Maxx yourself, squeeze yourself dry: The unhealthy obsession with optimizing everything

There was a time when moderation was a virtue and the middle ground, wisdom. Hyperbole was no more than a literary or rhetorical device. But not anymore. We live at the extremes. Raising everything to its highest possible level is the zeitgeist fate has handed us, and it comes with a suffix that colonizes the internet: maxxing. A highly versatile suffix: placed after the right word it means that, whatever you do, you are giving it your all.

Protein-maxxing means pushing protein intake to the highest possible level: powders, shakes, yogurt and five egg whites every day. Skin-maxxing means your skincare routines are long and meticulous, never fewer than 10 steps. China-maxxing means your immersion in that country’s culture and diet is total and consistent, and token-maxxing means you have, without hesitation, given yourself to artificial intelligence completely and irrevocably.

Originally maxxing was incel (involuntary celibates) slang — one of the most unpleasant digital subcultures. Around 2010 their forums started talking about looksmaxxing. It meant boosting the sexual attractiveness of an unattractive person to raise their market value through aesthetic procedures or strict lifestyle routines. In 2020 looksmaxxing reached TikTok, spreading through figures like Clavicular, an influencer famed for his willingness to endure anything to achieve physical perfection and who last week was accused of raping a minor. Clavicular today looks like a contemporary Kent, with arms hypertrophied by daily testosterone injections and a jaw literally chiseled with a hammer. Clavicular is a looksmaxxer and represents the transition from the early incels who accepted their ugliness as destiny to another generation that sees it as a challenge and accepts every test to climb the ladder of sexual attractiveness. Their forums debate technical concepts like “cantal tilt” (the outward tilt angle of the eye), “interpupillary distance” and “the proportion of the middle third of the face.” For a devoted looksmaxxer, everything can be corrected. Whatever the cost.

Looksmaxxing went viral and along the way shed some of its incel radicalism, becoming meme fodder on TikTok and Instagram. Dag Øivind Madsen, a professor in the Department of Marketing and Business at the Norwegian School of Economics, mapped maxxing culture in a study published last July and found the term’s visibility rising in Google searches: interest was “relatively modest” until the second half of 2025, began to climb in early 2026, and had shot up by July of this year. The professor told EL PAÍS by email why the suffix succeeds: “It’s short, flexible, easy to understand and adapts very well to social-media algorithms. Once users understand that maxxing means maximizing or optimizing something, they apply it to any area: sleep, money, physical appearance, productivity, AI use or social status. It works like a prefabricated linguistic template.”

It turned out to be a perfect formula. Writer Jake Neuffer asked in an article in Public Seminar why suddenly all his friends were using incel jargon, and answered his own question: “The suffix suggests that any personal attribute can be optimized numerically, and that fits very well with the growing economization of everyday life under neoliberalism.”

Øivind Madsen notes that internet language is increasingly conditioned by algorithmic visibility, virality, moderation and group communication. “The term maxxing is an almost perfect example of this process. Its commercial adoption has accelerated its spread, taking it away from its subcultural origins and making it sound increasingly commonplace,” he said.

Almost anything in this world can have a maxxing applied to it. From fiber-maxxing for those who pack fiber into every meal to money-maxxing for finance obsessives, but although adding a suffix seems linguistically simple, Professor Øivind Madsen reveals the process of maximizing follows a roughly fixed four-step structure. First you must diagnose the deficiency to be corrected: an asymmetrical face, a chubby body, a precarious bank account. The culture of comparison fostered by platforms helps in this phase, amplifying the deficiency by showcasing idealized bodies and perfect lives that are presented as the result of presumed optimization processes.

Once the problem is identified, you intervene with long, meticulous routines, supplements, training, coaching, surgeries, or whatever is required. “The intervention positions individuals as agents responsible for their shortcomings, so inaction is, obviously, a failure,” says the Norwegian School of Economics study. The third step is to provide public evidence of progress. Maxxing is not a private matter, so at minimum you must post before-and-after photos. “Public demonstration not only communicates progress but invites comparison and encourages imitation,” the professor writes. Finally there is escalation, because the process does not end when those pounds are lost or those dollars saved; new areas of insufficiency will appear. What has been achieved is only the starting point for another cycle of optimization. For the professor, this voracity is what distinguishes this subculture from the self-improvement processes we knew until now.

This trend is precisely where wellness and productivity cultures converge. In the world of wellness maxxing, the call is to optimize every metric and health analytic, applying efficiency and productivity concepts to reach that “best version of oneself.” “In small doses it can be positive; the problem arises when optimizing becomes a demand for perfection. In health, more does not always mean better,” Dr. Mariel Silva, medical director of SHA Wellness Clinic in Alicante, Spain, concedes by email. From experience she knows obsessing over maximizing sleep is counterproductive. “Being overly attentive to hours slept, sleep stages, or device metrics increases vigilance and nighttime anxiety and, paradoxically, hinders rest.” In her view, routines pushed to extremes create rigidity and frustration.

In 2026, moderation does not increase traffic but intensity does. That is probably another reason for the suffix’s success. No idea earns attention unless anchored at an extreme. Everything must unfold between hyperbole and drama. An influencer discovers peptides [molecules] “they can’t live without,” another “obsesses” over a cardio routine, and another “hates” books written by men. The algorithm amplifies and circulates heightened emotions, the audience buys into the maximizer narrative and takes sides. Identity fuses with a workout routine, with fiber or with avocado, and any difference, however slight, is received as a frontal attack. Today on the internet everyone is an extremist of their own habits, a maximizer of their practices. Ten years ago we would have shrugged if someone criticized our breakfast. Today it can cause a breakup and social collapse.

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