What is “mogging”? Inside Twitch’s bizarre new live beauty battles
What was once a platform mainly used for gaming is now also hosting a bizarre livestreamed beauty contest featuring an offshoot of looksmaxxing called “mogging.”
These beauty standoffs feature as random video chat plugins, pairing two strangers' faces side by side, before determining a winner based on algorithmic ranking and audience reaction.
Curiously, the term for this is “mogging,” which derives from the acronym AMOG (alpha male of the group), but at its current state, the phenomenon is open to people of any gender.
The competitive outcome has emerged as a kind of meta-streaming feature, which grades a user out of 10 on their face, in a similar way security programs scan your face for facial recognition.
In one video, popular influencer Jason Thanh Nguyen, who goes by “Jasontheween” lost to a female compatriot and seemed shocked by the outcome.
The app used to facilitate the process is called Omoggle, a play on the now-defunct video chat service Omegle, although alternatives are now available.
It runs on rapid-fire matchups, meaning a looks battle lasts only 30 seconds to 2 minutes before a winner is declared.
Maxxing out
Looksmaxxing is nothing new to social media. Emerging in the early 2010s with the rise of the manosphere, it continued to grow well into the 2020s and is now not limited by gender.
Often, you can find specific niches of “facemaxxing” by focusing on areas like the jawline or the eye area.
However, when revisiting one influencer we looked at last year, Cybernews found content creator Logan Murphy also posting video diaries of himself eating raw meat, believing it to be a wellness trend.
@logan.mphy Day 5 eating raw meat #looksmax #rawmeat #selfimprovement #rawmeatdiet #primaldiet #rawdiet ♬ original sound - Logan
The tendency for looksmaxxing to reach controversial lows doesn’t stop there, however. Back in March, popular influencer Clavicular was arrested for a battery charge after instigating a fight between two women.
He has also overdosed on illegal drugs in a nightclub in Miami, and been charged with shooting an already dead alligator – highlighting the perils involved with viral wellness trends at large.
