For an intellectually deficient movement, the manosphere has given us some unusually useful vocabulary. Take "maxxing", popularised by looksmaxxing, the offshoot of the incel community's obsession with physical attractiveness. Just add the suffix to your word of choice and you have a term that captures a commitment to doing that thing to the fullest.
Then there's mogging, Collins English Dictionary's newly crowned word of the year. It comes from Amog, or "alpha male of the group", an acronym used in bodybuilding forums in the 2010s and embraced by incels. Through an online metamorphosis, mogging now describes when a person or thing one-ups another, sometimes in looks, but also in style, work or aura.
The term's origins are steeped in the misogyny that defines much of the manosphere. It was given new prominence by Clavicular, the 20-year-old American streamer known for his looksmaxxing advice, who last month pleaded not guilty to criminal charges including rape. Collins's managing director Alex Beecroft said mogging's victory "shows how each generation leaves its mark on language".
Gen Z has a knack for taking words with dark origins and pulling them into the memeified mainstream, from clanker to brain rot. Manosphere terms such as red pill, simp, white knight and soyboy are already widespread. Critics long for the innocent days of Yolo and bae, but the author argues that resistance is futile. Bringing manosphere vocabulary into the mainstream takes the sting out of a harmful ideology, and as maxxing already sounds cringe to some, mogging might just get mogged too.
Source: Financial Times Companies · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing