Clavicular (influencer)

Braden Eric Peters (born December 17, 2005), known online as Clavicular or Clav, is an American online streamer and influencer. He became known in 2025 on TikTok and Kick for his "looksmaxxing" content, which commentators have described as extreme and controversial, particularly for practices such as facial "bone smashing", taking anabolic steroids and lipodissolve products, and using crystal meth to stay lean.

In December 2025, a livestream clip of Peters hitting a man with a Tesla Cybertruck went viral online and brought him to wider attention, as did his interview with right-wing political commentator Michael Knowles in which he described United States vice president JD Vance as "subhuman", contrasting him with California governor Gavin Newsom, whom he labelled a "Chad". Following controversies while appearing alongside far-right streamers, Peters has described himself as apolitical.

Braden Eric Peters was born on December 17, 2005, to a businessman father and stay-at-home mother. He was raised in Hoboken, New Jersey, and attended Seton Hall Preparatory School in West Orange, New Jersey. He has stated that he became interested in looksmaxxing—a term originating among incels online that describes the process of making oneself as physically attractive as possible—in high school, which he has attributed to wanting to influence others politically by becoming more attractive.

According to Peters, he began injecting himself with testosterone supplements at age 14 while at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Peters described this period as being "online for 14 hours a day", browsing Looksmaxxing forums, playing Grand Theft Auto V and skipping online classes. Peters has stated in interviews that he would often hide his testosterone supplements from his parents, and when caught he would be sent to live with his grandmother. He began attending Sacred Heart University in the fall of 2024, and was expelled for hiding testosterone in his dorm room three weeks after matriculating, which, according to him, was the result of Looksmax.org users reporting him to the school's administration.

Peters became popular online by 2025 for his content focused on looksmaxxing on both Kick and TikTok. His alias is based on the emphasis placed on clavicle width within the looksmaxxing community. He instructs fans on how to "ascend", or to become more attractive and ostensibly gain social power and sexual prospects as a result, and to "hardmaxx", a looksmaxxing term for undergoing intense and painful physical alterations.

He has participated in and advocated for looksmaxxing practices such as "bone smashing", a pseudoscientific practice involving hitting one's bones with a hammer or one's fist in order to have them grow back stronger, and taking crystal meth to suppress his appetite and remain thin. He has spoken about taking anabolic steroids over several years to become more muscular, which, according to him, made him infertile by 2025 due to his body no longer naturally producing testosterone. By late 2025, he also began selling access to a self-improvement and looksmaxxing course called the "Clavicular System", later called "Clavicular's Clan", for $50 per month. The course provides guides on how to "ascend" and on suggested peptides to take in order to do so.

For Wired, Jason Parham wrote in September 2025 that Peters was one of looksmaxxing's "most popular influencers". In January 2026, Thomas Chatterton Williams of The Atlantic referred to him as the "newest star" and "most recognizable member" of the looksmaxxing movement, Charlie Sabgir of Rolling Stone called him "a premier figure" within looksmaxxing, and Dave Schilling of The Guardian called him "one of the most prominent influencers in the looksmaxxing community". According to Joseph Bernstein of The New York Times, by February 2026, he was earning more than $100,000 a month from his Kick live streams. A November 2025 video of him injecting his then 17-year-old girlfriend with fat-dissolving peptides to reshape her jaw also gained attention online. In a later stream, he injected influencer Jenny Popach with Aqualyx, a fat-dissolving acid.

On December 24, 2025, a video from a live stream of Peters hitting a man with a Tesla Cybertruck in Miami-Dade County quickly circulated online. In the video, the man, who had purportedly been stalking the streamer and had previously thrown red liquid on him, climbs onto the hood of the car, and someone off-camera encourages him to start driving. He accelerates and appears to run over the man before asking if he is dead. A woman sitting next to him says, "I don't know," to which he responds, "Hopefully."

Later in the live stream, he speaks to a man in a reflective vest and states that he hit the man in self-defense and alleges that there were multiple people, one of whom looked like they "had a pistol" underneath their clothing, surrounding his car. A call between him and fellow live streamer Adin Ross, in which Ross advised him to keep live streaming and refrain from speaking on the situation, also circulated online.

Williams, writing for The Atlantic, called the live stream "perhaps [Peters’s] most viral moment". Following the incident, he was banned from Kick. According to TMZ, Peters soon posted an AI-generated photo of himself running over a man in a Cybertruck with the caption, "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes." James Fishback, a far-right candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2026 Florida gubernatorial election, tweeted that Peters had done "nothing wrong" by hitting the man with his car.

Days after his arrest in Arizona in February 2026, Peters walked in a looksmaxxing–themed runway in New York City for designer Elena Velez, whom Bernstein described as "known for her use of controversial internet microcelebrities as models", in collaboration with Remilia Corporation. Monica Sabchak of The Spectator described him as "the star of the evening" and as evidence that "the algorithm has stepped onto the runway".

On December 27, 2025, Peters appeared in an interview with conservative political commentator Michael Knowles for The Daily Wire. In it, Peters described Vice President JD Vance as "subhuman" for his "recessed side profile" and for being "obese", asking, "How are you fat and expected to lead a country?" He agreed with Knowles's criticism of California governor Gavin Newsom as both a "degenerate" and a "liar" but said that, in a potential 2028 United States presidential election in which Newsom ran against Vance, he would vote for "Chad" Newsom for "mogging", or being more attractive than, Vance.

The segment soon went viral online. Other clips of him from the interview, including one in which he described actress Sydney Sweeney as "malformed" with an "extremely recessed" "upper maxilla" and "eyes of doom with no infraorbital support", also went viral online.

Peters was endorsed as a "total Chad" by far-right political commentator Nick Fuentes for his comments on Vance; the two also appeared in an hours-long video together, wherein Peters stated that he had based his social media strategy on that of Fuentes and advocated for "saving European culture" by looksmaxxing and taking anabolic steroids.

A video of Fuentes, Peters, and right-wing influencers Sneako, Tristan Tate, Andrew Tate, Myron Gaines, and Justin Waller singing along to Kanye West's antisemitic 2025 song "Heil Hitler" at the Miami Beach nightclub Vendôme also circulated online in January 2026. After the clip went viral on social media, Peters defended the group singing along, writing that it was "just a song" and calling it "funny" that the group had "enough status and influence" to get the song played. The incident was condemned by Miami Beach mayor Steven Meiner. Several Miami club owners, including David Grutman, announced bans on the group from their venues. Peters met with Grutman and David Einhorn, owner of the Miami club Papi Steak, later that month, stating in a later live stream that he told the businessmen that he was "not trying to do politics anymore". Also that month, he and Sneako interviewed Fishback.

In an interview conducted with Adam Hegarty for 60 Minutes Australia in April 2026, Hegarty asked Peters if he was an incel due to his associations with "looksmaxxing" (a term initially coined by the incel community) and with Andrew Tate; Peters refused to answer the question, refuted that "looksmaxxing" was about going beyond incel culture, and proceeded to quit the interview.

Will Lavin wrote for Complex in late 2025 that Peters was "often deemed controversial" online. Williams of The Atlantic wrote that Peters’s "brand of nihilism" was enticing to young men and in February 2026, Chloe Combi described Peters as having attracted "a huge and growing Gen A boy following". For Intelligencer, Ezra Marcus described Peters as "something of an edgelord folk hero" whose "profit strategy fuses shock-jock tactics with straightforward marketing". Charlie Sabgir, director of the Young Men Research Project, wrote in January 2026 for Rolling Stone, "His fixation on optimization is inseparable from aggressive sexism."

Peters has described himself as apolitical and stated in 2026 that he "would never want to be associated with politics", which he has described as "jester", a looksmaxxing term for a "foolish waste of time". The Forward's Mira Fox included him on the newspaper's list of "right-wing extremists to watch out for in 2026" due to his affiliation with Fuentes and "the subtext of looksmaxxing [being] white supremacy", but described his politics as "confused" and added that he had "yet to openly espouse much political ideology". Lauren Smith wrote for Spiked that he was "seen as a player in the Very Online right" but that he was "best understood not as a right-wing thought leader" due to "only offer[ing] a parody of masculinity", while Joanna Williams wrote for The Telegraph that he had "been embraced by America's Very Online Right" and that he, Fuentes, and Tate "make the overlap between politics and appearance explicit". For the Miami New Times, Alex DeLuca wrote that he was "associated with [the] 'manosphere' and far-right extremism".

Peters has played audio of the racial slur nigger. He has also been known to wear a hat bearing the word and Bernstein described his use of it as "chronic". Helen Rummel of The Arizona Republic wrote that he was "well-known" for "the use of racist slurs in his livestreams". The Atlantic's Charlie Warzel wrote that he "revel[s] in anti-Semitism"

In February 2026, a tweet describing Peters as having been "brutally frame mogged" by an Arizona State University fraternity leader in a video became a copypasta and meme. The term jestermaxxing, used to describe having fun, also spread online that month due to its use in video captions of Peters dancing at the club. The suffixes -mogging and -maxxing and the incel term foid, a shortening of the portmanteau femoid, which describes women as subhuman, found popular usage online by February 2026 due to these and other memes of Peters. They were typically posted by "clippers", social media users who repost clips from livestreams with eye-catching captions and, according to Katie Notopoulos of Business Insider, often "have a financial motive" to be paid by creator programs or influencers. Bernstein also noted that some Kick users were paid by the platform for clipping Peters's live streams.

On February 7, 2026, Peters was arrested in Scottsdale, Arizona, on suspicion of dangerous drug possession, with court documents describing him as carrying Adderall and Anavar, and possession of a forged instrument at a bar, after attempting to gain entry using a fake ID. According to officers, he was shown on stream asking patrons at the bar for Adderall. He was released from custody the following day and soon tweeted that the charges were "straight up political persecution". The charges were dropped on February 11, 2026, due to a low likelihood of conviction.

Peters's mugshot after his arrest in Florida in 2026

In late March 2026, Peters was arrested in Florida on battery charges, relating to an alleged altercation between his girlfriend and another woman. On February 2, 2026, a 19-year-old woman reported that she has been attacked by Violet Marie Lentz, 24. Detectives found that Peters had provoked the fight. Around the same time, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission launched an investigation into him for shooting a previously deceased alligator on a livestream, though it is unclear whether the two events are connected. He was banned from Kick again.

As of 2026, he lives in Florida. Peters has stated that he is on the autism spectrum, though he has not been professionally diagnosed.

On April 14, 2026, while streaming in public with fellow influencer Androgenic, Peters experienced a drug overdose and was hospitalized; Peters went on to explain: "All of the substances are just a cope trying to feel neurotypical while being in public, but obviously that isn't a real solution."