeing her in the wild was very illuminating. ANYWAYS! I’m currently recovering from Fête de la Musique. You could definitely see the effects of TikTok all weekend long. I felt like a zoologist observing British people and their social habits. It reaffirmed my desire to NEVER move to the UK, no shade. But while we’re on the subject of living in a social media simulation… I INTERVIEWED CLAVICULAR. Kinda.

So I’ve written before about looksmaxxer Clavicular, whose real name is Braden Eric Peters. A refresher: he is a 20-year-old American Kick streamer who has become the most recognizable face of the looksmaxxing movement. He gained massive online attention by openly documenting extreme self-improvement, including multiple cosmetic surgeries (jaw work, rhinoplasty, otoplasty, and more), heavy PED use, strict dieting, and constant facial ratio measurements. His nickname comes from his well-known obsession with achieving wide, prominent clavicles, which he frequently measures and shows on stream.

Clavicular

He remains deeply controversial for his repeated use of racist slurs on livestreams, dismissive comments about Black women, and associations with far-right figures, elements he has downplayed as edgy humor rather than ideology, even as critics label his worldview as shot through with misogyny and racial hierarchy.

Fresh off his latest round of surgeries, what he called “Ascension Week,” he traveled to Paris ahead of Men’s Fashion Week with the goal of testing his newly enhanced look. Instead, he dealt with Parisian women rejecting him, and complained about French rudeness and living conditions, leading to discussions about whether looksmaxxing could actually improve his real-life results.

Now, I’ve written a lot about how harmful his content is, especially given how much time young people spend online these days and how much their worldview is shaped through these male improvement advocates, so I decided to hop on his stream to see how he was getting on around Paris. Imagine my surprise when I recognized the restaurant he and his female friend were streaming from. It was Père & Fish, a fish burger shop around the corner from me.

Back in 2019, I discovered the world of streaming while on Twitter and started seeing videos of a guy named “Ice Poseidon” livestreaming himself around Paris. I became fascinated with how he treated the city like a video game. It was like a real-world Truman Show. Soon I became familiar with streamer slang, especially what is called a “stream sniper,” which is someone who deliberately, and typically maliciously, makes themselves part of someone’s stream in a targeted manner. I quickly realized that people would track the streamer by watching their live stream, go find them, and interact with them to get on camera.

So when I saw Clavicular was 150 meters away from my house, I thought: this is my chance to ask him a few questions. He doesn’t do many interviews, and the ones he does tend to be very performative, or combative like his Piers Morgan Uncensored appearance, or he walks out like on 60 Minutes Australia when pressed on incel associations and Andrew Tate. So I summoned the audacity of that Balenciaga conspiracy theorist who confronted me at a Substack panel and set off to interview Clavicular, guerrilla style.

Armed with two phones, one with his live stream and one ready to record in 4K, I set off down the street to Père & Fish, only to realize that in the time I had been in the elevator, he had left the restaurant and was briskly walking across the 10th arrondissement with his female friend and his Black bodyguard. “Fuck,” I said under my breath, and scrutinized the live stream for familiar landmarks. QUEEN NAILS. I quickly Googled it, saw it was nearby, and began walking in that direction. As I neared it, I began to see clusters of children glued to their phones, looking around. We were all on the same scavenger hunt, and the prize was a surgically enhanced specimen of social media.

Still watching the live stream, I saw him pass my neighborhood kebab shop, the one I’m pretty sure is a money laundering front, because how can they afford to pay Offset £10,000 to eat some fries for five minutes? His female friend then stopped in a shop I recognized in front of my metro stop, and I knew that’s where I’d catch him. As I turned the corner at the top of the street I could see the hulking bodyguard, and then caught a flash of brown curls. TARGET ACQUIRED.

I slowed my pace, partly because I didn’t want to spook him, and partly because the street was already full of mini incels-in-training. Ok, maybe that was uncharitable, but that’s what it felt like to me. He was now facing me and I thought to myself… is this the wrong guy? Because this definitely doesn’t look like the pictures GQ took of him. Instead, in front of me stood a slightly puffy, awkward young man who seemed nervous taking a picture with ten-year-olds. Time to make this even more awkward.

Phone up. Record. “Clavicular!” I said, stumbling a bit over his digital moniker. His eyes flickered to me anxiously and then back to the phone screen of someone’s unattended child. I decided to lead with a general question about his naysayers, me. “Do you have any comment on people who say your content is hurting young men?”

I think I’ve been watching far too much TMZ.

His female friend rolled her eyes and walked out of frame while his bodyguard gave me a silent look. With a half smirk, he replied: “My content does nothing but HELP young men.” (Reminder: his content glorifies extreme cosmetic surgeries, heavy PED abuse, bone-smashing, racial hierarchies, and misogyny.)

I followed up with “So what would you call what you do?” He turned away and wished me a good day. The bodyguard said “Alright brother, have a good one” and I said YOU TOO. LOL.

As they continued up my street to the female-run yoga juice bar under my building, where he would wax poetic about the tiny benches not made for Americans, I glanced at the live stream chat, where everyone was calling me the N-word and saying “chimp attack.” Racist streamer chat is racist? Shocking. The “why do all gay leftists speak like that” was particularly funny to me, because… ACCURATE.

Almost three million views and one invitation to go on French radio to talk about Clavicular later, I’m still unsatisfied that I didn’t get to the extra chewy questions. Men’s Fashion Week starts tomorrow. I’ll leave the mogging to the models, that’s what they’re there for. But a surgically enhanced jaw doesn’t have much to say for itself when the questions get harder, and mine are getting harder. Stay tuned.