Between September 2025 and early 2026, online conversations about “looksmaxxing” exploded, with more than 806,000 mentions across social media platforms, according to a Brandwatch analysis. More than 405,000 unique users contributed to these posts. Public sentiment around the trend is largely critical: 84% of the tracked mentions are negative, often criticizing the pressure it places on body image and self-perception. Looksmaxxing, softmaxxing and hardmaxxing are social media-driven phrases that encourage people to aggressively pursue what they believe is the ideal face or body. This particular fad falls outside the expected norm, primarily targeting young men. Brandwatch notes that these communities often rely on attractiveness scales, facial ratios and jawline measurements to score appearance. This takes self-improvement and transforms it into a metric that can be calculated and compared online.…