During the recent heatwave, I spent much of my time alone in my room exploring how the internet has turned male insecurity into a spectator sport. The phenomenon is called a one-on-one online “mog-off”, based on the concept of “looksmaxxing” – trying to make yourself as attractive as possible.
My editor persuaded me to try Omoggle, a game on Amazon-owned Twitch where young men compete to be judged the “most handsome” by an AI. Despite criticism from politicians and campaigners, the platform hosts this game, which I found both absurd and troubling.
Omoggle is a spiritual successor to Omegle, connecting strangers via webcam with little regard for safety. The interface resembles a spaceship from Black Mirror, and before entering, it asks only “Am I over 18?” with no age verification. Once inside, you are matched with an opponent, and the website’s facial recognition software scans your faces, measuring metrics like “canthal tilt” and “palpebral fissure ratio” to assign a score between one and ten.
I lost my first match by 0.1 but scored 8.0, placing me in the upper tiers of the ranking system. This scale is based on the “PSL scale”, an acronym from incel forums that constructed junk science around male worthlessness. The system tells young men where they stand in a sexual hierarchy, implying their position is fixed and permanent.
What struck me most was the number of major companies profiting from this grim ideology. Twitch updated its guidelines to permit Omoggle content, despite a stated minimum age of 13. Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store host multiple looksmaxxing apps with paid subscriptions, while TikTok has become the primary platform for spreading looksmaxxing culture to mainstream audiences.
