Clavicular, the viral star and avatar of a subculture devoted to achieving male beauty at any cost, is known to experiment with chemicals.
He has spoken of taking meth to stay thin, starting testosterone therapy at 14 and consuming a daily “stack” of drugs and supplements intended to keep him lean, chiseled and focused enough to livestream for many hours a day.
Over a harrowing day and a half this week, those habits seemed to be catching up with him. The 20-year-old ambassador of the “looksmaxxing” community, whose real name is Braden Peters, was hospitalized in Miami Tuesday night after appearing incoherent and disoriented. Minutes earlier, he had said he was “absolutely gone.”
He left the hospital early the next morning. By that night, he was back at a club, posing for photos. Parts of this episode were captured on his stream or posted to social media by onlookers.
On Thursday morning, Clavicular’s publicist, Mitchell Jackson, said he would no longer represent the streamer unless he checked himself into treatment.
“We have given him an ultimatum,” said Mr. Jackson, who has represented Clavicular for just a few months and is known for his roster of controversial clients.
“If he wants to get better, I’m happy to spend as much time as I need to get him the help he needs,” Mr. Jackson continued. “I’m doing this as a plea for his health. There is a world of adults begging Braden to take this seriously.”
Shortly after leaving Jackson Memorial Hospital on Wednesday, Clavicular vowed in a video to stop taking “substances for a little while, hopefully forever.” (Clavicular did not respond to several requests for comment.)
But he raised doubts as to whether he would be able to “IRL stream” — go out in public in search of viral interactions, with the cameras rolling — without the aid of drugs.
“Either have to practice mogging sober,” he said, using a slang term that refers to being more handsome than other people, “or find a new form of content.” (In a February interview with The New York Times, Clavicular said that he thought he was on the autism spectrum, and that he had trouble interpreting social cues and making small talk.)
On Wednesday night, the same day as he had left the hospital, Clavicular hosted the opening of a Miami club, where he danced onstage next to the rapper Blueface.
“He’s an addict,” Mr. Jackson said. “I don’t think he identifies that way, but I believe he’s an addict.”
In the video from Tuesday night, Clavicular, sitting next to two other men in a Miami bar, appears woozy and then passes out. Footage posted to social media appeared to show the streamer being carried to a car.
Clavicular rose to fame at the speed of the internet. A college dropout, he was at this time last year well known only among the small message-board community devoted to looksmaxxing, a niche internet subculture that stresses the importance of taking extreme measures to improve one’s attractiveness at all costs.
But buoyed by widely viewed podcast appearances and streams alongside right-wing and manosphere figures including Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes, Clavicular became a social media sensation over the first few months of 2026. An army of clippers — gig-work amateur video editors — cut and distributed short videos of the streamer, which traveled widely through TikTok, Instagram and X.
In short order, looksmaxxing lingo — to “mog,” to “maxx” — bubbled up into the mainstream. Onstage at the Oscars last month, Conan O’Brien joked that he was “hostmaxxing.”
Erratic with the news media and known to use racial slurs on his streams, Clavicular has established a reputation for volatile behavior that has occasionally involved law enforcement.
In December, video emerged of Clavicular pointing a gun at a car of strangers. The same month, Clavicular appeared to run over a man who jumped on the hood of his car. In February, Clavicular was arrested in Scottsdale, Ariz., and he was charged with two felonies: possession of a forged instrument and possession/use of a dangerous drug. (The drugs were an Adderall pill and an oral steroid. The charges were dropped.)
In March, the Broward County Sheriff arrested Clavicular on misdemeanor assault charges. The same month, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission announced it was investigating an incident in which Clavicular fired a gun at a dead alligator. Then, in April, the streamer had a seizure after asking to be put in a chokehold by another streamer.
These incidents have, by the sensationalist logic of internet celebrity, brought him ever more attention.
Mr. Jackson said that Clavicular’s most popular content didn’t come from his brushes with the law or his streams at South Florida nightclubs. He pointed to a recent, viral “date” with the internet personality Woah Vicky as evidence.
“It’s about him being himself next to another weird character being themselves,” Mr. Jackson said. “There are a million people who party. There’s only one Clavicular.”
Joseph Bernstein is a Times reporter who writes feature stories for the Styles section.
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