I grew up in rural NSW; my father was a vet; and later I studied science and graduated as a zoologist. These meant in my childhood I watched bulls, rams, roosters and other male farm animals posing, presenting and fighting to get the attention of female farm animals. If you live in the city you will have seen male pigeons in the street puffing up their feathers and dancing around the hens.
At university we were taught about lek behaviour where the males assemble in a small area and put on a display to attract females. Lek is a Swedish word for light-hearted play.
So as a young adult I found the behaviour of alpha males – the bullying, arrogance and ultra competitiveness – quite hilarious as they tried to exhibit their superiority by behaving like farm animals. I was a little disappointed to see the alphas convincing the girls that they were more attractive, so I just brooded and wrote poetry.
Young Gen Z and Alpha men have developed an online vocabulary to describe similar behaviour among their cohort. “Mog” means to outclass, outshine, or dominate someone, primarily in terms of physical appearance or attractiveness. “Mogging” is trending at the moment due to postings by influencer Clavicular (aka 20 y.o. Braden Peters). I first came across mogging in this NBC post.
The meaning of mogging
Mog derives from AMOG — “alpha male of the group”–a term created in the “manosphere” in the early 2000s for the dominant male. The manosphere is a collection of Internet subculture sites ranging from forums to discuss how to find your way in the modern world (e.g. status, fashion, dating and behaviour), through subcultures obsessed with hierarchy, ranking and appearance, and at its worst is a forum for misogynist beliefs and extremist gender ideologies.
“Mog” appeared in 2016 and by the early 2020s, “to mog” was a verb. If a perceived superior man enters a room of inferior men he is “mogging”, if you are in the inferior group you have been “mogged”.
Types of mogging
There are specialist areas of mogging:
Hairmogging–your head of hair is considered fuller
Jawmogging–your jawline is more chiselled
Framemogging–your shoulders are squarer
Agemogging—for older men, you look younger than your peers.
The meaning of maxxing
Parallel to the rise of mogging is “maxxing”. “Maxxing” emerged in gaming circles in the mid-2010s before moving into wider internet slang. It describes an obsession with getting the most out of an activity. It is often used tongue-in-cheek to acknowledge the absurdity of the behaviours. There are many variations.
Looksmaxxing — reflects a belief that physical appearance determines social status and success with women. Gymmaxxing, moneymaxxing and statusmaxxing are related. My favourite is jestermaxxing — which means compensating for poor looks by being funny or entertaining (one tries).
Two types of looksmaxxing
There are two types of looksmaxxing: “softmaxxing”—the appearance improvement methods like skincare, diet, exercise, and grooming; and “hardmaxxing”—methods such as surgery, taking steroids or other drugs, and “bonesmashing”, the most absurd of all maxxing activities. Bonesmashing involves repeatedly tapping your chin, cheekbones, and jaw with a hammer to cause minor bone damage with the intention of making it heal into a squarer face, a more pronounced chin, or a stronger jawline, which, of course, will allow you to jawmog.
The real world
But humans are capable of more sophisticated courtship than farmyard animals. Successful relationships depend not on jawlines or shoulder width but on personality, empathy and selflessness. Perhaps the manoshopere should look at empathymaxxing — with an occasional act of humilitymogging.