ABOUT THIS EPISODE
From Joe Rogan to Steven Bartlett to Clavicular: online creators are in a rush to become “extreme.” So why are they all starting to sound like clones?
Online Content Feels The Same Re-Engineered YouToday we start with a strange question: why is a soap bubble always perfectly round? The answer? It's the most efficient shape physics allows. Which turns out to be a surprisingly accurate metaphor for the state of online content in 2025. Whether it's Joe Rogan, Diary of a CEO, Mel Robbins, or Tucker Carlson, the top-performing streams are converging on an eerily identical shape: an opinionated host interviewing a revolving cast of disgraced experts and fringe scientists, clickbait titles, and an escalating need to shock harder than whoever came before.
To illustrate our point, we talk about the face of the next generations of streamers. A 20-year-old “looksmaxxer” named Clavicular who has become one of the most-watched content creators on the internet. His entire brand is built around the belief that physical appearance is the only thing that matters in life, and that ascending to peak attractiveness trumps morality, politics, and basic human decency. Is Clavicular a symptom of a broken content economy? Or is he just the soap bubble that the current system was always going to produce?
Finally, we turn the lens on ourselves and ask the question we probably should have asked when we started: how mean are we willing to become to get rich? How dark are we willing to let our souls get, to achieve viewership? And what comes next after our current era of extreme content?
Links:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/style/clavicular-looksmaxxing-braden-peters.html
https://www.gq.com/story/inside-claviculars-thirsty-tour-of-new-york-city
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_6mni6k0Zw
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Overton-window
https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/why-are-bubbles-round
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-a-small-but-vocal-minority-of-social-media-users-distort-reality-and-sow-division
