{"id":194230,"date":"2026-03-09T15:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T19:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/09\/how-looksmaxxing-self-improvement-apps-are-marketing-misogyny-to-young-men\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T15:25:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T19:25:11","slug":"how-looksmaxxing-self-improvement-apps-are-marketing-misogyny-to-young-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/09\/how-looksmaxxing-self-improvement-apps-are-marketing-misogyny-to-young-men\/","title":{"rendered":"How \u2018looksmaxxing\u2019 self-improvement apps are marketing misogyny to young men"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/how-looksmaxxing-self-improvement-apps-are-marketing-misogyny-to-young-men-276174\">How \u2018looksmaxxing\u2019 self-improvement apps are marketing misogyny to young men<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/how-looksmaxxing-self-improvement-apps-are-marketing-misogyny-to-young-men-276174\">https:\/\/theconversation.com\/how-looksmaxxing-self-improvement-apps-are-marketing-misogyny-to-young-men-276174<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-03-09 15:11:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"theconversation.com\">theconversation.com<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Looksmaxxing and Misogynistic Ideology<\/strong>: The looksmaxxing trend on TikTok, originating from incel forums, is promoting toxic masculinity and misogynistic views by rating physical attractiveness and suggesting ways to &#8220;optimize&#8221; appearance.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Mainstream Toxic Masculinity<\/strong>: The popularity of looksmaxxing tools on TikTok has helped spread a harmful worldview rooted in incel ideology, reducing people&#8217;s self-worth to numerical scores.<\/li>\n<li><strong>App Economy and Monetization of Insecurities<\/strong>: More than a dozen smartphone apps utilize AI to rate faces based on arcane metrics, offering personalized assessments and promoting fitness and dietary advice, often behind a paywall, as part of a monetization scheme.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Quantification, Gamification, and Reframing<\/strong>: These apps employ quantification by rating faces numerically, gamification through rank hierarchies mirroring incel terminology, and reframing to offer a seemingly positive framework for self-improvement while promoting incel beliefs.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Potential for Radicalization<\/strong>: Despite providing a seemingly positive approach, these apps propagate underlying violent incel ideologies, potentially funneling individuals into extremist worldviews, sometimes even involving incel mass murderer references.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Vulnerability Exploitation<\/strong>: By targeting individuals struggling with self-confidence, looksmaxxing apps risk radicalizing them into adopting harmful and violent ideologies, functioning as a means for disseminating extreme incel viewpoints.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How \u2018looksmaxxing\u2019 self-improvement apps are marketing misogyny to young men https:\/\/theconversation.com\/how-looksmaxxing-self-improvement-apps-are-marketing-misogyny-to-young-men-276174 Publish Date: 2026-03-09 15:11:00&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":194231,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/722458\/original\/file-20260306-71-p5gcsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&rect=0%2C2153%2C3072%2C1536&q=45&auto=format&w=1356&h=668&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194230"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":194232,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194230\/revisions\/194232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}