“Look, when you’re making a documentary about influencers, it’s very hard for the documentary itself not to become caught up in that [world],” she says, clarifying that Clavicular was never the documentary’s focus. “We were looking to spend time and actually understand these guys—not just as outrageous human beings, but what is driving them? Where are they coming from?” says Lee.
Following influencers like Clavicular may help illuminate what motivates an increasingly popular, exceedingly online idea of modern masculinity. A generation of boys who were socialized behind screens, and sold steroids as a cure-all for their societal woes, came of age in the two years that Lee and her crew spent shadowing various manosphere influencers, starting in 2023. “When we came in, this was niche,” says Lee, “and even after the first [day of] shooting, it was front and center, mainstream cultural conversation—politics, RFK, all these things coming into play as we were making this documentary. Simultaneously, all of the documentary’s main looksmaxxers “escaped to Thailand because America doesn’t offer them enough,” Lee says, shrugging. “So there’s a bit of contradiction in that.”
The resort city of Pattaya, Thailand, is where Lee was introduced to Tony Huge, born Anthony Hughes, an “overstuffed Marvel character,” a biohacking influencer who predated Andrew Tate, Bryan Johnson, and Clavicular, says Lee. “He became famous for taking DNP, which is a fat burner. Essentially you take one pill and lose a bunch of weight, you take two pills and…people [could] die,” she explains. “He was willing to go on camera and do things that a lot of people at the time were not. In the world of bodybuilding and fitness culture, so many men are taking a bunch of drugs but not really talking about it, whereas Tony took a different approach. And that created this brand, maybe an illusion for him, of radical transparency. But when you are like, you can see everything, it actually makes you more on guard like, what are we not seeing?”
Tony HugeCourtesy of Hulu