Hankering for a chiseled jawline, a male TikTok influencer strikes his cheekbones with a hammer – highlighting the rise of "looksmaxxing," an online trend pushing unproven and sometimes dangerous techniques to boost sexual appeal.

Looksmaxxing influencers – part of an online ecosystem dubbed the "manosphere" – have surged in popularity across social media, capitalizing on the insecurities of young men eager to boost their physical attractiveness to women.

In posts across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, they promote pseudoscientific methods to achieve everything from pouty lips to chin extensions and almond-shaped "hunter eyes," often while monetizing their popularity by endorsing a range of consumer products.

In more extreme cases, these influencers advocate taking steroids, undergoing plastic surgery, and even "leg-lengthening" procedures to become more attractive.

Food National Banana Day: How to make a dream banana split

While women may pay regular visits to aestheticians or buy new beauty products, spurring a global beauty retail market worth hundreds of billions of dollars, the manosphere at times promotes a DIY approach that draws on the nearest toolbox.

"Babe, what's taking you so long in the bathroom?" reads the caption flashing across a viral TikTok video of a man seen hitting his cheeks with the sharp edge of a hammer, in what he calls his "skincare routine."

Underneath the video are dozens of comments warning that "bone smashing," also known as the hammer technique, was "dangerous," while others hailed it as a legitimate way to achieve an angular jawline.

In other videos, British influencer Oscar Patel promotes "mewing," an unproven technique that involves pressing the tongue into the roof of the mouth for improving jaw and facial structure.

Without offering evidence, he told his nearly 188,000 TikTok followers that such tricks would turn them into a "PSL god," an internet slang for exceptionally attractive men, short for Perfectly Symmetrical Looks.

The looksmaxxing trend is fueling "an industry of influencers who promote 'perfect bodies and perfect faces,' often to feather their own nest," said Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan, an analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

"Among men, this is mixed with the misogyny of the manosphere, which often blames women for male insecurities, creating a toxic combination," he added.

Many looksmaxxing influencers appear to have a financial incentive, frequently leveraging their popularity to promote products ranging from skin cleansers to pheromone perfumes, and even Chinese knock-off watches.

Looksmaxxing is rooted in "incel" – or involuntarily celibate – communities, an internet subculture rife with misogyny, with men tending to blame women and feminism for their romantic failings.

"The incel ideology is being rebranded to looksmaxxing on TikTok," said Anda Solea, a researcher at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Portsmouth.

In a study, Solea found that incel-inspired accounts on TikTok were circumventing a ban on hateful language with a focus on looksmaxxing and more palatable words about self-improvement.

"There are a lot of pressures on men – we want to protect women from gender-based violence, but we should also be careful about young men and boys," Solea said.