Infertile influencer Clavicular’s dark fetish is far more alarming than anyone feared, claim high school enemies as they leak unrecognizable photos and humiliating secrets

He smashes his face with a hammer, injects himself with testosterone, takes experimental weight loss drugs and smokes meth to stay lean all in the pursuit of the aesthetic pinnacle of masculinity.

Indeed, it is the sharp jawline and chiseled physique of Braden Peters – and the extreme means by which he achieves them – that could be credited for the 20-year-old’s success as a ‘looksmaxxing’ extraordinaire.

But those who knew him even a few years ago would be forgiven for not recognizing the man now known as Clavicular.

The contentious internet persona has a cult-like following of more than one million clinging to his every word, watching his videos on how to ‘looksmax,’ or achieving what they deem to be the ultimate masculine appearance, and heeding his controversial dating advice.

By his own admission, his parents believe him to be a ‘drug addict,’ and most recently he was thrust from his internet niche into the mainstream after a series of stunts that saw him lambasted online, booted from a nightclub and arrested.

It’s a far cry, former classmates tell the Daily Mail, from the boy they met at their Catholic high school in New Jersey.

Photographs from those days, obtained exclusively by the Daily Mail, show Peters as an unremarkable teen: a somewhat skinny kid making goofy faces at the camera. And, while growing up in Hoboken, he wasn’t unlike the many adolescents fixated on their appearance during the uncomfortable throes of puberty.

His ascent to cultural leader of the looksmaxxing world is the result of the six years he spent exploring online forums, studying the notion of facial harmony and attractiveness scales, and taking steroids since the age of 14.

Aryan K, 19, was friendly with Peters during their sophomore year of high school. Even then, he said Peters had an unusual obsession with his appearance.

‘The one time I got lunch with him, I was struggling to talk with him and the stuff we did talk about, he was really fixated on looks and steroids,’ he told the Daily Mail.

While Peters did play youth baseball and basketball, according to photos posted on Facebook, he has admitted that sports were not his strong suit, claiming on a livestream that his parents told him he ‘sucked’ at sports.

Instead, he turned to the gym. He began watching workout videos on YouTube, and reportedly researched shoulder-to-waist ratios on bodybuilding forums. It wasn’t long after that he discovered Looksmaxx.org, a digital community for men who wish to improve their looks and become overall more successful in life.

First, there was ‘bone smashing,’ a technique lauded by the looksmaxxing community that endorses smashing facial bones to achieve a more chiseled appearance. For Peters, his tool of choice was a hammer bought from Home Depot, though he said his mom confiscated it when she caught wind of what he was doing.

Shortly before his 15th birthday, Peters claimed, he ordered testosterone off the internet. For the next two years, Peters said he would take 300mg of testosterone – a high dose of the hormone that carries serious health risks – to speed up puberty and get his body to his desired, hypermasculine look.

It was that testosterone, Peters told the New York Times, that got him expelled from Sacred Heart University in Connecticut in September 2024, just weeks into his first year of college. As he put it, he returned to his dorm after class to find campus police officers searching his room – someone, he claimed, from the looksmaxxing forum had reported his steroid stash to the university. Sacred Heart University did not respond to requests for comment.

In adulthood, however, going to such extreme measures for his outward appearance – and doing so publicly online – made Peters an overnight sensation in the looksmaxxing community.

He has a combined one million followers across TikTok and Instagram and another 244,000 on the livestreaming site Kick, where he streams for an average of six hours a day and reportedly rakes in more than $100,000 a month. This month he challenged himself to stream for nearly 24 hours a day as part of his 30-day marathon called ‘Mog World Order.’

A typical Clavicular livestream shows the looksmaxxer driving to a Miami nightclub in a luxury sprinter van, where he will ‘mog’ – or physically surpass – other 20-year-old men and hit on college-aged girls in the club, before taking them back to his Miami penthouse that’s been loaned to him by fellow streamer Adin Ross.

He has also garnered attention for a recent string of viral stunts.

In December, he appeared to run over a man who had climbed onto the hood of his Cybertruck in Miami. He was arrested in Arizona two months later for suspicion of entering a bar with a fake ID, though charges were dropped. And he was recently kicked out of Manhattan’s trendy nightclub Le Bain during New York Fashion Week – which, of course, was livestreamed to his followers.

For those who graduated with Peters from Seton Hall Preparatory School, an all-boys Catholic school in West Orange, New Jersey, his tumultuous rise to internet stardom has come as something of a shock.

Back then, he had earned a reputation as being the ‘reserved,’ ‘closed off’ and ‘strange’ loner, according to several of his peers who spoke with the Daily Mail. One former high school classmate, who asked not to be named, described Peters as ‘a little strange’ and ‘very quiet’ during the few interactions they had.

‘In our school – all boys, Catholic – most people were quite friendly, talkative, and many could be described as boisterous although good-natured. So, someone like him was not exactly normal,’ the classmate claimed.

Indeed, Seton Hall Prep – a 14-mile drive from Peters’ family home in Hoboken – prides itself on its high-ranking athletics, competitive academics and tradition rooted in the Catholic faith.

Ryan Go, who also graduated Seton Hall Prep in 2024, said that Peters ‘mostly kept to himself’ while they were in school.

‘Whenever I did encounter him, whether it be in the hallways or at lunch, he was a pretty nice and chill guy,’ Go, 19, told the Daily Mail, emphasizing that he neither follows nor supports what Peters does today. ‘Nowadays, I do not talk to him at all.’

Perhaps it is a testament to his newfound fame that Peters seemingly has a deep understanding of knowing exactly what to say and when to say it to get attention.

And, according to former classmates, that is something he appeared to learn early on.

‘The days he felt like he wanted to mess with someone he would, and he always knew exactly what to say to get a good reaction from the teacher. But there were other days where he didn’t say a word the entire class,’ said Aryan, who also made clear he is not a fan of Peters and no longer in touch with him.

According to Aryan, Peters would ‘troll’ his teachers during a senior year theology course and get ‘kicked out of class’ nearly two to three times a week. There, serious topics, he noted, often ranged from gun control to abortion access to universal healthcare.

He said: ‘There were many times where Braden used to get into squabbles and shenanigans with the teacher concerning his views about the craziest topics.’

Those topics, he recalled, included: ‘His views on communities of Islamic people in the Middle East, what he thought about women and the biological separations between men and women. He was also a ‘race realist,’ where he believed that different races had different qualities and indicators for life based on race, which I remember our teacher did not like.’

Aryan said their teacher pre-emptively removed Peters from the classroom when a female instructor came in to talk to the students about reproductive rights.

‘He just didn’t want to have Braden ask her any dumb questions,’ he said.

Seton Hall Preparatory did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Was this, perhaps, a foreshadowing of what would eventually become part of Clavicular’s shock value?

In January, Peters partied at a Miami nightclub with white supremacist commentator Nick Fuentes and self-described misogynist Andrew Tate (a man currently facing charges of rape and human trafficking, which he has pled not guilty to). In videos that spread online, the three men were seen chanting along to the Ye song ‘Heil Hitler.’

According to a writer for Rolling Stone who gained access to his looksmaxxing academy Clavicular’s Clan – where entry costs $49 – Peters addressed ‘ethnic[s],’ or non-white followers, who got the ‘short end of the phenotype stick,’ telling them to follow his ‘godly coloring’ routine.

Speaking to the New York Times, Peters dismissed accusations of racism within the looksmaxxing subculture as ‘dumb.’

Online, he has repeatedly used the N-word, and in one livestream said, ‘It’s not a racist thing. It’s just a fun word to say.’

These days, Peters maintains that he has no interest in politics, telling comedian Adam Friedland on his podcast last month, ‘I don’t like to think about politics because these people get into these manic headspaces over nonsense.’

When the Daily Mail scheduled an interview with Clavicular, he failed to appear. His representative admitted the 20-year-old streamer might still be asleep and did not respond to further requests for comment.

Unlike most 20-year-old boys, Clavicular also believes that dating women is a distraction from his true ambition of ‘ascending’ – a looksmaxxing term for becoming more handsome.

Peters revealed to Friedland that he lost his virginity at 16, but he doesn’t know if he’s ever been in love. He recently broke up with his 17-year-old girlfriend because his ‘brutal’ streaming hours complicated their relationship. Peters has said he believes he is infertile due to years of taking testosterone, though he has not provided evidence.

‘He didn’t have any long-term relationships in high school,’ Aryan said. ‘I don’t think he’ll ever be able to actually hold a wife or have the same girl for too long.’

Peters, however, does offer up some controversial dating advice for those in Clavicular’s Clan, such as where to meet women and interact with them, according to Rolling Stone.

For example, he gives a guide for how to approach women on a dancefloor, saying, ‘No resistance? Inch closer until your erection is her problem.’

And college campuses are, in his eyes, ‘the most target-rich environment you’ll ever be in.’

‘Dozens of slayables in a five-minute radius, zero real world consequences.’

It is a far cry from the wholesome picture that his maternal grandmother, Judy Schmitt, has painted of her grandson on her Facebook page, which is plastered with sweet family photos and throwbacks of Peters before his looksmaxxing days.

During the summer, his family would visit his grandma on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. There, he would take up a summer job at The Chatham Squire bar and restaurant in Chatham and was described by the bartender as a ‘great kid, hard worker and smart.’

But of course, one would wonder how his parents have reacted to their son’s online persona and fame.

His dad Kenneth Peters, 60, is the co-founder of tech recruiting firm The Connors Group, while his mom Lauren Schmitt Peters, 56, is a former bodybuilder. He also has a 16-year-old sister, Reilly.

Peters has said that his parents watch his livestreams on Kick and send him concerned messages about his day-to-day pharmacology.

During a January livestream, Peters read aloud a text he received from his dad. ‘My dad said, ‘Full-blown drug addict, sad,” Peters told his audience.

His mom, Peters shared, would confiscate his drugs after learning about her then-teenage son’s looksmaxxing efforts.

Following his arrest in Arizona on February 7, Peters revealed on a livestream that his parents were ‘not exactly happy’ he was booked for two felony charges – including possession of a fake ID and carrying prescription drugs.

Prosecutors later dropped the felony charges, citing that there was ‘no reasonable likelihood of conviction.’

Even still, he said his parents took away his birth certificate and passport in December – so his plans to travel to Turkey for a $35,000 double-jaw surgery are currently on hold.

Despite it all, our anonymous source said that Peters’ internet fame is ‘pretty cool’ to some of his former peers, albeit ‘unexpected.’

Meanwhile, Aryan is in a group chat – of which Peters is not a member – with fellow classmates.

Their thoughts?

‘We were all so surprised that someone who we thought was going to be a nobody became a somebody.’