Bonesmashing: The Most Radical “Looksmaxxing” Trend

So… there’s a trend on TikTok where teenage boys hit themselves in the face with hammers.

Not joking.

It’s called “bonesmashing,” and the idea is that if you repeatedly strike your own cheekbones, jaw, or chin with blunt objects—fists, bottles, massage guns, or yes, actual hammers—the bones will heal back stronger. Thicker. More angular. More masculine.

By late 2023, videos tagged “bone smashing tutorial” had racked up over 260 million views on TikTok.

Now, look, before we go any further, let me be absolutely clear: this doesn’t fucking work.

It cannot work. The science these boys think they’re relying on has been twisted beyond recognition, and the medical community is pretty unanimous on this one. You are not going to get a chiseled jawline by smashing your face with a hammer. What you might get is a fracture, nerve damage, chronic pain, or permanent disfigurement.

But here’s what makes this genuinely disturbing, and why we’re talking about it tonight.

Bonesmashing didn’t emerge from nowhere. It crawled out of incel forums, where it started as something between a dark joke and a dare. And somehow, it escaped. It found its way onto the feeds of lonely, insecure teenage boys who’ve been taught to believe that their faces are broken… and that breaking them further might be the fix. Because that make sense…?

So, in today’s video, we’re going to trace how bonesmashing went from fringe internet absurdity to viral trend. We’ll look at the actual science it claims to be based on, why that science doesn’t say what they think it says, and what this whole thing reveals about a generation of young men learning to hate their own reflections.

The Hammer and the Hashtag

Let’s imagine a teenage boy sits in his bedroom, ring light glowing, phone propped against a stack of textbooks. In one hand, he’s holding a hammer.

The comments are already rolling in. Skull emojis. “Do it.” “Mog them bro.” Hundreds of viewers waiting to see if he’ll actually swing.

This is bonesmashing in action.

And look, the basic concept is exactly what it sounds like. You take a blunt object—a fist, a hammer, a glass bottle, sometimes a massage gun—and you hit yourself in the face. Repeatedly. The target areas are usually the jaw, the chin, and the cheekbones. The goal, supposedly, is to trigger some kind of bone growth that will make your face more angular.

The tools vary. Some guys just use their knuckles, punching themselves dozens of times a day. Others escalate to household objects. The commitment ranges from “I tried it once as a joke” to “I’ve been doing this every day for six months.”

By October 2023, Forbes reported that videos tagged “bone smashing tutorial” had accumulated over 267 million views on TikTok. That analysis was later republished by the University of Nebraska Medical Center, which… well, they weren’t sharing it because they thought it was a great idea.

What Bonesmashing Claims to Do

Okay, so what’s the actual theory here? What do these guys think is happening when they hit themselves in the face? Because… again… this is really a thing.

The claimed mechanism goes like this. When you strike bone with enough force, you create tiny cracks—micro-fractures. And when those micro-fractures heal, the bone supposedly grows back thicker and stronger than before. Do this enough times, in the right places, and you can reshape your own skull. Sharpen your jawline. Build out your cheekbones.

Basically… DIY plastic surgery with a hammer.

The scientific justification they point to is something called Wolff’s law. Which is actually a real thing, named after a 19th-century German anatomist named Julius Wolff. And the basic idea is that bone adapts to mechanical stress. Put load on a bone repeatedly, and over time, it will remodel itself to handle that load better.

This is why weight-bearing exercise can increase bone density. It’s why astronauts lose bone mass in zero gravity. Wolff’s law is legitimate science.

But here’s where it gets… creative.

Bonesmashing proponents have taken that principle and extended it to mean: if I punch myself in the jaw five hundred times, my jaw will grow bigger and more angular. If I smash a bottle against my cheekbone, it’ll heal into something sharper.

We’ll get into the actual science in a bit. But for now, I’ll say it again: medical experts have been pretty clear that there is no evidence random facial trauma can predictably improve your appearance.

The Week described the practice as a taunt and a dare. Which… yeah. That about covers it.

The Looksmaxxing Pipeline

So bonesmashing didn’t just appear out of nowhere. It’s part of a much larger subculture called “looksmaxxing.” And to understand why boys are hitting themselves with hammers, you need to understand what looksmaxxing actually is.

The term comes from incel message boards—“incel” meaning “involuntary celibate,” men who believe they’re unable to find romantic or sexual partners (just in case you didn’t know). On these forums, starting in the early 2010s, users began treating physical appearance like a video game skill tree.

They even developed their own metric for it: “sexual market value,” or SMV. The idea being that dating is essentially a marketplace, and your face, your height, your jawline… that’s your currency.

Now, looksmaxxing exists on a spectrum.

On one end, you’ve got “softmaxxing.” This is the relatively harmless stuff. Going to the gym. Skincare routines. Better haircuts. Dressing well. Honestly, most of it is just… basic grooming advice that any lifestyle magazine might give you.

But then there’s “hardmaxxing.” And this is where things escalate.

Hardmaxxing includes steroid use. Extreme dieting, sometimes called “starvemaxxing.” Cosmetic surgery. A technique called “mewing,” where you supposedly reshape your jaw by pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth for years. And at the far far far end of the spectrum… bonesmashing.

Here’s the thing. If you scroll through looksmaxxing content on TikTok, a lot of it looks completely normal. Fitness tips. Skincare recommendations… that kinda stuff. I guess I’d just call it self-improvement?

But researchers like Jamilla Rosdahl, a senior lecturer at the Australian College of Applied Psychology, argue that the underlying ideology traces directly back to misogynistic manosphere spaces. The Guardian and the BBC have both reported on how these communities can funnel teenage boys from “how to clear up acne” to full-blown incel culture.

From Forums to FYP: Bonesmashing’s Origin Story

Okay, so where did bonesmashing actually come from? Like, who was the first person to think “I should hit myself in the face to get a better jawline”?

The answer is… murky. But we can trace the rough outline.

KnowYourMeme, which tracks internet phenomena rather rigorously, traced the term back to looksmaxxing forums like Looksmax.org and various incel spaces. The earliest known references appear in discussions from around 2018. That same year, VICE published a glossary of incel terminology that included bonesmashing as one of the terms circulating in these communities.

But here’s the thing. It’s not entirely clear whether anyone was actually doing it at that point… or whether it started as a joke.

The Week, citing Rolling Stone, described bonesmashing’s origins as a “trollish suggestion.” A bit of a dare and a taunt.

You have to understand the context of these forums. These are communities where self-hatred runs deep. Where users routinely tell each other they’re genetically doomed. Where, in some of the darker corners, suicide encouragement is disturbingly common.

In that environment, telling someone to smash their own face in could be a joke. Or a test. Or a way of saying: “You’re so ugly, this is your only option.” Right…

So on these forums, you’d see some users “recommending” bonesmashing with what might be sarcasm… or might not be. And you’d see others vehemently warning against it, calling it insane, dangerous, and obviously fake.

The practice became a meme as much as a supposed hack. Something to argue about. Something to dare people into. And then TikTok got hold of it.

How Big Is This, Really? Meme vs Reality

Now, at this point you might be wondering: are people actually doing this? Like, really doing it? Or is this just another case of media panic over something that’s mostly a joke?

The honest answer is… it’s complicated.

If you read the headlines from late 2023, you’d think there was a bonesmashing epidemic. Teenagers everywhere, hammers in hand, smashing their faces for TikTok clout. News outlets covered it with the usual breathless alarm reserved for whatever the kids are supposedly doing this week.

But when TodayOnline actually looked into it, they found something interesting. Many of the TikTok videos tagged with bonesmashing don’t actually show anyone hitting themselves. They describe the trend. They discuss the trend. They react to the trend. But the actual face-smashing? Often rather absent.

The Week put it bluntly. Citing reporting from The Guardian and Rolling Stone, they noted there’s been “much hand-wringing” over bonesmashing… but “little evidence anyone is actually doing it” at scale.

Cosmetic surgeons told reporters they’d seen an increase in inquiries about jaw surgery and facial restructuring from young men. But self-inflicted facial fractures from hammer blows? Not exactly flooding the emergency rooms.

Meanwhile, on Reddit, users openly debate whether bonesmashing posts are satire. Some insist the whole thing is an elaborate troll. Others… admit they’ve tried it.

So what’s the reality? Probably something like this: bonesmashing exists on a spectrum.

At one end, you’ve got obvious jokes. Memes. People filming themselves pretending to bonesmash for the algorithm.

In the middle, there’s performative content. Guys lightly tapping their faces on camera, claiming results, chasing engagement.

And at the far end… a smaller subset of young men who are genuinely, repeatedly, hitting themselves hard enough to risk real injury.

We don’t have good data on how many fall into that last category. No hospital system is tracking “bonesmashing-related admissions.”

Inside a Bonesmasher’s Head

So who are the people actually doing this? Not the jokers. Not the guys tapping their cheeks for content. The ones who genuinely believe it might work.

In April 2023, KnowYourMeme published something unusual: interviews with six self-identified bonesmashers. And what they described was… pretty bleak.

A common thread ran through almost all of them. They felt genetically doomed. Like they’d been dealt a bad hand at birth, and no amount of gym or skincare or self-improvement was going to fix the fundamental problem: their faces.

Specifically, their jawlines and cheekbones. The bone structure that separates a “Chad”—the looksmaxxing term for a genetically blessed man who effortlessly attracts women—from everyone else. The men who don’t get swiped right on.

Several of the interviewees described bonesmashing as a “last resort.” They’d tried everything else first. Years at the gym. Skincare routines. Mewing, the tongue-posture technique that supposedly reshapes your jaw over time. But the results were too slow. Or invisible. Or not enough.

So they escalated.

Others admitted they’d been influenced by incel ideology. Concepts like “blackpill”—the belief that your romantic fate is determined entirely by genetics, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Or “sexual market value”—the idea that dating is a marketplace where your face is your price tag.

The Guardian profiled a young man they called “James,” a pseudonym. He described spending hours on looksmaxxing forums, micro-analysing every flaw in his face. The angle of his jaw. The projection of his chin. Features most people would never notice. But to James, they were everything. The reason he was alone.

The Science They Think They’re Using: Wolff’s Law

Alright, let’s talk about the science. Because bonesmashing doesn’t come from nowhere—it’s based on that real principle we talked about earlier. The problem is, that principle has been mangled beyond recognition. Kinda like a bonesmasher’s face.

So, now let’s talk about bones!

Most people think of them as static, but bones are actually living tissue. They’re constantly being broken down and rebuilt.

Your body has specialised cells for this: Osteoclasts, which break down old bone. Then there are osteoblasts that build new bone. It’s a continuous cycle—about 10% of an adult skeleton gets replaced every year. Your bones right now are not the same bones you had a decade ago.

Now, here’s where Wolff’s law comes in.

Julius Wolff was a 19th-century German anatomist who observed something important: bones adapt to mechanical stress. If you consistently put load on a bone—like through weight-bearing exercise—it will remodel itself over time to handle that load better. The bone gets denser. Stronger. It reinforces itself along the lines of stress. This is why resistance training can increase bone density.

But here’s what Wolff’s law actually requires: controlled, moderate, repetitive stress. And crucially… proper healing time between loading cycles.

What it does not describe is: hit yourself in the face with a hammer and your jaw will get more angular.

Random blunt trauma to facial bones doesn’t trigger controlled adaptation. It causes fractures, tissue damage, and inflammation. And if those fractures heal wrong—which they often do without medical intervention—you get something called malunion. The bones fuse at the wrong angle. Which isn’t very Chad-like.

For comparison, when surgeons actually reshape facial bones, they use millimetre-precise cuts, reposition the bone fragments exactly where they want them, and stabilise everything with titanium plates and screws. Then the patient heals in a controlled environment for months.

That’s a little different from smashing a bottle against your cheekbone in your bedroom. Isn’t it?

Surgeons, Dentists, and the Worst-Case Scenario

So what do actual doctors think about all this? Let’s just say… they’re not fans.

Dr. Etan Sugarman is an orthopaedic surgeon who spoke to Healthline about bonesmashing. He called the idea that random fractures could improve your appearance “magical thinking.” His assessment of the likelihood that hitting yourself in the face would give you a better jawline? It “approaches 0%.”

So you’re saying there’s a chance?? … Just joking, please don’t.

Dr. Ben Schultz, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon at LifeBridge Health, gave an interview to CBS Baltimore in November 2023. He addressed the core belief that bones always grow back stronger after they break. That belief, he said, is simply false—and what actually happens with uncontrolled facial trauma is fractures, nerve damage, and potentially permanent disfigurement.

In April 2024, a Brazilian oral and maxillofacial surgeon named Ricardo Grillo published a letter in the Journal of Stomatology, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. The title was blunt: “Urgent concern regarding ‘bone smashing’, a dangerous trend on TikTok.”

Grillo called on dental professionals, trauma surgeons, and emergency physicians to actively educate their patients about the trend. His concern was that young men were going to start showing up in clinics with self-inflicted facial injuries—and that many medical professionals might not even know what bonesmashing was.

Measuring the Damage We Can’t See

As of 2024 and into 2025, there are no large published datasets tracking emergency room visits specifically coded as bonesmashing injuries. It just gets logged as facial trauma, if it gets logged at all.

Dr. Grillo’s letter in the Journal of Stomatology framed bonesmashing as an “emerging concern”—something clinicians should be aware of, based on what he was seeing circulate online.

A broader academic review on harmful social media challenges, published on ResearchGate, listed bonesmashing alongside the cinnamon challenge and the Benadryl challenge as examples of viral trends pushing adolescents toward dangerous behaviour. The pattern is familiar by now: something starts as a joke or a dare, gets amplified by algorithms, and eventually someone gets hurt.

Legal analysts have started paying attention too. A 2026 report from Bader Law on what they called “viral injury epidemics” mentioned bonesmashing as part of a larger pattern. Platforms host self-harm content. Engagement metrics reward extreme behaviour. And even when the actual injury numbers for any single trend are small, the cumulative effect adds up.

But here’s the thing. Physical injuries are only part of the picture.

The boys who spend hours analysing their own jawlines on looksmaxxing forums… the ones who feel “genetically doomed” before they’ve finished high school… the kids who watch 267 million views worth of content telling them their faces are broken…

Algorithms, Clout, and the Masculinity Funnel

So how does a teenage boy go from watching workout videos to considering hitting himself in the face with a hammer? The answer, in large part, is the algorithm.

The BBC investigated how looksmaxxing content spreads on TikTok in 2024. What they found was a pretty predictable pipeline. A boy watches some fitness content—maybe dating advice. The algorithm notices he’s interested in self-improvement, in attractiveness, in how to be more appealing to women.

So it serves him jawline exercises. Then mewing tutorials. Then looksmaxxing creators explaining the difference between “softmaxxing” and “hardmaxxing.” Then videos rating people’s faces, pointing out flaws, ranking bone structure on a scale of one to ten.

And then… the harder stuff.

The Week reported that looksmaxxing has become a genuinely mainstream phenomenon. Influencers like Kareem Shami, who goes by “syrianpsycho” online, have amassed huge followings by offering appearance advice wrapped in pseudo-scientific jargon.

It looks like expertise, and for a lonely teenager who’s been told his whole life that confidence comes from within… it offers something more concrete. A system. Something to do.

Jamilla Rosdahl, the Australian psychologist who studies these communities, has warned that looksmaxxing converts ordinary appearance anxiety into something much more rigid. A worldview where dating is a marketplace, attractiveness is currency, and men who don’t meet the genetic threshold are simply… doomed.

Once you’ve accepted that framework, extreme measures start to seem rational. If your jaw is the only thing standing between you and a happy life… wouldn’t you do anything to fix it?

Meanwhile, TikTok officially bans content that encourages self-harm. It’s right there in the community guidelines. But as the Bader Law report noted, dangerous trends often circulate for months before moderation catches up. By the time a hashtag gets blocked, it’s already been viewed hundreds of millions of times.

Boys, Body Image, and the New Perfectionism

For a long time, when we talked about body image issues and appearance anxiety and eating disorders, we mostly talked about girls. And those concerns were legitimate. But something has definitely shifted.

Parents.com reported in 2025 that body image concerns among boys have risen sharply in the social media era. Looksmaxxing content gets framed as “self-improvement”—just guys helping guys look their best!

But the outcomes researchers are seeing tell a different story. Disordered eating. Steroid use. Depression.

Mental health commentators at BalancedTX noted that boys exposed to manosphere and looksmaxxing content are more likely to internalise rigid ideals of what masculinity should look like. The chiseled jaw, those “hunter eyes,” the low body fat percentage. And crucially… they’re more likely to tie their entire sense of self-worth to whether they meet those ideals.

That’s a pretty fucking brutal way to go through adolescence.

Jamilla Rosdahl, the Australian psychologist, offered a theory for why this is happening now. Young men today are growing up in a precarious world. Economic instability, a job market that feels rigged, fewer real life social connections.

In that context, your body becomes one of the few things you can actually control. Or at least, it feels that way.

You can’t fix the economy. You can’t fix the housing market. You can’t make people like you. But maybe… maybe you can fix your face? Maybe if you just try hard enough, optimise enough, grind enough… you can become someone worth loving.

And if mewing doesn’t work fast enough, and the gym isn’t giving you the jaw you want, and you’ve already tried everything else…

Well. There’s always the hammer.

What Real Bone Work Looks Like

So let’s say you genuinely want to change the structure of your face. Not through bonesmashing. Through actual medicine. What does that look like?

Orthognathic surgery—that’s the medical term for procedures that reposition the bones of the jaw and face. Surgeons do this every day and it can produce dramatic results. But here’s what’s involved.

First, detailed imaging. CT scans. 3D models of your skull. Surgeons need to see exactly what they’re working with, down to the millimetre.

Then extensive planning. Surgeons map out precisely where they’ll make their cuts, how they’ll reposition the bone, what the final result should look like.

The surgery itself happens in a sterile operating theatre, under general anaesthesia. Surgeons make controlled cuts with specialised tools. They move the bone fragments into their new positions.

Recovery takes months.

And even with all of that… orthognathic surgery still carries risks. Nerve damage, infection, all the other standard risks with surgery. The Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons of Australia note that these procedures are usually done for functional reasons—breathing problems, bite alignment issues—as well as aesthetics.

Now compare that to bonesmashing.

No imaging. No planning. No sterile environment. No control over where the fracture lines go. No fixation. No professional monitoring during healing.

Just a fucking hammer.

The doctors who’ve spoken publicly about this trend have been pretty consistent. If you want to change your appearance, there are evidence-based options. Consult a surgeon or a mental health professional.

The Economics of the “Perfect Jaw”

So here’s an uncomfortable question: who’s making money off all this? Because someone must be, right?

Thinkhouse, a youth marketing research firm, published an analysis in 2024 tracking the rise of looksmaxxing alongside a boom in products marketed specifically to teenage boys. Male grooming. Skincare lines. Jawline exercise gadgets.

A generation of boys has been taught to obsess over their bone structure… and there’s a whole market ready to sell them solutions. No, never?! Some of it is harmless. Skincare is fine. Looking after yourself is fine. But the line between “self-care” and “you need to fix your defective face” gets blurry fast.

Then there are the clinics.

Cosmetic surgery practices have started publishing blog posts about bonesmashing. They explain the trend, warn about the dangers, and then… offer their services as a safer alternative. Sometimes that’s genuinely helpful—I mean professional guidance instead of DIY mutilation is a good thing. But sometimes it’s opportunistic. “Don’t smash your face with a hammer… let us reshape it instead, for a fee.”

Thinkhouse noted that some brands are trying to push back. Promoting “softmaxxing” as basic hygiene and self-care without the extreme measures. Trying to decouple looking after yourself from hating yourself.

But plenty of others are happy to ride the wave. The same ecosystem that tells boys their jaws aren’t good enough is also selling them the fixes.

Key Takeaways

• Bonesmashing is a dangerous TikTok trend where boys hit their faces with hammers to alter their bone structure.
• The trend originated from incel forums and is based on a misinterpretation of Wolff’s law.
• Medical experts unanimously agree that bonesmashing does not work and can cause serious injuries.
• The looksmaxxing subculture promotes extreme measures for appearance enhancement, leading to harmful behaviors.
• Algorithms on social media platforms can funnel teenage boys into harmful trends like bonesmashing.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is bonesmashing?

Bonesmashing is a trend where teenage boys hit themselves in the face with blunt objects like hammers, fists, bottles, or massage guns, believing it will make their bones heal back stronger, thicker, and more angular.

Does bonesmashing actually work?

No, bonesmashing does not work. Medical experts agree that it cannot improve appearance and can cause fractures, nerve damage, chronic pain, or permanent disfigurement.

How did bonesmashing originate?

Bonesmashing originated from incel forums as a dark joke or dare and later spread to TikTok, where it gained significant views and attention.

What is the looksmaxxing subculture?

Looksmaxxing is a subculture that originated from incel message boards, where users treat physical appearance as a metric for success in dating, known as ‘sexual market value.’ It ranges from basic grooming to extreme measures like bonesmashing.

What is Wolff’s law and how is it misinterpreted in bonesmashing?

Wolff’s law states that bones adapt to mechanical stress, but bonesmashing misinterprets this to mean that hitting oneself in the face will make bones grow stronger and more angular, which is not supported by medical evidence.

What do medical professionals say about bonesmashing?

Medical professionals strongly advise against bonesmashing, stating that it can cause serious injuries and that there is no evidence it improves appearance. They recommend consulting professionals for any desired changes.

How does the algorithm contribute to the spread of bonesmashing?

The algorithm on platforms like TikTok can funnel users from fitness and self-improvement content to more extreme looksmaxxing content, including bonesmashing, by serving them increasingly radical videos based on their interests.

What are the psychological impacts of looksmaxxing?

Looksmaxxing can lead to severe body image issues, depression, disordered eating, and steroid use among boys, as they internalize rigid ideals of masculinity and tie their self-worth to meeting these ideals.

What is the safer alternative to bonesmashing for changing facial structure?

Orthognathic surgery is a safer alternative, involving detailed planning, controlled cuts, and professional monitoring, but it still carries risks and is usually done for functional reasons as well as aesthetics.

How does the market capitalize on looksmaxxing?

The market capitalizes on looksmaxxing by selling products like skincare, jawline exercise gadgets, and cosmetic surgery services, often blurring the line between self-care and self-hatred.

Sources

• Original Into the Shadows video: Bonesmashing: The Most Radical “Looksmaxxing” Trend
• Hero image source by P. Horálek/ESO / openverse, by.

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