Latest / Mini Scroll / MINI SCROLL: Unwell Winter Games cast criticism, mini Clavicular deep dive + a 2026 Joe Exotic meme (help😭)

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MINI SCROLL: Unwell Winter Games cast criticism, mini Clavicular deep dive + a 2026 Joe Exotic meme (help😭) · Mini Scroll

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  Hi everyone, welcome to Mini Scroll, the daily Internet
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  culture podcast bringing you the biggest stories from social
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  Every Monday through Thursday and sometimes Fridays.
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  I'm your host, Lauren Meisner, the founder of the Australian
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  youth digital media brand Centennial World.
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  Welcome back to Mini Scroll, everyone.
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  OK, reminder, obviously this weekend is Easter long weekend,
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  so we have a holiday on Friday and Monday.
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  So the podcast will be off on Friday and Monday.
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  I'm going away for a little bestie weekend.
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  So after Thursday's app, there will be no episode until
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  Tuesday. All right, before I get into it,
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  Please Spotify Star, rate US, subscribe to us on YouTube, join
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  our Patreon if you want some extra behind the scenes content,
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  and subscribe to our newsletter. Let's get into the stories for
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  today. So the first story that I have
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  for you guys today is Alex Cooper's Unwell.
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  Winter Games are facing criticism for problematic
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  casting, so Alex Cooper is taking a page out of Mr. Beast's
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  book and hosting a competition show for the first time.
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  According to Variety, The Unwell Winter Games is a four episode
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  series that brings together 16 contestants at a quote luxury
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  chalet in Park City, UT to compete in a series of mental
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  and physical challenges over 4 days.
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  OK I'm sorry Park City, UT we know we did a deep dive into
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  Utah at the end of last year like why?
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  Utah is the capital, the center of pop culture right now.
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  I feel like despite all of the problems that I'm going to get
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  into, the fact that they chose Park City, UT is like the
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  perfect place to host this. So the cast will be split into
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  two teams with one team eventually ending up as the
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  winner. It will be airing on YouTube
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  next week. Today, Unwell revealed the cast
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  and it has not gone over well. It's a mix of reality TV stars
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  and influencers, and many of them are slash have been
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  problematic. So I will share some of the
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  people involved in this show. There is a full list.
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  There's actually so many of them.
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  We put together the full list and we were like, holy shit.
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  But I'll give you guys a little breakdown on some of the key
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  players here. So Alyssa Violet, Anna Delvy,
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  Dakota Mortenson, Secret lives of Mormon wives, Demi Engeman,
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  who is also from the secret lives of Mormon wives, Hooda
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  Mustafa from Love Island and Louis Russell from Too hot to
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  handle slash Perfect match. He's also known for dating
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  Hooda, and if you recognize anyone on this list, you can
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  probably understand why they are controversial.
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  Many people online have taken issue with the casting of Dakota
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  Hooda and Louis Mosley. So when it comes to Dakota,
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  social media users are upset with this casting, especially
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  after the leaked video of Dakota and Taylor Frankie Paul that we
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  discussed last week on Mini Scroll.
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  Don't necessarily want to get into the details again because
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  it was quite confronting, but users and publications like
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  Vulture have gone into question why quote, Dakota can do this
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  but we can't get The Bachelorette.
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  Especially since it has been confirmed that there is an open
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  quote, domestic assault investigation between Dakota and
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  Taylor with claims against both people just in these past couple
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  of weeks. Aside from the video that came
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  out last week, which Dakota, you know, is accused of leaking
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  himself regardless. Alex, what is your actual
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  problem? I get that you want to make
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  money and have views to make yourself even more famous and
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  successful in your field, but did we really have to include
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  someone that's involved in a pretty serious investigation
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  involving domestic violence with his baby Mama?
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  Like children are involved in this.
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  He's not just a toxic public figure.
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  Like, I get that drama is everything that you strive for
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  and you're obsessed with that. Did you really have to include
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  him? It's a similar story with Huda
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  and Louis. So Huda, as many of us would
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  know, was one of the most polarizing characters to emerge
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  from Love Island season 6. She was considered the villain
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  by many viewers due to her crash outs, possessive behavior, and
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  how she name called slash yelled at other people in the villa.
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  She later opened up about her mental health and her tumultuous
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  childhood in an episode of Call Her Daddy.
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  Hooda started dating Louis Russell shortly after the show
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  ended, but now the two are also facing their own legal battle.
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  So it was recently reported that Louis Russell's ex-girlfriend
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  Nicole Olivera filed for a restraining order against Hooda.
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  She alleged that Hooda has made threats against herself and
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  Nicole's children. Her one year old son's father is
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  Louie. Nicole also alleged that Hooda
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  tried to break into her home while Louie was also there.
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  As reported by People quote, a judge grants to Oliveira a
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  temporary restraining order which requires Mustafa to stay
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  at least 100 yards away from Oliveira and her son until the
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  case is heard in court on April 3rd.
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  Hooda has also addressed the situation on her Instagram story
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  writing. I'm aware of what is being said
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  and it's not true. Slash.
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  I'm handling everything the right way by letting legal take
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  care of it. I appreciate everyone who
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  continues to support me. OK, so of course it's like one
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  thing to have, you know, controversial creators on a
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  show, but platforming influencers and couples that are
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  actively in these situations. I can see why people are
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  questioning Alex Cooper's judgement here.
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  It makes this feel like anything for views, like an absolute
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  desperate move from a network for views because they know that
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  people will TuneIn to see these controversial personalities.
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  Granted, I'm sure this casting happened well before some of
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  this, you know, all came out, but regardless, if you've
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  watched any of these shows, like these people were cast from
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  being on these shows, right? If you've watched any of these
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  shows, you would know how problematic most of these people
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  are, like regardless of, you know, the legal battles that
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  they're in right now and stuff like that.
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  But I will say this will probably get the ratings.
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  And at the end of the day, I guess that's the point of doing
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  any type of TV show. Speaking of ratings and anything
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  for views, the next story that I have for you guys today is I am
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  going to be covering how Clavicular got arrested and I'm
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  going to do essentially like a mini deep dive into Clavicular,
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  who he is, why he's different from other looks maxers and give
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  you guys like the full context of him.
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  We've never, well, I don't want to say never.
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  We have covered him very briefly here and there within the
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  Centennial world universe. I have never covered him
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  personally on mini scroll. That's partly by design, but I
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  feel like at this point it is time because how people are
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  covering his arrest in the mainstream media has been very
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  eye opening. There's a lot of like missing
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  context and I think not a lot of understanding from mainstream
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  media around who he is and why he's so famous.
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  So clavicular he is a 20 year old looks maxer.
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  His real name is Braden Aaron Peters and he's been arrested on
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  a misdemeanor battery warrant connected to a viral fight
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  video. The charges stem from a February
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  altercation at an Airbnb rental involving his girlfriend and a
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  19 year old woman. Authorities say the pair got
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  into a physical fight and that Clavicular encouraged or
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  instigated the confrontation and posted video of it online,
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  allegedly to exploit the situation for views.
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  So this arrest comes amid wider scrutiny of his behavior online.
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  A separate viral video has shown him shooting at an alligator in
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  the Everglades, and that prompted a wildlife
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  investigation into him recently as well.
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  So this arrest and this recent investigation show, you know
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  what, he does these insane things for views and attention
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  and this is not unique to him. We have seen this happen many
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  times before, especially young men who are posting things
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  online. I think my earliest memory of
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  this type of culture is Jackass. That's like so millennial of me,
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  but the Jackass series and like all of my guy friends when we
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  were like in grades seven and eight, we're all trying to like
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  recreate their own version of Jackass.
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  And I feel like that's the original, at least for me, for
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  millennials, like the original version of young men doing
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  really stupid things for views online.
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  OK, so who is Clavicular? Why did I want to to cover him
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  so? Clavicular is an American
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  influencer. He actually chose his online
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  name as a reference to his collarbones.
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  When he was 14, he began injecting himself with mail
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  order testosterone. After his parents found his
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  stash and threw it out, he set up a peel box so we could keep
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  ordering new substances. At one point, he was also
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  claiming to use crystal meth in an effort to stay lean.
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  So that was like his origins of quote, UN quote looks maxing.
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  And he has become one of, if not the most prominent figure in the
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  looks maxing community. He's best known for documenting
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  his DIY facial quote UN quote, like a reconstruction where he
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  literally hits his jaw and cheekbones with a hammer in the
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  pursuit of a more sculpted face. This practice is commonly
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  referred to as bone smashing, and it's an idea that circulates
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  heavily in the incel adjacent online communities.
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  So looksmaxing itself is a subculture within the broader
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  manosphere. It's centered on obsessively
• 9:44
  measuring, optimizing, and maximizing male attractiveness.
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  The mindset is basically instead of improving your confidence,
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  your communication skills, your social skills, your ability to
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  just like be a normal empathetic guy towards women, they're like,
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  we don't actually need to do any of that.
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  Let's just take steroids instead and then women will want to
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  sleep with us. Now that's obviously a
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  simplified explanation. It's very reductive.
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  We actually did do a full deep dive into looks maxing and it's
• 10:13
  in cell Roots and how all of that has really flourished over
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  the past couple of years in 2024.
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  So if you guys want a deep dive into looks maxing, it's actually
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  I don't even know if we mentioned Clavicular in that
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  deep dive because it was, you know, a couple of years ago now.
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  But if you do want more insight into that, go back and listen to
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  that episode. OK, so 1 of Clavicular's first
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  viral moments was he posted this photo in 2024 that went really
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  popular on Reddit. From there, his willingness to
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  live stream increasingly extreme behavior really built his
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  audience rapidly. So, for example, he hit somebody
• 10:45
  with his cyber truck during a Christmas Eve live stream.
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  And obviously whatever live stream platform he was on, he
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  was on Kik at the time. But any live stream platform is
• 10:53
  not going to let you, you know, just like do that and then stay
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  on the platform. So he got banned from Kick.
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  Getting banned from kick, I feel is kind of hard.
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  Seemingly overnight, he became wildly popular within the
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  manosphere corner of the Internet.
• 11:05
  And his fame has helped popularize terms like ex maxing
• 11:09
  and ex mogging within more mainstream vernacular outside of
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  like in cell and looks maxing circles.
• 11:15
  Why do I believe an Internet culture journalist believe that
• 11:18
  he is not being represented, I suppose, accurately in the
• 11:22
  mainstream media? There's a couple reasons.
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  First, it's that he claims to be apolitical.
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  So in January, Clavicular was seen at a Miami nightclub
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  alongside Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes and extremist podcaster
• 11:35
  Myron Gaines. Videos of the group listening to
• 11:37
  Kanye West song Hail Hitler quickly went viral At the time.
• 11:41
  Will Gotts, again for The Atlantic, made an important
• 11:43
  point here. He said it's worth asking who is
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  actually using who. He was arguing because
• 11:49
  Clavicular claims to be apolitical.
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  And he says, like, I don't talk about politics and my content,
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  my content is not political. He makes that very clear.
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  He states that that the far right manosphere has repeatedly
• 12:00
  tried to latch onto him at every opportunity.
• 12:03
  And this arguably makes him more dangerous, not less dangerous
• 12:07
  because he can kind of act as like a gateway for young boys
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  into the alt right pipeline. But these far right manosphere
• 12:13
  creators are using him as a vessel to tap into this younger
• 12:17
  generation. And then one of our favorite
• 12:18
  Internet culture journalists here, Aiden Walker, who we've
• 12:22
  actually interviewed on this podcast before.
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  He's written a few sub stack posts about Clavicular and he
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  argues that part of the reason why he's so different is because
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  of when he was born. He so he says, like Nick Fuentes
• 12:32
  and Sneiko, they were both born in 1998, meaning they were
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  teenagers or young adults during 2016, which was the movement
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  when online politics and public discourse began to seriously
• 12:43
  unravel. Clavicular, on the other hand,
• 12:45
  was born in 2005, so he was only 11 when this began.
• 12:49
  So by the time Clavicular hit puberty, it looks Maxine culture
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  had already been normalized in certain corners of the Internet.
• 12:56
  So Aidan argues that for Clavicular's cohort, the world
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  has always felt broken and it creates this different type of
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  relationship to nihilism. In that environment, the only
• 13:05
  real sources of meaning or momentum become the self and the
• 13:09
  attention economy of social media.
• 13:12
  So he describes this as nihilism by default and argues that this
• 13:16
  represents something genuinely new.
• 13:18
  And Claire Parker from good noticing.
• 13:20
  So we've also had on the pod. She argues something similar.
• 13:23
  So she said that we can understand the rise of looks
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  Maxing within the context of men feeling, quote UN quote left
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  behind, you know, the male loneliness epidemic.
• 13:31
  And we hear all this stuff about how men are being left behind
• 13:34
  and, you know, they're not performing as well as their
• 13:36
  female counterparts and all this kind of stuff.
• 13:38
  And she argues that this reaction to men feeling quote,
• 13:43
  UN quote left behind, it's comparable to an extent to how
• 13:46
  women turned inward and started focusing on self improvement
• 13:49
  after second wave feminism let us down.
• 13:52
  I think the best way to understand what's happening with
• 13:54
  men and the looks maxing trend and specifically clavicular and
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  the phenomenon of this guy. In order to understand it, you
• 13:59
  have to look at what happened to women in 1993.
• 14:02
  And author Suzanne Bordeaux came out with this book Unbearable
• 14:04
  Weight, which was about her theory that after the failures
• 14:09
  of second wave feminism in the 70s to like elevate everybody
• 14:12
  and like reach parity with like wage and household duties and
• 14:16
  everything. Women gave up on this idea that
• 14:18
  there'd be this like mass movement that would lift up
• 14:20
  everyone and instead started focusing on the self.
• 14:22
  And the best way to focus on the self just to like optimize your
• 14:24
  physicality. And so she looks like the
• 14:26
  obsession with workouts in the 80s and 90s and she's like, this
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  is the result of the fact that we weren't able to get like
• 14:32
  governmental and social support as a whole class.
• 14:35
  And instead we're like, OK, everyone for themselves.
• 14:37
  But if you think about the fact that many white men specifically
• 14:40
  feel that they have been like left behind because they no
• 14:42
  longer are entitled to like all of the votes and all the
• 14:44
  property. It makes sense that they would
• 14:47
  go down the same path that women went with like our us as a class
• 14:50
  is being left behind and we're being fucked over.
• 14:51
  So abandoned everything and just focus on optimizing the self.
• 14:54
  And then finally, why Cliff is so different?
• 14:57
  He embodies A worldview that is going to be really hard for us
• 15:00
  to escape from, which is something that Aiden Walker
• 15:03
  calls content maxing, when basically everything is content.
• 15:07
  Everything is about metrics first and impact second.
• 15:10
  Again, we can look at his arrest as an example of that.
• 15:13
  But also, this is not unique to Clavicular at all.
• 15:16
  But Aiden argues that this is a type of digital nihilism.
• 15:19
  So the idea where there are no norms, there's no laws,
• 15:22
  institutions or traditions stronger than the algorithm's
• 15:25
  shallow snap judgments, algorithmically based social
• 15:29
  media platforms, they're not going away views maxing content
• 15:33
  maxing, all this maxing like it's not going away, right?
• 15:36
  So we really need to be looking at creators like Clavicular with
• 15:39
  a very critical eye. We can't reduce his impact to
• 15:42
  something that he's doing to himself.
• 15:45
  You know, where looks maxing is a completely self absorbed
• 15:49
  practice because it's not. There is so much more this like
• 15:52
  scratches the surface. OK, this is like a mini deep
• 15:55
  dive. But if you guys want more, like
• 15:56
  we can definitely do a bigger episode into him and into the
• 15:59
  impact. I feel like I really only
• 16:01
  touched on like the highlights here just to give you guys more
• 16:03
  of a full picture because we've never talked, well, I've never
• 16:06
  talked about him before and I don't think we've talked about
• 16:08
  him in this context. But yeah, of course, if you want
• 16:11
  us to, we can get into this a little bit more maybe in a deep
• 16:14
  dive or something. But in a nutshell, that is why
• 16:16
  Clavicular and these types of creators are so different,
• 16:19
  different than other manosphere creators and why he specifically
• 16:23
  can be so much more dangerous than the mainstream media gives
• 16:26
  him credit for. OK, we need a palate cleanser.
• 16:29
  Now. The last story that I have for
• 16:30
  you guys is really not even a story.
• 16:32
  It's like an honorable mention. But there is a new meme going
• 16:35
  around you guys, and it's about Joe Exotic, OK.
• 16:38
  And like, I know that man is deeply unwell.
• 16:41
  I know he's so problematic, but Tiger King, like what?
• 16:45
  Nostalgia. OK, so Joe Exotic commented on
• 16:49
  Tiktok, on a TikTok about like Erica Kirk and Charlie Kirk and
• 16:53
  like some type of TikTok, OK, he commented, everyone knows Erica
• 16:56
  put a hit on Charlie. And then somebody responded at
• 16:59
  Joe Exotic. How are you commenting from
• 17:01
  prison? And then he responded it's all
• 17:04
  corrupt girl. And now everybody is using it's
• 17:08
  all corrupt girl. It's like the perfect answer to
• 17:11
  everything Twitter is blowing up with.
• 17:14
  It's all corrupt girl, TikTok comments, it's all corrupt girl.
• 17:16
  So if you see anybody using, it's all corrupt girl, that's
• 17:19
  what they're referencing. All right guys, that's it for
• 17:21
  Mini scroll today. Thank you so much for listening.
• 17:23
  Please remember to rate, review and subscribe.
• 17:25
  Annabelle will talk to you guys tomorrow and then I will talk to
• 17:28
  you guys on Thursday. Bye.
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  Centennial World Podcast Network operates on Gadigal land.
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  We would like to acknowledge the Gadigal of the Aura Nation, the
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  traditional custodians of this land, and pay our respects to
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  elders both past and present.