Controversial influencer Clavicular is telling his fans that not only does he take doxyPEP, an STI prevention medication popular among gay men, but that the drug will protect them against the type of pneumonia that recently led to the death of a lab technician at a plague research institute in Russia.
āI take doxycycline daily as part of my looksmaxing [sic] routine because it lets me slay without getting STIs,ā wrote Clavicular, whose real name is Braden Peters, in a post on X (formerly Twitter). āNow, doxycycline is the rare drug to stop the plague in Russia.ā
Peters rose to dubious internet fame as the face of the ālooksmaxxingā subculture, where young men are encouraged to go to extreme lengths ā think plastic surgery, black market drugs, and using a hammer to get a better jawline ā to improve their appearance.
āAnother mog for looksmaxers [sic],ā he continued. "Mogging" is a looksmaxxing term that refers to outperforming someone in appearance or fitness level.
This social media post comes two weeks after Peters made headlines when he was charged with rape and drugging a person for sex, charges that could bring a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison.
Doxy-PEP (Doxycycline Post-Exposure Prophylaxis), the medication Peters mentions in his social media post, is an antibiotic medication taken within 72 hours after sex to help prevent chlamydia and syphilis. This STI prevention drug is mostly recommended to gay and bisexual men and men who have sex with men.
Peters revealing that he takes doxyPEP seems to be part of a larger unresolved dichotomy at the heart of the looksmaxxing subculture. The community revolves around self-improvement with the goal of attracting the opposite sex, but adherents seem to be more concerned with impressing other men than the women they claim to want to date and even look to openly gay actor Matt Bomer as their physical ideal.
The āplague in Russiaā in Petersā social media post refers to the pneumonic plague that is suspected to have caused the death of a 28-year-old woman from pneumonia after having been exposed at an Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia.
The treatment for pneumonic plague is a 10 to 14 day course of antibiotics like ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, moxifloxacin, gentamicin, and streptomycin, not doxycycline.
Antibiotics are not interchangeable, and no evidence currently shows that taking doxyPEP offers any protection against pneumonic plague.
