Looksmax.org Rating Threads: Should You Post Your Face?

Looksmax.org is an anonymous, English-language forum where men post photos to get their looks rated and trade looksmaxxing advice, from skincare to jaw surgery. What it gets right is a short list of boring, evidence-backed basics; what it gets wrong is the rating culture around them. The one move you can't undo there is uploading your face.

Jump to what you came for:

• Curious what the site is? Where it came from.
• Want your face rated? How the rating threads work, before you register.
• Checking a thread's advice on tretinoin, peptides or mewing? The evidence table.
• Already posted? The takedown steps. The first two lose power every hour.

Sources: public records, published research and the forum's public pages, reviewed October 2026. We have not posted there.

What is looksmax.org, and where did the forum come from?

Looksmax.org is a public message board for looksmaxxing, which Wikipedia defines as an online self-improvement practice focused on maximizing male attractiveness. Its domain was registered on 10 August 2018 (registry record), and the Internet Archive first captured it nineteen days later.

Whichever spelling you typed (looksmax org, lookmax org, looks max org), this is the place:

• It's an heir. Its vocabulary (PSL ratings, mogging, "cope") comes from PUAHate, Sluthate and Lookism.net, the three "PSL forums" Wikipedia lists as defunct. Searched "lookism org"? That board is gone; much of its culture moved here.
• It has two halves. Advice threads (skin, hair, training, surgery) and rating threads, where posted photos get a number and a flaw list.
• Most threads are public and indexed by Google, so anyone can read them. That matters later.
• It's the deep end. The looksmaxxing subreddits are the moderated wing (our map). Here, bonesmashing (hitting your own face to remodel bone, which facial surgeons warn risks fractures) is ordinary slang; here's what it actually does.

In fairness: most regulars arrived wanting honest feedback, and the archive holds useful grooming and training detail. The problem is what's wrapped around it.

How do looksmax.org rating threads work, and are they accurate?

You post a photo; members reply with a number, usually on the forum's PSL scale, plus a list of what's "wrong." A crowd can roughly place you, but nobody has ever checked a forum verdict against how real people react to you.

The real part first: in 11 meta-analyses, Langlois and colleagues found that raters agree about who is attractive, within and across cultures, so a thread can land in the right neighborhood. And strangers are specific in a way friends never are; sometimes one names the fixable thing (hair, body fat, skin) everyone else talks around.

Where it breaks:

• The Cruelty-as-Calibration Myth. The colder a verdict feels, the more accurate it seems. But harshness earns a rater status and costs him nothing, because he never sees how your life goes. Accuracy needs a feedback loop; anonymous raters have none.
• The autopsy method. Threads grade faces feature by feature. People don't: in a composite-face experiment, the same top half looked more attractive beside an attractive bottom half, and the effect vanished once the halves were misaligned (Abbas & Duchaine, 2008). Faces are read whole.
• The drift. Sociologists who coded 8,072 comments from the advice and ratings boards of a large looksmaxxing forum (6 million monthly visitors, unnamed by the authors) found pushes toward leg-lengthening surgery and mewing, and "masculine demoralisation": users cast as failed men, some encouraged to self-harm (Halpin et al., 2025).

Knowing how you come across doesn't need an audience. Our first-impression test takes about a minute of questions plus two photos, your photo is never published, and the full report is a one-time $5.

Which looksmax.org advice holds up: tretinoin, peptides, eye area, jaw?

The advice that holds up is the boring part: prescription skincare and one small, real trial on eyebrows. The topics that draw the most heat (injectable peptides, steroid cream on the nose, mewing for a recessed jaw) range from unproven to actively harmful.

The pattern: everything that survives is what a dermatologist would tell you anyway. The forum mostly adds urgency.

Is looksmax.org safe?

It's safe enough to read for most adults and a bad place to post your face. The risks aren't to your device; they're to your privacy, your sense of normal and, in a low stretch, your mood.

• Your photo is the permanent part. Threads are public and indexed; deleting a post doesn't delete screenshots. The rating is temporary. The upload isn't.
• Your reference range shifts. Read enough dissections and average faces, yours included, start to look defective. Your face didn't change; your measuring stick did (the evidence on that loop).
• The ideology is in the room. A 2025 University of Portsmouth study drawing partly on looksmax.org posts found incel accounts rebranding as "sub5s" and using looksmaxxing terms to reach young people on TikTok. Most readers aren't incels, but the belief on offer, that your bones decide your life, is the most contagious thing there.

Skip it if you're under 18, have a history of body-image struggles, or are in a rough patch. If a thread has left you thinking about hurting yourself, talk to someone today; in the US, call or text 988. Already in and want out? Here's the exit plan.

Already posted your face there? How do you take it down?

Delete the post first, then the account, today and in that order. Forum software usually keeps a departed user's posts, so closing the account alone can leave your photo under a dead username.

1. Delete the post. Screenshot it with its URL first, as proof.
2. Ask a moderator, in writing, to close the account and purge attachments. Private message or contact form; keep the sent copy.
3. Reverse-search the exact file in Google Images and TinEye. It turns dread into a list, usually a short one.
4. Report copies to the hosting platforms, not the posters. If you were under 18 in the photo, use NCMEC's Take It Down.
5. Clear Google separately. Once the page is gone, the Remove Outdated Content tool drops the dead result; for a live identifying image, file a personal-information removal request.
6. Break the username link. Search your handle in quotes; if it also sits on a profile with your real name, cut that link.

For most posts, the realistic worst case is nothing at all. Every step gets harder with time.

What should you use instead of looksmax.org?

Every real need it serves has a cleaner source. If an app is your plan instead, check looksmaxxing apps compared first: every app's real price, and where its paywall lands.

On the first row, full disclosure: we build a first-impression test — the analysis runs before you pay, and the full report costs $5. A few quick picks plus your photos, about a minute: a read of how your face, physique and outfit come across on a 70–155 perception axis. It's deliberately not a 1–10, because decimals feed exactly this obsession. Your photos are never published and can be deleted in one click. It isn't a clinical instrument; it's one data point without an audience.

The bottom line

Looksmax.org is real information wrapped in a corrosive economy. If you go, lurk for the basics and never upload. Your face doesn't have a number that decides your life. It has an effect on people, and the reversible things (skin, hair, body fat, fit) move it more than any thread admits. Want one honest read? Take ours once, then close the tab.

Studies referenced

• Abbas, Z. A., & Duchaine, B. (2008). The role of holistic processing in judgments of facial attractiveness. Perception, 37(8), 1187–1196. https://doi.org/10.1068/p5984
• Halpin, M., et al. (2025). When help is harm: Health, lookism and self-improvement in the manosphere. Sociology of Health & Illness, 47(3), e70015. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.70015
• Langlois, J. H., et al. (2000). Maxims or myths of beauty? Psychological Bulletin, 126(3), 390–423. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.126.3.390
• Lee, S., et al. (2014). Minoxidil 2% lotion for eyebrow enhancement. Journal of Dermatology, 41(2), 149–152. https://doi.org/10.1111/1346-8138.12275
• Wang, X. W., et al. (2023). Slim the face or not: 3D change of facial soft and hard tissues after third molars extraction. BMC Oral Health, 23, 508. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12903-023-03214-5