Interessa · Jornal O TEMPO

Obsessão pelo 'Looksmaxxing': entenda como a busca pela beleza masculina adoece jovens na internet

·1 hr·4 clips

Ian Ribeiro's Instituto Casa da Palavra has run reflective groups for male perpetrators of violence since January 2023 — with zero recidivism registered by police, compared to 25-40% recidivism in courts without such groups.

1. Interessa podcast hosts Renata Zaccarone and Flaviane Paixão examine Lux Maxxing — a male beauty and status subculture linked to incel and red-pill forums — with journalist Luiz Otávio Barbosa and Ian Ribeiro, PhD in Psychoanalysis. 2. Ian Ribeiro is the director of Instituto Casa da Palavra in Belo Horizonte, which facilitates court-mandated reflective groups for men who are authors of violence against women; he also holds a law degree and a PhD from UFMG. 3. Luiz Otávio Barbosa is the journalist who wrote the source article published on o tempo.com.br that triggered the episode. 4. Lux Maxxing is described as a subculture that begins with male appearance and grooming but merges with incel and red-pill machosphere forums, producing a misogynistic status hierarchy where men are classified as Betas (insecure, below average) or Chads (ideal jaw, body, desired by women). 5. The subculture includes extreme practices: facial bone hammering to sharpen jawlines, multi-day fasting, raw meat diets, and expensive skincare routines — some marketed through courses generating millions of followers and significant revenue. 6. Patrick Bateman, the fictional 1980s protagonist of Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho — whose author is openly gay — is identified as the internet's Lux Maxxing archetype; the hosts note the film's director Mary Harron and Ellis are both disturbed by the character's ironic glorification. 7. A real brand called 'Bateman Skincare,' with the motto 'you are your own best asset,' sells 10-step routines modeled on the fictional character's routine. 8. The red-pill movement takes its name from the Matrix allegory — created by the Wachowski sisters, who are trans women — subverting the film's original meaning to justify an ideological movement that claims men who see the truth must reject feminist society. 9. Ian Ribeiro frames the male identity crisis through the Narcissus myth: Narcissus's problem was not seeing himself but failing to look up — to see others, difference, the world — and today's phone screen replaces the water mirror. 10. Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han's concept of homo sapiens becoming phono sapiens is cited: humans now relate only through imagetic social media, replacing narrative with information accumulation, which Ribeiro argues hits 12-14-year-old boys discovering their own bodies especially hard. 11. Ribeiro says the male identity crisis manifests most severely through provision and power: master's research by Alfredo Rabelo at a school in Serra, Belo Horizonte, found that teenage boys define manhood primarily as the ability to provide, with almost no language for emotional identification. 12. Men who arrive in the Instituto Casa da Palavra domestic violence groups come trained with misandry rhetoric and statistics, framing themselves as victims, having learned the term 'misandria' (hatred of men) from online forums. 13. Since January 2023, Instituto Casa da Palavra has run 12-session reflective groups for court-mandated domestic violence perpetrators; monitoring via Military Police partnership shows zero recorded repeat offenses to date, versus 25-40% recidivism in comparable courts without such programs. 14. The institute now holds cooperation agreements with the Tribunal de Justiça and Ministério Público and serves as the state reference for implementing these policies in municipalities across Minas Gerais. 15. Femicide is described as 'an avoidable violence' and 'the cruelest point of misogynistic discourse' — not hatred of women who are actually threatening, but hatred produced by men who see women's emotional competence as exposing their own deficiency. 16. A Folha de São Paulo investigation is cited: in private schools in São Paulo, following news of a collective rape in Rio de Janeiro, investigators found WhatsApp groups of 15-16-year-old students commenting on 'who will be the next victim.' 17. Australia's social media ban for children under 16 is discussed as a structural response to protect minors from algorithmic radicalization, though the panel acknowledges it only addresses access, not offline peer dynamics. 18. The episode argues that masculine socialization patterns — boys told not to cry, boys separated from girls in school activities — replicate gender hierarchies long before social media, and that parents are not solely responsible for this cultural formation. 19. The tone is a Brazilian talk-show debate format: four speakers including two experts contribute, with audience polling, social media comments, and strong personal opinions from the hosts. 20. This episode is best for Portuguese-speaking listeners interested in gender studies, men's psychology, online radicalization, or domestic violence policy.

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