Fellas, is looking good literally fascism? In an important new piece, as America’s troubled young men descend ever further into the internet badlands, WIRED raises one of the great questions of this moment. Shocked by this — again, important — new story, Pirate Wires set our own Riley Nork out to explore this terrifying new trend.

—Solana

To the uninitiated, the trend looks like normal adolescent behavior:

A fixation on appearance, fitness, and hygiene, presumably in an effort to pick up members of the opposite sex, albeit through unconventional means.

But in reality, the trend — known as “looksmaxxing,” popular on platforms like TikTok, where young men regularly post videos of themselves doing jaw exercises, skin care routines, and other self-care practices — is far more sinister than that.

While they may seem innocuous, lying behind every “How to Get a Chad Jawline in Two Weeks” video is nothing short of… the emergence of fascist eugenics in America. Or at least, that’s according to a recent (insane) article from Wired — the tech outlet that used to cover tech — which sounded the alarm about the hate and misogyny prevalent in this online community of dudes documenting their self-improvement journeys, basing their argument almost exclusively on two minority looksmaxxers receiving some hateful comments online.

“Many of the movement’s aims align with the wave of manosphere ideology that is reanimating American society under the Trump administration, where hypermasculinity has become both a performance and a weapon of oppression,” the author writes of teenagers plucking their eyebrows, adding that looksmaxxers “often use eugenic beauty standards.”

Horrified, I decided to expand on Wired’s baseless fearmongering sensational reporting, taking a closer look at some of the specific tactics employed by these chiseled, Hitler Youth of TikTok who clearly intend to bring about an Aryan Ethnostate in America one jaw exercise at a time.

Below, an investigation into the online fascist dogwhistling known as “looksmaxxing” — and why we all must remain on high alert before these well-groomed teenagers on social media destroy the concept of democracy as we know it.