If You're Maxxing Thank an Incel

Issue #340 | May 13, 2025

Earlier this month, New York Times writer Marie Solis wrote a story exploring a new frontier in contemporary cuisine: the intense, almost aggressive, flavor engineering to create experiences of maximum sensory impact. Also known as “flavormaxxing.”

The article dropped us into Solis’ own attempt at solidifying a “scientifically designed, flavormaxxed menu” — “a ‘sweet heat’ beet salad,” “salmon glazed with miso and gochujang, instead of yuzu” and “brownies with a miso-caramel drizzle.” Solis wrote about feeling “slightly manic” while preparing the meal. The “hazy shame of trying too hard.” As well as the resulting “fatigue, not just with flavor but with life.”

In other words, here was yet another microcosm of “maxxing” culture. And yet another data point revealing the extent to which the language of the internet’s most alienated fringes has seeped into the mainstream.

“Incels are really creative with their language,” says Jen Golbeck, a professor at the University of Maryland in College Park and an expert in social networks, social media, and privacy. “They are constantly creating new terms, mixing words and mashing them together, and creating new spellings and phrasings.”

At its core, “maxxing” is about optimization. Whether it’s optimizing one’s appearance, physical performance, or even a meal’s sensory impact, the goal is to achieve a maximal state. To squeeze the maximum possible value. Perhaps the most widely discussed recent manifestation of this optimization impulse is “looksmaxxing.”

That term, which was first reported on by the New York Times in 2023, stems from incel message boards. And more specifically, from the world of role-playing games and the strategy of optimizing a character by minimizing weaknesses and maximizing strengths, often with a focus on combat effectiveness.

There are two types. Softmaxxing includes basic self-care routines like skincare, grooming, exercise, and healthy eating, often shared and discussed on platforms like TikTok. And hardmaxxing, which includes starving oneself, jaw surgery, and in the most extreme, albeit unconfirmed cases, taking a hammer to your face to promote more “manly” regrowth when the bones repair.

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– Andrew Fiouzi, Contributing Editor

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WHAT WE’RE WATCHING

In this Channel 5 video, Andrew Callaghan visits the Red Pill Expo, an event held by Red Pill University, an organization that some may say perpetuates a number of conspiracy theories that have traversed the internet in recent years.

Check it out below.