Signal Turing Institute finds 44% of looksmaxxing TikTok videos carry blackpill hashtags

Summary

The Men's Wellbeing Initiative cites research from the Alan Turing Institute on looksmaxxing content on TikTok. The researchers found that 44% of such videos also carried blackpill hashtags. The blackpill idea, which holds that appearance fixes a man's fate, started on incel forums. The Initiative reads the overlap as evidence that hashtags and recommendation systems steer young men from appearance content toward more extreme blackpill and neo-Nazi material. It also refers to research documenting users being pushed toward self-harm when judged to have failed appearance standards. The finding supports the Initiative's view that the body crisis among young men is driven by an ideological engine as well as by vanity.