5 July 23-29, 2026 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com NEW TIMES | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | 5 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | CONTENTS | LETTERS | RIPTIDE | METRO | NIGHT+DAY | STAGE | ART | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | Dressed in a camouflage hockey jersey and beige pants, the lean, 6-foot-2 young man looks tired. His hazel eyes, framed by upturned lashes which appear to have recently re- ceived a lift, are slightly bloodshot. A fistful of bouncy brown curls falls onto his forehead. The harsh camera lights sharpen the faint acne scars on his forehead and the stubble lin- ing his jaw. He resembles a hungover cologne model. Before speaking with me, he instinctively reaches into his pocket for Carmex lip balm, squeezes some onto his finger, and smooths it across his lips. “People can complain about Miami,” he says. “But there’s really nowhere better.” By now, a larger crowd has convened inside the club, while Peters hangs back and poses for photos on a red carpet. One young man tries, and fails, to sneak into the venue through the bushes bordering the property, prompting a double-take by Peters before the young influencer once again assumes his position for the cameras. Then a confession: Peters says that he’s only eaten 300 calories all day. “Dude, I was about to eat a burger, but then I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror at my face and said, ‘Not a chance,” Peters muses aloud. Over the past year, Peters transformed from an obscure online presence into one of the internet’s most inescapable figures by promoting “looksmaxxing,” a once-niche in- ternet subculture focused on radical physical self-transformation. Coined on incel (in- voluntary celibate) messaging boards in the 2010s, the term can refer to anything from the benign — like improving one’s skincare routine — to extreme glow-up practices like facial bonesmashing (taking a hammer to one’s face), using methamphetamines to stay lean, and performing “dick-ups” by placing weights on one’s penis to maximize girth and erection strength. Peters derives his Clavicular moniker from the clavicle, or collarbone, a focal point in the subculture. His traditionally handsome face and natural charisma, punctuated by increasingly bi- zarre moments that feel distinctly internet-era, have turned him into one of livestream- ing’s most compulsively watchable figures. He has transformed chaos into content, drawing national headlines for allegedly hitting someone with his Tesla Cybertruck, par- tying in a Miami Beach nightclub to Kanye West’s antisemitic track “Heil Hitler,” and ap- pearing in a video that showed him shooting an (apparently dead) alligator in the Everglades. In April, he overdosed on a livestream in full view of his audience. Days later, a female looksmaxxing influencer sued him, alleging he sexually assaulted her at his par- ents’ Cape Cod home and later injected her with a fat-dissolving substance unapproved by the FDA during a livestream in Miami. A self-described “autist,” although he has reportedly never been formally diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, Peters has repeatedly used the N-word on streams (“It’s not a racist thing. It’s just a fun word to say,” he previously said during a livestream). As a result of the January “Heil Hitler” debacle, he quickly found himself blacklisted from a handful of nightclubs across Miami. Amid the chaos, Peters has become recognizable enough to be mocked on “Saturday Night Live,” interviewed by “60 Minutes,” profiled by the New York Times, and cast as the de facto face of “IMPACT x Nightline: Looksmaxxed,” Hulu’s new looksmaxxing documentary. The lingo he popularized has seeped into the public consciousness, with food influencers and even the White House now deploying words like “mogging” (slang for “to outshine or dominate”) and the widely used suffix “maxxing.” Though Peters now averages only a few thousand concurrent viewers on Kick, he re- mains nearly impossible to escape online for some, thanks to a sprawling ecosystem of clip accounts that slice his livestreams into viral moments for X, Instagram, and TikTok. When, late last year, Peters arrived in Miami — a city that has become a playground for streamers, influencers, and internet hustlers — he was the face of looksmaxxing. The city could sell him everything the job required: surgeons who would operate on camera, nightclubs that didn’t seem to mind that he was only 20, and streamers to collaborate with. But even in Miami, where this sort of vanity has been on offer since before Peters was born, he still seemed to bend time and space. As his own transformation became a business, his message began to change. The same obsession with appearance and status that fueled his rise became the foundation for a wider empire built on attention, money, and access. In recent months, Peters has moved away from preaching self-improvement toward a decidedly more transactional corner of the creator economy, surrounding himself with On- lyFans models and a new circle of collaborators. Along the way, former partners say they were ghosted, creators allege they were mistreated or left unpaid, and some fans say they were left frustrated by canceled projects and unmet expectations. At the center of Peters’ new orbit is his little-known manager, a 27-year-old from Michigan named Nathaniel “Nate” Kest, who has emerged as one of the most influential figures in his life and business. To trace Peters’ rise from a shy honor-roll kid in New Jersey to one of the internet’s most divisive personalities, New Times spoke with former classmates, business associates, and his former publicist and reviewed previously unreported police records. We spent an evening at his nightclub and a morning at his rhinoplasty. Their accounts reveal a young influencer who turned his insecurities into a business model. But as his world expanded, it grew harder to separate performance from reality. Livestreams bled into cosmetic surgery, his apartment turned into a content house, and a growing cast of OnlyFans creators soon became part of the spectacle. “We should take pride in, like, the mog” Seated in his family’s living room, on a couch draped in a large American flag, Peters stares awkwardly into a laptop camera while a commencement speaker announces his >> p6 Braden Peters, better known as Clavicular, arrived in Miami last year as the face of looksmaxxing. TheCameraClicks.com
