You’ve heard of mewing, but now there’s another appearance-themed word overtaking your timelines. Ladies and gentleman, please welcome to the stage: mogging.
It’s no secret that the internet’s vernacular grows by the second, but if you stumbled upon its latest coinage — be it on livestreams, FYPs, or even the all-too-rare space known as IRL — you’re not alone.
Whether you’ve recently adopted mogging as a practice, been out-mogged by someone else, encountered its synonyms like looksmaxxing, or scrolled to a creator called Clavicular, this guide’s for you.
Here’s everything you need to know about the term that’s lit up your group chats, been hurled as an insult or a compliment in comment sections, or otherwise made you feel perpetually out of loop.
What is mogging?
Like everything perilous and confusing (more on this later), mogging is derived from the manosphere acronym AMOG, which stands for, *withholds barf*, Alpha Male of the Group.
As such, to mog someone is to outshine, outdo, or exert dominance over them — usually by way of physical appearance. Basically, mogging is a way for men to assert their manhood through the (ironically metrosexual and feminine-coded) status indicator of beauty.
The term’s origins means the avenues to achieve peak mog are defined by typical markers of masculine aesthetic norms. That means ultimate moggers are those who usually have sharp jawlines and chiseled cheeks, or those who are suavely dressed with big muscles and well-groomed five-o-clock shadows.
In other words, mogging is pretty privilege’s final boss in online spaces where adopters don’t just strive to look better for themselves, but to look better — and therefore more superior — than other men. It’s all so plainly homoerotic, but I’m not sure those who use it unironically have caught on to that fact.
Where did mogging originate?
The term has existed in multiple variations in the algorithm for years. It has proliferated in recent times in the so-called manosphere — an online sub-culture which promotes (oft-toxic) masculine standards — meaning it’s also a popular term within gym and self-improvement digital communities.
Like any viral trend, mogging has since escalated to assume a bunch of different meanings and usage, and has somewhat outgrown its use specifically in the manosphere. At the risk of sounding like a thesaurus, there’s multiple other terms you might encounter whenever someone’s mogging or being mogged on your feed.
So, am I using mogging wrong?
Mogging is also used as a suffix (we love grammatical memes!), with physical attributes tacked at the front whenever someone is outshining someone else in that aesthetic department.
If you’ve been hairmogged, for example, that means someone nearby has better hair than you (that’s not a read — I’m just delivering the facts). If you’re jawmogging, it’s because you have a defined jaw, while heightmogging means you’re taller, framemogging means you’ve got the biggest build, and so on and so forth.
If you hadn’t already caught on, smartmogging is not a thing — because moggers are purely looks-focussed.
Speaking of looks, one term synonymous with mogging is looksmaxxing, which means taking one’s physical appearance to the nth degree by whatever means necessary. If mogging is the ultimate end-goal, looksmaxxing is the avenue to achieve it.
It’s why you’ll see looksmaxxing hashtagged on TikToks of over-the-top self-improvement clips like gym routines, jaw exercises or even style tutorials. Looksmaxxing originated on icel forums, but it too has transcended those murky online waters, with maxxing also serving as a suffix in more recent times.
Jestermaxxing, for example, means being the funniest or silliest person in the room, while slaymaxxing means having sex. Manosphere creators using the word “slay” — did I already mention the irony of it all?
If all this sounds like stretching the English language to the point of pure rot, that’s because it is. Gen Alpha is here, and they’re taking the dictionary and wiping their ass with it. Call it languagemaxxing.
Okay, who is Clavicular? And how is he related to mogging?
Popular livestreamer Clavicular is largely responsible for popularising mogging. In his videos, the 20-year-old looksmaxxer regularly invites users to compare people’s looks. He’s thought of as a manosphere-adjacent creator, and was pictured with the sphere’s shiny turd of a figurehead Andrew Tate last month.
As the forebearer of mogging (he’s like Shakespeare to the word “thee”, if Shakespeare had TikTok and a backward view of masculinity), Calvicular has gone to the extremes of looksmaxxing.
His name is a reference to his clavicle, but he’s also reported to have taken steroids, appetite-suppressants, testosterone, and fat dissolvers in order to achieve peak mog. He also endorsed the practice of smashing a hammer on your jaw to chisel it.
It goes without saying, but none of these methods are recommended. He’s just idiotmaxxing. Despite his enormous, like so big dude frame, Clavicular has squeezed out of sub-cultural spaces and hit the mainstream.
Last week, he made his debut at New York Fashion week and landed a profile in The New York Times. Because that’s simply the timeline we’re on.
Is mogging a dirty word?
It might’ve originated in murky waters, but mogging isn’t always implicitly toxic or supportive of harmful masculine norms. Like everything on the internet, it has become so ingrained in the vernacular that its meaning is constantly reappropriate, sometimes ironically or even as a compliment.
Margot Robbie was stylemogging on the Wuthering Heights press tour, for example, while Jacob Elordi was and always will be heightmogging. In its more iconic uses, maxxing has been added to literally activity undertaken by social media users — to the point where watermaxxing means staying hydrated or productivitymaxxing means finishing your chores.
What all this says about our current moment is too dizzying to inspect deeply (I don’t want to spiralmaxx), but chances are that because I, a 26-year-old, have heard of mogging, it’s probably already fallen out of vogue.
Like Six Seven before it, mogging may well just exit the internet’s vocab at the same speed it takes to count to well, seven.
Lead images: Instagram and X
The post Mogging, Clavicular & The Manosphere: The Sinister Origins Of The Internet’s New Buzzword appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
