The Dark Money Behind Clavicular's Rise to Fame, The Clipper Economy, and Meta-Nihilism | Upswing #2

Hey everyone — check out Upswing’s latest podcast episode with Minh Tran, author of the “coulda been at the club” Substack and producer of Victory Light with Kid Mero, a pop culture podcast that has featured guests Zohran Mamdani, Hasan Piker, Letitia James, Kenan Thompson, Eddie Huang, and other big names in pop culture, politics, sports, and entertainment.In this episode, we dig into the (somewhat) hidden economy fueling Clavicular’s rise to fame, how gambling money is bankrolling some of the most influential figures for young men, and what this says about internet nihilism.Show Notes-* “I Paid $49 for Clavicular’s ‘Looksmaxxing’ Academy. What I Saw Should Scare Us All” by Charlie Sabgir https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/clavicular-looksmaxxing-acadamy-influencer-1235504022/* “The Internet That Made Clavicular” by Minh Tran,* “Clavicular is Brutally Frame Mogged on Stream”-* “Child’s Play,” by Sam Kriss- https://harpers.org/archive/2026/03/childs-play-sam-kriss-ai-startup-roy-lee/* “Crypto Casino Stake Pays Drake and Other Stars to Bet, with Clips of Big Wins Spreading to Impressional Gamblers. The Numbers Show Surprising Luck at Work.” by Cecilia D’Anastasio, Olivia Solon and Leon Yin https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2026-stake-drake-crypto-casino-adin-ross-gambling/* Nothing but Respect-* Monitoring the Situation Meme- https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1ri1ouc/whats_up_with_monitoring_the_situation_memes_on/* “What Are Young Men Seeing about The Epstein Files on Reddit?” by John Ray https://youngmenresearchinitiative.substack.com/p/what-are-young-men-seeing-about-the?r=42ahc5* “Trump’s Iran War Is Uniting a Strange New Anti-War Alliance” by Christian Paz, https://www.vox.com/politics/481208/trump-iran-war-podcast-manosphere-influencer-maga-america-first-war-neocon Get full access to Young Men Research Project at ymrp.substack.com/subscribe