Let me tell you about a young man named Braden Peters. He’s 20 years old. He goes by “Clavicular” on the internet, which I’m told is a bone in your shoulder, and he’s famous for something called “looksmaxxing,” which is where you take a hammer to your own face to break the bones so they grow back stronger. Merriam-Webster added that word to the dictionary. I’ll pause while you let that settle.
This week, prosecutors in a Cape Cod courthouse filed three charges against young Braden: one count of rape, one count of drugging a person for sexual intercourse, and one count of procuring liquor for someone under 21. The alleged incident happened May 23, 2025. His arraignment is set for October 14. If convicted on the rape charge, he faces up to 20 years in state prison.
Now, his representative, a fellow named Mitchell Jackson, says Braden “has not been physically served” and that The Bulwark, which broke the story, is “exaggerating.” Braden himself hopped on X to ask for “community notes” on the report, and a community note was promptly appended confirming that yes, he has indeed been charged. Bless his heart.
Here’s where the story connects to something larger. A young woman named Aleksandra Mendoza, who goes by Alorah Ziva online, filed a civil lawsuit against Peters in Florida back in April. She says she was a minor when Peters arranged for her to travel to his family’s Cape Cod home, gave her vodka until she was drunk, and then had sex with her while she was too intoxicated to consent. She also says he injected a fat-dissolving substance called Aqualyx, which the FDA has not approved for anything, straight into her face during a livestream without her permission.
Peters responded to all of this by posting a letter he claims Mendoza sent him thanking him for “helping me,” plus a video where she appears to call the injection “fun.” He wrote that people “try to come for your money” and that “greed is evil.” I don’t know about you, but when I read a young man responding to a rape charge by complaining about his finances, I have questions for whoever raised him.
And here’s what I really want to know. This boy started ordering testosterone off the internet at 14. He bragged about abusing unregulated steroids. He got kicked out of Sacred Heart University after they found his stash in a dorm room. He was hospitalized in April for a suspected overdose during a livestream, and came home to post about his “life support mask.” He pleaded no contest to shooting an alligator in the Florida Everglades and got six months’ probation.
That is the resume. And on the strength of that resume, TikTok, Kick, and Instagram handed him a platform. GQ profiled him. The New York Times profiled him. He walked a runway at New York Fashion Week. He launched a paid coaching program teaching other boys to do what he does.
So I’ll ask the question nobody in the fancy offices seems to want to answer. When a 14-year-old boy is buying black-market hormones online and smashing his face with a hammer for views, where were the adults? When a teenager is livestreaming his own overdose, where’s the intervention? When a young woman says she was drugged and assaulted, why does it take five months and a civil lawsuit before a prosecutor files charges?
The platforms made money off this kid. The magazines made content off him. The fashion industry put him on a runway. And now a young woman says she was raped.
Braden Peters will get his day in court. That’s how this country works, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But the machine that built him, promoted him, and profited off him doesn’t get to act surprised. You don’t hand a hammer to a boy who’s already swinging it at his own skull and then pretend you couldn’t see the damage coming.