Inside The Bonesmashing Community: Six 'Looksmaxxers' Share Why They Started Bonesmashing

Disclaimer: None of the people interviewed in this article endorse or recommend bonesmashing. Bonesmashing is dangerous. Do not bonesmash.

People will go to great lengths to enhance their physical appearance. This is especially true in the modern age of social media, where everyone can look good with a simple filter and the idea of being a Chad is so desirable.

For a lot of men, this leads them down the "gym bro" path. They turn their focus to making gains and bulking up by working out, sometimes becoming obsessed with gym culture in the process. While some people might find problems in this approach, often linking gym bros to things like the redpill, high value male movement, it's hard to argue against the benefits of going to the gym. It's much harder, however, to argue for the benefits of a practice like bonesmashing.

Bonesmashing is based on Wolff's Law, which states that repeatedly causing trauma to your bones causes them to become thicker and stronger, therefore making them able to withstand greater damage without breaking. Over the past few years, this idea (which is "not always applicable" according to WebMD and the National Library of Medicine) has taken off with a specific branch of the incel community known as looksmaxxers, who have decided to put Wolff's Law to the test by taking blunt objects like hammers and repeatedly traumatizing the bones in their face to reshape them.

Looksmaxxing is an idea inspired by lookism, defined as prejudice or discrimination towards a person's physical appearance. Many looksmaxxers and bonesmashers believe, as we'll learn shortly, that looks are everything when it comes to finding a partner. Some of them refer to this discovery as "taking the blackpill," the blackpill being the realization that looks are all that matters. For the online looksmaxxing community, which mostly takes place on the Looksmax forum, this means taking drastic measures to make yourself act and look as Chad-like as possible.

According to the Incel Wiki, there are several levels to looksmaxxing. "Softmaxxing" is non-invasice and includes things like a healthy diet, using supplements, going to the gym and showering. The next step up, "Hard looksmaxxing," involves more risky practices like taking steroids, bleaching your skin, getting light plastic surgeries like botox and preventing hair loss. There's also "surgerymaxxing," which is defined by getting major plastic surgeries to enhance your appearance.

Bonesmashing seems to fall more in the "hard looksmaxxing" category and is listed in the "controversial looksmaxxing methods" on the Incel Wiki alongside practices like mewing, which involves holding your tongue to the roof of your mouth to allegedly improve the shape of your jaw.

While the exact origins of bonesmashing are unclear, the practice seems to have started on the Looksmaxxing forums as early as 2018, when Vice included the term in an article on "secret incel language." Even on Looksmax, the practice is largely frowned upon and seen as a meme, with some members actively speaking against it whenever a poster genuinely asks if it works.

Despite this, there are people on the forum who, as stated, are genuinely curious if it works. But does that necessarily mean that anyone is actually smashing their face with a hammer to get a chiseled jawline? If you ask a creator like James Sapphire (now an ex-bonesmasher) or Ekil, who post content to TikTok and YouTube about the practice, they'll tell you that not only is it a real thing, but it works, too.

We spoke with six alleged members of the bonesmashing and looksmaxxing community to learn more about the controversial and dangerous practice, all of whom claim to be teenagers between the ages of 15 and 18. Some have chosen to stay anonymous, while others have given online handles. Remember, these are all claims made by individuals who could very well be trolling. Take everything you read here with a grain of salt.

Meme Insider: How did you first find out about bonesmashing and what about it appealed to you?

Anon (Bonesmasher): I learned about bonesmashing because of Looksmax and I thought I looked horrible so I started punching myself in my cheekbones and it worked. Then I switched to using a screwdriver and hitting my cheekbones with it. Now I do my brow ridge and chin and cheekbones. I am also addicted to stimulants. I wouldn't have started without the stimulants.

Julian111 (Bonesmasher): When I was about 11 I signed up to this forum called incels.is then after lurking there for a bit I found the forum looksmax.org. After lurking on looksmax.org I found theories about bonesmashing and how it could possibly grow bone and increase bone density so I decided to try it out since I was pretty subhuman at the time. Then I just kept doing it over and over and I havent really stopped.

Draco! (Bonesmasher): I found out about it around two years ago when I first saw a video about bonegrowth and I bonesmashed my nose […] It made my bump bigger so now i need rinoplasty meaning it works when I bonesmashed the bump because it was smaller at the time than it is now.

Ricky ♱ (Bonesmasher): I found about it when I found out about looksmax.org, I saw bonesmashing on there and on TikTok a couple times and I was in a bad headspace and wanted to see if I could improve my looks because I was insecure.

Ekil (Bonesmasher): I had my own ideas about it before I heard the term “bonesmashing.” I knew already of people punching to harden their knuckles and it seemed intuitive to me that this would thicken the bones. So I began by hitting my wrists together because I had small wrists (I quit [that] after a few days). I started doing research online and found people talking about how their knuckles were bigger from hitting a bag and eventually I [learned] the term bonesmashing.

I don’t remember where or how, but from there I started watching Indigenous Swiss on YouTube, which convinced me to start bonesmashing my face. It appealed to me because I was always concerned about my looks my whole life; I felt insufficient and insecure. I was optimistic about this method, being younger. I assumed it would work immediately and I never even thought about any risks like increasing skin aging.

In his first answer, Ekil, who has been posting videos to YouTube about bonesmashing and other looksmaxxing practices like thumb pulling for a little over a year, mentions Indigenous Swiss, aka Juri Rüfli, a now-deleted YouTuber who seems to have made quite a splash in the bonesmashing world in his brief time online.

Before his channel was deleted and he disappeared from the web, Indigenous Swiss was one of the few people posting videos of himself bonesmashing. The only clip that seems to have survived exists on Reddit's /r/WTF board and shows the looksmaxxer repeatedly hitting himself in the head with a hammer. Indigenous Swiss was also the subject of an episode of the "Book Club From Hell" podcast, where they read a 20-page PDF by Rüfli called Natural Law that was sold on his GumRoad page before it was deleted.

The PDF, which was provided to us by the podcast hosts, mostly discusses basic alpha male principles and ideas about how to attract women and make yourself a desirable man. It's nothing you can't find from a million other "red pilled" self-help gurus and is arguably weighed down by the knowledge that the man relaying the info literally smashes his face with a hammer every day, as is joked about by the podcast hosts throughout their video.

Still, the impact that Indigenous Swiss seemingly had on the looksmaxxing community, specifically in spreading bonesmashing, is notable, with multiple posts on looksmax referring to him and wondering where he went.

MI: Has bonesmashing worked for you? Have you seen any results?

Ekil: Well it’s hard to say. My looks have improved. I compared pictures from the exact same angles and my cheekbones got wider and my eyebrows lower. There’s a chance it was an error or the changes are due to something else, however.
Basically, I think it has worked somewhat for me but I emphasize that this is not a scientific study and the technique remains experimental.

Anon: Yes it works extremely well. I looked in the mirror this morning and i got scared because there was such a big change. Every day it gets more and more swollen and the bone feels different sometimes. I hit hard asf. I look 100x better. I used to look really subhuman and my cheekbones were horrible but now I think I look like a model and I get compliments from people IRL about it. My face looks wider in general and I can feel the new bone in my cheekbones and my face has changed for the better so much.

Julian111: I bonesmashed my chin for five months and I think I've seen a difference. I've supplemented with bone building supplements like vitamin k2, vitamin d3 and my chin length and height grew but that could've just been puberty, or both. But post-bonesmashing you will see swelling and your bones look bigger and once the swelling dies down after you do it for a while you can see an increase if you do it correctly, however, the side effects are very brutal. If you do it incorrectly you could damage your nerves or become blind, experience brain bleed, or get brain damage.

Draco!: It took me around a month of doing it hard to notice it and you gotta hit until [there is] bruising. I am now bonesmashing my cheekbones.

Ricky ♱: I have seen results but they are slight because i have been doing it only for six months.

As we can see, all of these alleged bonesmashers seem to believe that bonesmashing works for them and shows results. Some sent before-and-after photographs over DMs that appear to show some changes in the shape of the face, although we will not be sharing them here for the sake of privacy.

While the studies on Wolff's Law are few and far between, they all come with the exclaimer that the law is not always true. While it can be observed in cases of people like athletes, such as tennis players according to a paper published on the Veterans Affairs North Dakota website, there is no solid research regarding the exact practice of smashing your face repeatedly to change its shape, making the practice dubious at best.

Another important takeaway is the fact that several of the bonesmashers realize that the practice is dangerous if done incorrectly, leading to our next question:

MI: Are there any notable downsides to bonesmashing you've noticed?

Ekil: That I’ve noticed, no, apart from temporary bruising or bleeding. It does increase local inflammation, and inflammation is known to cause aging. Although there’s a difference between chronic inflammation and the inflammation from bonesmashing, I believe there’s a good enough chance that bonesmashing speeds skin aging, which I why I stopped.

Anon: Yeah there is definitely downsides. I think I have nerve damage from it, if I poke my cheekbone I'll start feeling tingly and weird feelings in my lower eyelid and upper lip. The swelling makes you look kinda weird until it goes down. People have started saying I look kinda creepy from the front but I think it has been worth it. So many e-girls have been wanting me ever since I started smashing my face so I think it was slightly worth it even if I look creepy.

Julian111: No, I havent because I've taken measures to negate the negative effects such as supplementing, putting my head on a pillow to reduce head movement and not doing it everyday. I would say you should only bonesmash if you are truly dedicated to looksmaxxing, most normal people won't be able to do it correctly because they don't have the right knowledge.

Draco!:I regret bonesmashing my nose when I first learned because the bump is bigger. The negitives are that if people find out they will think you're weird and you can die or screw up ur nerves easily.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that repeatedly hitting yourself in the face with an object is dangerous and these alleged bonesmashers know that. Still, the majority of them seem unwilling to stop. It begs the question, what is the endgame with bonesmashing and how long can a person really dedicate themselves to such a dangerous practice?

MI: Is bonesmashing something you plan to keep doing for the foreseeable future? Or is there an endgoal?

Anon: I don't really have an endgoal. I'm probably gonna keep doing it for like another year. It's a part of my daily routine at this point. I am probably gonna go too far and ruin my face but it's kinda addicting to bonesmash.

Julian111: I’m gonna keep doing it until im like 20.

Ricky ♱: I think I am going to continue to do it because I have fallen so deep in the rabbit hole. I want to be more attactive and get a better life and more attention from women. [Now] I am getting attention from women but I have not been confident in myself enough to try to engage a lot with them. I dont know if I will [ever stop bonesmashing] but I think I will try to soon, I've become addicted to it and addicted to perfecting my flaws so it'll be hard to do.

At its core, bonesmashing can be lumped into the category of self-harm, among practices like cutting. Bonesmashing has the benefit of being disguisable as self-improvement for people who want desperately to change the way they look, but at the end of the day, you're harming yourself to get to that point.

Anon's claim that bonesmashing feels "addicting" likely plays a part in the reason why most of our interview subjects have little desire to stop. The addictive qualities of self-harm have been studied by researchers for years, with some studies claiming that people who self-harm do feel that the practice is addictive.

According to Psychology Today, this addictive quality often comes from a desire for relief. With bonesmashing, that relief is found in the alleged results of the practice, i.e., a more "desirable" appearance. Like any addiction, though, it's often challenging for the addicted person to realize when enough is enough, or that the practice is simply doing damage rather than helping.

Thinking of bonesmashing and other looksmaxxing practices as self-improvement rather than self-harm is a very dangerous game and is exactly what has trapped people like our interview subjects in the dangerous world of looksmaxxing. Another troubling factor, though, is the ideals that drive people to looksmaxxing in the first place, which are deeply rooted in the incel movement.

MI: There seems to be this idea online that bonesmashing is mostly done by incels. Do you think there's truth to this or is this a mischaracterization? Why do you think people are attracted to bonesmashing?

Ekil: I think it’s a mischaracterization. A lot of bonesmashers don’t identify as incel. The vast majority of self-identifying incels don’t bonesmash.

Anon: [People are attracted to bonesmashing] because of these women and the blackpill. It's because women control the dating market, so men have to compete via looksmaxxing because women are shallow and only care about looks. I shouldnt have to smash my face with a screwdriver to get girls.

Julian111: [People are] probably interested in bonesmashing because of the way that they were treated by women, shunned because they were ugly, or social media making them feel bad. For me it was because I was extremely ugly and women laughed at me when they saw me and I wasn't treated well.

Draco!: Because they want to look more attractive after realizing looks are everything.

By and large, bonesmashing seems to come from a place of insecurity. Considering this, it's not surprising that all of the interviews above come from teenagers. These are young men who have come to the sad decision to smash their faces to look better through online incel rabbit holes, blackpills and ideas about the importance of looks overall, which are echoed across social media by "manosphere" content creators like, for example, Andrew Tate.

That's not to say that Andrew Tate is telling his audience to bonesmash, but creators in the "redpill" and "pickup artist" world like Tate are arguably a gateway to content like this due to their misogynistic viewpoints and problematic beliefs about what it takes to be a man, focusing on more traditional ideals.

Incels use women as the scapegoat, claiming it's women's fault for refusing to date them when in reality, most of these teenagers haven't even been in the dating game long enough to see notable results. They're being told by people like Tate that they're not good enough because they haven't found a partner yet in their short 18 years of life. In most cases, this will not lead someone down the bonesmashing road. In the best cases, it will lead men to working out and generally taking care of themselves. But, based on the accounts of bonesmashers, that's not always the case, painting a troubling picture for today's online youth.

MI: You're rather young. Do you think bonesmashing is something you'll look back on and regret?

Anon: I already kinda regret it cuz it ruined my mindset and my mental health. I used to never care how I looked, but now i have sobbed and cried because of the way I look. I am not happy I did it. Doing it made me obsess over my entire face like my negative canthal tilt and the way my jaw is.

Draco!: I don't think I will regret doing it. I think I will be happy I did it.

To cap things off, we spoke with one of the biggest figures in bonesmashing today, James Sapphire, aka @jamesthebonesmasher on TikTok. Sapphire has a long and problematic history on the looksmaxxing forums and has become a known figure there. We won't go into that too much, but a video by Julius Perceiver goes into his history in more detail.

When we started speaking to Sapphire, he claimed to have been the one to popularize bonesmashing on TikTok, where it's most recently gained a following both genuine and ironic (although it's hard to tell the trolls from the real bonesmashers). Now, he claims to be done with bonesmashing and working on more natural ways of improving himself.

Recently he posted a series of videos to TikTok claiming he was faking bonesmashing the whole time to try and stop people from getting into the practice, claiming he only started making videos on the topic to promote his music.

The following is our interview with Sapphire, a man who has regrets about starting bonesmashing and spreading it further outside of the looksmaxxing community who stands as an ultimate example of just how far the looksmaxxing rabbit hole can take you.

Meme Insider: When did you first discover bonesmashing and what about it appealed to you?

James Sapphire: I first discovered bonesmashing on a site called lookism.net back in 2019. I heard it mentioned a lot and memed and then I heard about it circling on looksmax.org kind of as a meme but also people being serious. No one actually ever posted their results, though.

From then on I got a ball point hammer out of my garage and was determined to try it and be the first to put out actual results and document it as guinea pig because I was not keen on waiting 20 years for researchers to do an actual study on microfractures. If you are familiar with the millimeters of bone meme, it is the truth. The only thing that matters in life is bone, from playing sports, instruments, drawing, and physical attraction, whether it be height, face, hands, etc.

Femoids are attracted to bone mass in a face more than personality and that's a fact. Most people only bonesmash the zygos (zygomatic bones), but I have bonesmashed every day since 2021, full face, infra orbital, supra orbitals, zygomatic temporal, gonions and mentus. Some have experienced smashing the supra tip break or apex of the nose but unless you have extremely short nasal tip projection I wouldn't recommend touching the midface region.

What really appealed to me about bonesmashing was the fact that you are not only the sculptor, but also the marble. Humans are afraid of the unknown and so at first I thought this was such a ridiculous idea. I mean, hitting yourself in the face to become more attractive? That sounds insane! Something out of that one SpongeBob episode with handsome Squidward. But I believe that the dark, mysterious nature of this theory and how it is not very documented appealed to me.

It was something I could capitalize on early, and take advantage of before anyone else did so that there would be less skull moggers walking the planet. I wanted something more than looks, I wanted a life I could live happily, not only with bones, but finally escape the blackpill and move on.

MI: Does bonesmashing work? Have you noticed a difference in your face?

JS: Bonesmashing works 100%. It is not placebo, your bones are malleable and will grow when blunt force trauma is applied. This is not an opinion, it's fact and you will see by my results. I've been bonesmashing for two years, so my results are starting to look a bit unnatural or comical as some have said. For the first two months I did not see any really noticeable results up until my second month whenever my chin started growing crazy.

I would cry after my [bonesmashing] session wondering if I would ever ascend from being a low tier normie with big lips descending me to mid tier incel. I knew I had to get bones to make up for my lack of masculinity. My zygos went from low set to high set, my browridge went from flat to mogger tier, I changed my hooding from negative to neutral which is ideal for the hunter look, my jaw got a lot wider but I still need a few more months to get more bigonial width. I smash at the browridge, it's good to smash hard, it also seems to grow the brows by stimulating the area.

I smash my chin, smash it straight for more projection and verticle height and the sides for more width. You can smash hard on the chin. I smash hard af on zygos but on orbitals you gotta be more careful since it's a sensitive area. I also thumb-pull, it can give you more forward growth.

I already had good bone structure before bonesmashing, which really accenuated my results. I wouldn't expect to go from incel to male model with it unless you truly had the base, but many cases I have seen at least a 1 PSL-2 PSL+ increase which proves how important bones are

MI: What are some downsides to bonesmashing and do the negatives outweigh the positives?

JS:

Cons:

1. If anyone finds out it's social suicide (unknown for the coming future as I'm creating new norms) as for now through the present 2023, if anyone finds out they will think you are mentally insane.

2. You will get mental illness the more time you spend smashing, you are literally rattling your brain and it will drive you crazy the more you smash. Body dysmorphia occurs a ton, sometimes after the hour bonesmashing sessions I will look in the mirror or phone camera and feel as if my bonesmashing results are not evident or noticeable. Then I will pull up the pictures above and feel better about myself knowing that my bizygomatic arch has become higher set and that my FWHR has increased drastically from a death tier 1.55 narrow cuck to a 2.05 strong masc warrior dom high fWHR chad. The face width to height ratio is EXTREMELY important in signaling dominance and high T. With bonesmashing not only have my facial ratios and side profile angles improved drastically, I've gone up from 5 PSL to 6.5 PSL on the PSL scale, but I look more masculine and dark triad.

3. Nerve damage and CTE is a massive possibility. I haven't been to the doctor since she made fun of my height in early 2021 before bonesmashing so I wouldn't know what mental illness or damage I have but I know I'm messed up.

4. You lose your collagen, skin gets messed up and all youth is lost. I mean you can just tell by the look in my eyes I went from cute prettyboy to someone who looks like they've been scarred because my face has been punched even more than the average amatuer boxer and a lot of pro fighters today. I do this for hours and have calculated that I have been hit in the face these past years over 46,800,000 times but it is probably more

Pros:

1. Your face will get more attractive if you keep a good skincare routine and take calcium vitamins and HGH to speed up the growth, I used mk677 aromasin and HGH one year after I first started bonesmashing so it wasn't fully from the drugs but it did enhance my results.

2. With bigger bones you will be treated better because you will be higher PSL and face matters the most. Jaw, cheekbones, chin height, tattoos, car, money, status, etc. cannot match the power of hunter eyes. None of those can make you appear as a mythical creature or majestical being like the eye area.

3. This is a pro and a con but as a consequence of bonesmashing you can garner assymmetries. It's not over with that being said, it's quite easy to cure the asymmetry as you got it in the first place. If you were born with your chin asymetrical or jaw asymetrical or one eye deeper set than the other this is great to cure without filler implants or osteotomies (bone work).

MI: Do you regret bonesmashing?

JS: I have a ton of regrets in life, bonesmashing is a cope for me, a safe space even if it is just a placebo. Each time I pickup that hammer I feel empowered with each hit, I know I will achieve my goal. All of the times I was beat up at school, approached once by the baseball team who had bats threatening to kill me, thrown into bathrooms and scuffed up and bullied, each hit I've had to endure from normies is represented by my smashes and not only is it an emotional scar, but it is now a physical scar shown visibly on my face.

I have suffered and for bonesmashing being my outlet, I have absolutely ZERO regrets in doing it. I did what I had to do, I went in as an already conventionally 5 PSL attractive prettyboy, took a tour around the manosphere, came out as a niche appeal 6.25 PSL IRL incel with mogger bones and I am not as happy with my appearance anymore as I used to be, but I always had body dysmorphia. I was sick of being called gay, weak and being inferior to people more masculine than me because I was such an easy target as a prettyboy. Now no one messes with me, they see the look in my eye, they see my bones, they know what I could do to them, and so I am unmoggable, untouchable. THIS IS MY CURSE!

MI: You've been talking about the negatives of bonesmashing a bit, do you worry that more people are getting into it? Do you have any sort of guilt about spreading it further? And to add to that, why do you think it is that men feel the need to looksmax and bonesmash?

JS: Honestly, the more people get into it, the more people will both speak out against it and encourage people to do it. Out of all those 80 million+ people exposed to bonesmashing, I highly doubt even 10k will do it, so for that I don't feel guilty since it's looked at as a meme, rather than an actual practice. If someone ended up messing themselves up beyond repair, I am not responsible it's at their discretion they did it to themselves I'm not a doctor, so I couldn't give one care.

We bonesmash because it's the blackpill, the sooner you can accept the fact that looks are your life, you will have an awakening and understand the truth. Whether you shower, or use hair product, bonesmash, surgerymaxx, or even buy new clothes you are looksmaxxing whether you are subconciously doing it, or conscientiously making that choice. Women are the biggest looksmaxxers of them all, look at makeup market, it is huge. Women know their value relies solely on their looks so they cash in on it.

In a world where men are taught to not care about their looks, hair, or look in the mirror, they often are not seeing the true value of their potential and don't unlock it due to these voices telling them they are gay for wanting to change their natural self, or even their natural potential. Society hates self improvement, they see it as gene frauding. Even admitting [you bonesmash] to gym people, they will look down on you which is why you can't admit to looksmaxxing. My coworker at Dollar Tree asked what I do for my curly hair I said all I do is shower and she looked infuriated knowing I hairmogged her without having to do anything.

I don't even admit to showering and I stopped bathing and washing 2+ years ago because I accept my looks now. I know I am not a super handsome guy even after bonesmashing no matter what my ratios say, my Tinder results (five likes) say it for itself. This is my complete unfrauded self, no self-improvement, no nothing. Just bonesmashing, just pure bonesmashing.

Disclaimer: None of the people interviewed in this article endorse or recommend bonesmashing. Bonesmashing is dangerous. Do not bonesmash.