This week we’re taking a look at some hyper-specific cultures within the larger youth culture. They run the gamut from the truly disturbing Looksmaxxing community, to the strange world of hardcore audiophiles, to the nostalgic domain of the bebot girls. What’s a bebot girl? I’m glad you asked!
What is a “Bebot Girl”?
TikTok is being taken over by Bebot Girls. “Bebot” is Filipino slang from the 2010s that means “babe” or “baddie.” The bebot girl trend is posting videos of the transformation from a regular person to a bebot, that is, a Filipino baddy from the 1990s. This is usually accomplished through period-appropriate makeup like heavy bronzer, frosty inner eyes, and striking metallic eyeshadow. It looks like this:
and this:
The trend started with TikToker @bellepauleen posting this video, which revived the term. The bebot anthem and soundtrack to the these videos is Black Eyed Peas 2005 song “Bebot.” Bebot girls seems like part of the same nostalgia trend that brought us Millennial Optimism and nostalgia for 2016, but with a huge dose of Filipino pride. If you want to watch bedot girl videos all day, check out the hashtag.
Who is Clavicular?
This week in people who are famous to your children but not you, we have Clavicular. His real name is Braden Peters, he was born in 2005, and he is the world’s most famous looksmaxxer.
Looksmaxxing (as you can read in my Gen Z and Gen A slang glossary) is maximizing one’s physical attractiveness through personal grooming, working out, and dressing stylishly. That doesn’t sound terrible in theory, but in practice, looksmaxxing is nihilistic vanity. To the Looksmaxxer, there’s a single standard for male attractiveness: basically being a lantern-jawed white dude. And there is nothing more important than looks. Being smart, cool, interesting, good-hearted, talented etc. does not matter; the only quality that is worthwhile is how you look. Looksmaxxers are insanely obsessive about defining what makes a person attractive. They measure their canthal tilt (the angle of the eyes), obsess over their maxilla (upper jaw), and know their exact biacromial width (the span of the clavicle.) Clavicular’s is 19.5 inches, hence the name.
Clavicular’s fame comes from his Kick channel, where he films himself rating other people’s looks, walking around being handsome, giving advice to his followers on how they can “ascend,” (become more attractive) and going on dates. As expected, he does sell an online course. To achieve his look, Clav says he’s been injecting himself with testosterone since he was 14, takes steroids regularly, and smashed his cheekbones with a hammer so they would grow more prominent. There are rumors that he takes meth to keep his weight down too. Although he describes himself as apolitical, Clavicular’s associates include right-wing influencers Nick Fuentes, Sneako, Andrew Tate, and more. He says the n-word all the time.
So all this is very bad, and it’s all growing in popularity among boys of the brainrot generation. So be warned, I guess: Young boys are not OK.
What is a “Big John machine”?
While niche communities like Looksmaxxers are depressing, many young people are into much less dire interest groups, like audiophiles. Within that community, audio equipment is sometimes referred to as “Big John machines,” because people are demonstrating their ridiculously expensive audio set-ups by playing a Geoff Castelucci cover of Jimmy Dean’s 1961 novelty hit “Big Bad John.”
It started with a post on Reddit’s audiophile subreddit, describing the original song as “an interesting example of how good audio systems can bring out more life in a recording.” So people started posting videos of extremely exotic and expensive systems playing the song. Like this system with $2 million speakers:
Then people started posting their own systems playing the song. Or just middle-of-the-road gear. Then people started posting the cheapest gear that can play “Big Bad John,” like this:
and this:
Viral video of the week: The Leaf Test
Recently, TikTokers Toni & Austin posted the following 11-second video, dubbed “The Leaf Test.”
In it, Toni says, “I found a leaf,” and Austin responds “It’s beautiful, just like you.” She sighs. He panics, presumably having said the wrong thing. It’s mildly funny, but it went viral in a huge way—over 18 million views— for maybe the wrong reasons.
Despite it being very, very clear that the clip is a joke, the video’s comment section is full of anger, with people saying things like, “Dump her ungrateful ass,” “He deserves someone better,” and “Can we normalize not doing test on our boyfriends he gave a perfect and valid answer and how are we still gonna get upset??”
People started making response videos:
It spread off TikTok. Reddit got extra mad about the leaf test.
I don’t know if there’s any way to measure this, but the internet has made people way less able to understand when someone is being ironic or sarcastic, whether it’s misinterpreted written posts on Threads or joke videos on TikTok. The internet seems to have made people less likely to moderate their responses; people are fast on the trigger.