Maxxing: Blind Leading the Blind
When it comes to social media, it’s safe to say that many don’t find any boundaries or limitations on their voices or opinions. Who is going to stop them? With unlimited likes, reposts, and comments, it’s a lot easier to criticise and to pass judgement when you’re behind a screen than if you were face-to-face. And if you were a public figure on social media wouldn’t your main objective be to avoid those criticisms and judgements?
The surest way to do that? Portray a perfected and curated black and white image. Instead of risking your reputation by making one party or another unsatisfied, you begin to feed into this extremism, whether subconsciously or in some cases, consciously.
You may not win them all, but you need to in order to keep your relevance. Your relevance becomes dependent on the unattainable. It keeps your followers, who themselves fall deep into the extremism, always reaching for that hit and coming back for another. The problem is, the screen is standing in between the reality of mortality. So where do we draw the line?
When too much of anything becomes toxic, how do we recognise silent self-harm when social media is built for control of the narrative? How are we supposed to prove the toxicity in ‘life-maxxing’ or ‘money-maxxing’ or ‘friction-maxxing’ that are all aimed to improve our lives and find our ‘best’ potential in life?
The internet has been oversaturated with ‘fill in the blank’-maxxing for all and every aspect of life, from the mundane to the more general overviews of one's life. Not only does the meaning of the concept begin to lose meaning but it begins to lose control of itself. Slapping the label -maxxing to anything your mind desires, begins to blend uncontrollably with aspects of one’s life that should be in control or vice versa.
And the oversaturation of the concept not only blurs the boundary between control and uncontrol but almost underestimates the influence of giving anything that title. With other topics like College-maxxing, simplifying a ‘guide’ to college life and making the most out of the experience, in many ways devalues the whole impact that looks-maxxing had.
Because at the root of this concept, looks-maxxing was not simply a workout plan to get your summer body or a way to lose weight in a healthy manner. It was about the extreme, and the visual perfection of the human body at any cost. And the cost of the root of the concept, was not simply your health longterm, it was your life being cut short. And Clavicular, the face of looks-maxxing, has expressed his priority for his image even if that means dying young.
It’s important not to get the definition of this concept mixed up with a micro-trend or a picking up a hobby. It is a pure and whole embodiment of whatever maxxing you are reaching for, and to realise that maxxing as the name suggests will take over anything else. So as not to underestimate its dangers both mentally and physically, let’s take a look at the maxxing trends online that may or may not have gone too far?
Let’s look at videos that use the title without intent. For @alexnuntapreda, ‘collegemaxxing’ includes setting time aside in the morning for studying followed by having a part-time job or internship, along with going the gym 3-4 times a week, get a creative hobby, and ends with his ninth step “don’t take everything too seriously”. All of this sounds pretty healthy and sustainable? Many of the tasks people already do on their own time without any need for motivation. It’s fair to assume when videos like these pop up on viewers' social media feeds, they assume this is what maxxing is - simple effort.
Not only is this video more of a great core habit for a healthy and productive lifestyle for college students, it is in itself contradictory. How can you be maxxing out on anything when you are not meant to “take everything too seriously”? This can overshadow the toxicity happening in the ‘maxxing-world’, where many creators are justifying their maxxing goals by simply labelling it as self-improvement and normalising maxxing in everyday language.
To other creators such as @jettfranzen who created a video discussing “larp-maxxing” takes a more aggressive approach to maxxing and where his language and attitude is very dismissive of boundaries or limitations. He begins by assuring you to not to “let anybody tell you that you shouldn’t be larping” and acknowledges that it has a negative connotation to it but doesn’t elaborate further on those negative connotations.
His language and examples mask the toxicity and extremity by using language that makes the 68.2k people who liked the video to believe that larp-maxxing is attainable. What’s the danger of pretending or acting as if you already attained something when the creator himself answers the question of how we fall asleep with “first pretending that you are asleep”, and thus the same philosophy should apply to everything else?
As the video goes on, it’s important to note you are not Drake and should not rent out a Rolls Royce until you become an ultra-rich rapper who can buy one yourself. This is true maxxing, where the extreme of larping becomes the priority.
This harmful, if out of control, mentality goes too far. It can cost people financial, social, and mental stability. It all sounds too dramatic until a person’s belief of who they are begins to harm others. And the danger of this concept of maxxing is the isolation, where @jettfranzen ends the video by defining people who criticize larping as “spectators” who aren’t “even in the game”.
If it’s all a game and society is below you, where is the weight of your consequences? This leaves maxxing as becoming blurred in definition and practice, more normalised with each category of it made, making it hard for us to draw a line of what is safe and what is too far.
Written By: Sophia Arceo
Edited By: Kirsten Baldwin
