The news that Braden Peters, better known online as “Clavicular”, has been charged with rape and other offences matters for reasons that go beyond one social-media personality. The allegations are serious, Peters denies them, and they must now be tested through the proper legal process. But irrespective of the outcome, there is a wider question we should be asking: why are young men increasingly taking their cues about how to live from people whose business model depends upon keeping them anxious, dissatisfied and watching?

Clavicular became prominent through “looksmaxxing”: the idea that young men can optimise their attractiveness through sometimes increasingly extreme interventions. He has accumulated a substantial audience through content centred on appearance, status and relationships. There is nothing wrong with a young man wanting to look better. Going to the gym, dressing well, eating properly and taking care of yourself can all be positive. The problem comes when self-improvement becomes self-obsession and when an industry discovers that male insecurity can be monetised.

Welcome to the Grifter Economy.

Its currency is attention and its raw material is insecurity. Its sales pitch to young men is brutally simple: you aren't attractive enough, rich enough, muscular enough, sexually successful enough or sufficiently dominant. But keep watching me, buying what I sell and following my rules and perhaps you can become so. This is why the phenomenon matters beyond any individual influencer.

For generations, boys encountered adults and role models through institutions around them: parents, extended families, teachers, sports coaches, youth workers, employers, churches, Scouts, cadets and community organisations. Those institutions were imperfect. But they usually involved real relationships and some degree of accountability.

The smartphone has created something radically different. A boy sitting alone in his bedroom can now spend hours in the company of someone he has never met but whom he feels he knows intimately. And the algorithms have little interest in whether that influence is wise, responsible or even safe. They reward engagement. The more outrageous the content, the greater the potential attention. The greater the attention, the greater the potential financial reward.

That creates a dangerous inversion. The qualities we should want boys to develop – judgement, patience, empathy, responsibility, resilience and respect for others – are rarely those most efficiently monetised online. Excess, conflict, humiliation, spectacle and certainty often perform rather better. We therefore need to stop talking about influencers as though they were simply celebrities for the digital age. Some are effectively unregulated educators. They are teaching boys what success looks like, what wom who are not who they pretend to been are like, what relationships are for and, ultimately, what it means to be a man. And many are not who they purport to be. Indeed it can be argued there is a double inversion where boys are being led by deeply flawed and individuals who themselves are deeply troubled.

The challenge is therefore bigger than removing the worst content. We have to offer boys something better: trusted adults, real communities, meaningful activities, credible pathways into work and a much richer idea of masculinity than the one being sold to them by the Grifter Economy. Because if responsible adults vacate the field, we should not be surprised when the influencers move in. The good news is that policy makers are alive to this challenge. Earlier this month the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Men and Boys’ Issues (CPRMB acts as the secretariat) launched an Inquiry into online harms specifically affecting men and boys in the UK, with its first evidence session focusing on “looksmaxxing” and body image. Forthcoming sessions will look at Gambling, Crypto Currency and Financial Exploitation in October and Impacts of Misogynistic content in November and Pornography and Sextortion in January.

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