Fear and looksmaxxing in Miami: Inside the ascension of Clavicular

It’s around 12:30 a.m. on a Wednesday, and the doors have just opened at Bacara, a new “streamer-first” nightclub on 23rd Street, west of Collins Avenue in Miami Beach. Livestreamers and their assorted entourages trickle into the venue’s dimly lit outdoor courtyard, where a Gunna track drifts from hidden speakers and mint vape smoke hangs in the muggy air. 

On the red carpet, an influencer known as Cuban Tarzan poses for photos alongside an older blonde woman with a dramatically augmented bust and a small, fluffy dog wearing a blue cowboy hat cradled in her arms. Near the entrance, a short woman in a denim jacket holds a selfie stick above her head, broadcasting live to her followers as she scans the crowd for celebrities.

“Justin Bieber is in Miami — why wouldn’t he be here?” she asks no one in particular. 

Bieber isn’t there. But one young man has the crowd’s attention: Braden Peters, a 20-year-old from Hoboken, New Jersey, known online as “Clavicular.”

On this balmy night in May, the polarizing livestreamer (who nowadays mostly goes by “Clav”) is several hours into another Kick.com livestream that has already taken him across Miami with rappers 6ix9ine and Waka Flocka Flame, former pro basketball players LiAngelo Ball and Lonzo Ball, and YouTuber Jake Paul. Around 9:30 p.m., Peters played an impromptu game of basketball with fellow streamers and former athletes at a court somewhere in Miami. Later in the evening, he popped into manosphere influencer Myron Gaines’ Fresh & Fit podcast studio in downtown Miami, where he and Gaines — in line with the show’s premise — mostly attempted to humiliate the handful of young women seated around the studio, including Peters’ girlfriend, Lily Snyder.

There, Peters explained how earlier in the evening he’d asked Snyder to wear something “representable” to Bacara, given there would be celebrities in attendance. He directed her to stand up and show off her outfit: a semi-transparent black lace top and mini skirt.

“Are you kidding me? You’re changing,” Peters told her, shaking his head. “Disgusting.”

Now, close to 1 a.m., Peters’ stream is still going at Bacara. 

Guiding me through the gathering is Hai Waknine, an older nightclub operator who recently partnered with Peters on Bacara. Wearing transparent-framed glasses and a diamond chain strung with a Chai pendant (the Hebrew word for “life”), the Israeli-born Waknine introduces me to a man he describes as Peters’ manager — “a nice Jewish boy,” he says, patting him on the back.

The young man, who introduces himself as Nate, is wearing a kippah, the small skullcap worn by observant Jewish men. A young, pretty brunette is hanging on his arm.

Minutes later, Peters emerges through the thin crowd. A cameraman trails not too far behind, broadcasting his every move live to thousands of Kick viewers. Comments like “MOGGING” and “CORTISOL SPIKE INCOMING” stream across the feed. Waknine escorts him toward me.

Dressed in a camouflage hockey jersey and beige pants, the lean, 6-foot-2 young man looks tired. His hazel eyes, framed by upturned lashes which appear to have recently received a lift, are slightly bloodshot. A fistful of bouncy brown curls falls onto his forehead. The harsh camera lights sharpen the faint acne scars on his forehead and the stubble lining his jaw. He resembles a hungover cologne model.

Before speaking with me, he instinctively reaches into his pocket for Carmex lip balm, squeezes some onto his finger, and smooths it across his lips. 

“People can complain about Miami,” he says. “But there’s really nowhere better.”

By now, a larger crowd has convened inside the club, while Peters hangs back and poses for photos on a red carpet. One young man tries, and fails, to sneak into the venue through the bushes bordering the property, prompting a double-take by Peters before the young influencer once again assumes his position for the cameras.

Then a confession: Peters says that he’s only eaten 300 calories all day. 

“Dude, I was about to eat a burger, but then I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror at my face and said, ‘Not a chance,” Peters muses aloud. 

Over the past year, Peters transformed from an obscure online presence into one of the internet’s most inescapable figures by promoting “looksmaxxing,” a once-niche internet subculture focused on radical physical self-transformation. Coined on incel (involuntary celibate) messaging boards in the 2010s, the term can refer to anything from the benign — like improving one’s skincare routine — to extreme glow-up practices like facial bonesmashing (taking a hammer to one’s face), using methamphetamines to stay lean, and performing “dick-ups” by placing weights on one’s penis to maximize girth and erection strength. Peters derives his Clavicular moniker from the clavicle, or collarbone, a focal point in the subculture. 

His traditionally handsome face and natural charisma, punctuated by increasingly bizarre moments that feel distinctly internet-era, have turned him into one of livestreaming’s most compulsively watchable figures.

He has transformed chaos into content, drawing national headlines for allegedly hitting someone with his Tesla Cybertruck, partying in a Miami Beach nightclub to Kanye West’s antisemitic track “Heil Hitler,” and appearing in a video that showed him shooting an (apparently dead) alligator in the Everglades. In April, he overdosed on a livestream in full view of his audience. Days later, a female looksmaxxing influencer sued him, alleging he sexually assaulted her at his parents’ Cape Cod home and later injected her with a fat-dissolving substance unapproved by the FDA during a livestream in Miami. (Steve Kramer, an attorney for Peters, denied the claims in a statement to Rolling Stone, saying the allegations “remain unproven” and that Peters “disputes the characterization of events” and intends to defend himself in court.)

A self-described “autist,” although he has reportedly never been formally diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, Peters has repeatedly used the N-word on streams (“It’s not a racist thing. It’s just a fun word to say,” he previously said during a livestream). As a result of the January “Heil Hitler” debacle, he quickly found himself blacklisted from a handful of nightclubs across Miami. 

Amid the chaos, Peters has become recognizable enough to be mocked on “Saturday Night Live,” interviewed by “60 Minutes,” profiled by the New York Times, and cast as the de facto face of “IMPACT x Nightline: Looksmaxxed,” Hulu’s new looksmaxxing documentary. The lingo he popularized has seeped into the public consciousness, with food influencers and even the White House now deploying words like “mogging” (slang for “to outshine or dominate”) and the widely used suffix “maxxing.” 

Though Peters now averages only a few thousand concurrent viewers on Kick, he remains nearly impossible to escape online for some, thanks to a sprawling ecosystem of clip accounts that slice his livestreams into viral moments for X, Instagram, and TikTok. 

When, late last year, Peters arrived in Miami — a city that has become a playground for streamers, influencers, and internet hustlers — he was the face of looksmaxxing. The city could sell him everything the job required: surgeons who would operate on camera, nightclubs that didn’t seem to mind that he was only 20, and streamers to collaborate with. But even in Miami, where this sort of vanity has been on offer since before Peters was born, he still seemed to bend time and space.

As his own transformation became a business, his message began to change. In recent months, Peters has moved away from preaching self-improvement toward a decidedly more transactional corner of the creator economy, surrounding himself with OnlyFans models and a new circle of collaborators. At the center of Peters’ new orbit is his little-known manager, a 27-year-old from Michigan named Nathaniel “Nate” Kest, who has emerged as one of the most influential figures in his life and business.

To trace Peters’ rise from a shy honor-roll kid in New Jersey to one of the internet’s most divisive personalities, New Times spoke with former classmates, business associates, and his publicist and reviewed previously unreported police records. We spent an evening at the Miami Beach nightclub he co-owned and a morning at his rhinoplasty.

Together, the accounts and experiences reveal a young influencer who turned his insecurities into a business model. But as his world expanded, it grew harder to separate performance from reality. Livestreams bled into cosmetic surgery, his apartment turned into a content house, and a growing cast of OnlyFans creators soon became part of the spectacle.

“We should take pride in, like, the mog” 

Seated in his family’s living room, on a couch draped in a large American flag, Peters stares awkwardly into a laptop camera while a commencement speaker announces his name. Flanked by his mother and father, the 14-year-old sits stiffly in a light gray polo shirt, his braces flashing behind an embarrassed grin. His father lifts a diploma into the air and, for a moment, the two hold opposite ends of it for the camera. Then his father leans in, appearing to go for a noogie.

Peters subtly motions for him to stop. Seconds later, the livestream cuts to the next graduate. 

It was June 20, 2020, just months into the COVID-19 pandemic, and Peters was graduating via Zoom from eighth grade at All Saints Episcopal Day School, the small private school he had attended in Hoboken, New Jersey, since kindergarten. By most accounts, Peters appeared to be a normal teenager. The son of a businessman and a former bodybuilder, he grew up with a younger sister and a family dog. His family went on ski vacations and spent summers in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. 

But early in the pandemic, he says he began spending upwards of 14 hours a day online — playing Grand Theft Auto V, watching bodybuilder Rich Piana, and sinking deeper into the hyper-masculine corners of the internet where young men traded advice about steroids, jawlines, and facial symmetry. 

One forum in particular became a fixation: Looksmax.org. 

At the ripe age of 14, he began secretly ordering testosterone online. He would later say he shipped the vials through General Delivery (a postal service allowing those without a permanent address to receive mail at a designated post office) so his parents wouldn’t intercept them before he could inject himself. 

When they discovered the vials, he said, his parents would throw them away. Eventually, they stopped trying.

“They realized that there was kind of nothing that they could do to stop my ascension,” Peters later told the New York Times. 

During long, pseudo-scientific discussions about facial harmony and sexual marketplace value, under anonymous usernames, Peters documented his physical transformation in obsessive detail. He spent hours Photoshopping images of himself to simulate future surgeries and idealized versions of his face. 

Offline, Peters maintained the profile of a high-achieving student. He made the honor roll at Seton Hall Preparatory School, a prestigious Catholic all-boys school in New Jersey, where tuition costs roughly $24,000 a year. According to his LinkedIn profile, he graduated in spring 2024 with a 3.9 GPA and scored a near-perfect 1570 on the SAT. 

One former classmate described Peters as “pretty reserved” throughout high school. The person he later watched gain fame and notoriety online, he said, seemed far removed from the teenager he remembered, particularly in how outgoing and “attention-seeking” he became.

“Once I saw him go viral, the change in his personality was literally night and day,” the student, who graduated alongside Peters in 2024, told New Times. 

Every summer, Peters’ family stayed in Cape Cod and spent time at the beach, he previously told GQ. In summer 2024, Peters took a job working security at the Chatham Squire, a famously chaotic Cape Cod bar packed with tourists and hard-partying summer crowds. 

Just months into the gig, he was facing criminal charges after allegedly joining a massive brawl at the bar.

Late one night in mid-August, while he worked security there, members of a large engagement party began tugging on bras hanging from the rafters. Staff — including a then-18-year-old Peters — asked them to stop, according to police records obtained by New Times.

Records of the incident describe a fight breaking out between members of the party and staff as security tried to force people out of the bar. Surveillance footage reviewed by police allegedly showed the father of the soon-to-be groom grabbing Peters by the neck. Peters threw punches in return. A photo attached to the report shows Peters with several red scratches on his neck.

In a 911 call obtained by New Times, a woman screams and cries to a dispatcher before explaining that she had just watched a man — whom she didn’t know, and who appeared to be in his 60s — get “punched in the head” and hit his head on the floor. She describes to the dispatcher how fellow bar patrons performed CPR on the man.

“Please! Oh my god! He’s an old man,” she cries, weeping loudly into the phone. “Please, I’m so scared.”

Three weeks later, police charged Peters with misdemeanor assault and battery and felony assault and battery on a person over 60 — his alleged victims being a 56-year-old woman and a 63-year-old man, who was also arrested for assault and battery on Peters. In a statement provided to police, the woman’s son said she spent the night in the hospital and received stitches in her face.

“As a note, I have a clear memory of the individual who hit my mom,” his statement reads. “After the fact, our group was able to identify the specific individual as Braden Peters through social media.”

Michael Anderson, chief at the Chatham Police Department, tells New Times that both charges against Peters were dismissed in January 2025 at the victims’ request.

In fall 2024, Peters enrolled at Sacred Heart University, a small Catholic college in Connecticut. One night in early September, Samantha* — then a sophomore at the university — was out with friends at Rumaj, a since-shuttered nightclub in nearby New Haven that was popular with Sacred Heart students. (New Times is using a pseudonym because she spoke on the condition of anonymity.)

Sometime during the evening, Samantha recalls, Peters approached her and attempted to strike up a romantic connection.

“I didn’t even get to say my name, and then he picked me up and tried to make out with me,” she says. “I was like, okay, that’s a little much.” 

She recalls Peters as a “wanderer” who didn’t appear to have a set group of friends. 

“It kind of seemed like he was trying to fill some part of his life by jumping around to different groups,” she says. 

Samantha says she got Peters’ Snapchat that night and they corresponded for some time afterward. Eventually, she rejected him after hearing rumors on campus that he was taking steroids. Samantha recalls people posting the rumors on the social-networking app YikYak, which allows users to post and comment anonymously.

Peters told the New York Times that several weeks into his freshman year at Sacred Heart, he came home from class to discover campus police officers turning his room upside down. He says that trolls from Looksmax.org had called the school to tell officials he had steroids in his dorm. Peters was subsequently expelled, he says. 

“He got kicked out,” Samantha says, “and after that, we really didn’t hear anything about it.”

With his education out of the way, Peters turned all his attention to social media.

He posted videos on TikTok and created an online looksmaxxing course where users could pay $39 a month for access to guides on “anti-aging, skincare protocols, endocrinology, pharmacology, diet, training, surgery, social calibration, fashion, hair, hygiene, and more.” (A 1-on-1, 45-minute looksmaxxing strategy call with Peters costs $5,000.) He also posted regularly on the Looksmax forum. In one post, he described taking a small cocktail of prescription drugs — anticonvulsant medication Pregabalin and muscle relaxant Baclofen — before having a “super mog night.”

“It made me super low inhib to the point where i was spam approaching every girl at the bar (i even approached a girl in front of her 3 brothers) i felt super euphoric and had a super fun drive home,” he wrote in a post. “It was honestly top 5 mog nights.”

Late one night in December 2024, Peters crashed his car while driving home from work at the Squire. On the Looksmax forum, he wrote that it was because he’d fallen asleep while on Baclofen. 

“So many girls mired at my car, reduced to atoms. I was nodding off on the way home and crashed into a fence,” he wrote in a post. “It will cost me atleast 2-3 grand.” 

According to a police report obtained by New Times from the Chatham Police Department, Peters called 911 around 3:30 a.m. on December 21, 2024, after he veered off the road. When officers arrived, they found his white BMW mangled and lodged against a roadside barricade. One officer noted that the road was wet and icy at the time of the crash. Photos from the scene show Peters still sitting in the driver’s seat, speaking on his phone from the wrecked BMW.

Body-camera footage later posted online — which a Chatham Police spokesperson confirmed depicts the incident, though he said it had been edited with additions such as music and an opening title card — shows two officers discussing Peters near the mangled vehicle.

In the video, one of the cops appears to recognize Peters.

“You remember the big fight that happened this summer?” he asks the other cop, after noting that Peters worked at the Squire.

“Yeah,” the other responds.

“He was one of the people involved in that. Then he went off to college, then something happened at college, left school, came back here, now he’s just been working at the Squire,” the first cop replied. 

He continued: “So he’s there full time, which is never a good combination.” 

Some months later, Peters connected with California TikTok creator Demir Basceri — better known online as Cookie King — whose fanbase had exploded during the pandemic through viral “POV”-style videos. Peters and Basceri bonded over fitness and body transformation: Basceri had undergone a dramatic weight-loss journey in 2022 before later regaining much of the weight. 

“This is when, I would say, [Peters] starts integrating into the actual content creator world,” tech and online culture reporter Taylor Lorenz explained in a December 2025 YouTube video about Peters. 

By summer 2025, Peters had become loosely associated with the Cookieverse, a collective of TikTok creators centered on the viral personality Cookie King and known for absurdist, “brainrot” style comedy skits. But as Peters’ online profile grew, he began drifting toward increasingly extremist (in other words, “blackpilled”) corners of the internet.

That August, he appeared on a livestream hosted by Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist influencer. The two discussed lookmaxxing, being vaccinated for COVID (Peters said he’s not vaxxed “simply due to laziness”), and anti-whiteness.

At one point, Fuentes told Peters there’s a lot of “anti-white stuff going around” and “we should take pride in who we are.”

Peters seemed to struggle with this. 

“We should take pride in, like, the mog,” Peters replied, before laughing. “I’m more of, like, a moggist, not a racist.”

Around this time, Peters appeared to drift away from the Cookieverse orbit and toward Miami, which was already emerging as a hotspot for livestreamers.

On Christmas Eve in 2025, less than three months after arriving in Miami, he was driving his Tesla Cybertruck when someone jumped onto the hood of the vehicle mid-drive, filming and shouting into the camera.

“Start driving,” a voice shouts off-camera.

Peters accelerates, seemingly striking the person with the truck.

“Oh my God!” a female passenger cries.

“Is he dead?” Peters asks as he continues driving, before answering himself: “Hopefully.”

It all streamed live on Kick, where his audience was watching in real time.

Mitchell Jackson, Peters’ on-and-off publicist, explains that most of Peters’ fans are young people who aren’t tuned into traditional Hollywood celebrities. Instead, he says, they watch livestreamers.

“Now kids move to Miami to stream the way an actor used to move to Hollywood,” Jackson says. 

The business of attention

On the night of January 15, Peters and a group of right-wing influencers — including Nick Fuentes, Andrew Tate, streamer Sneako, and “men’s rights” influencer Myron Gaines — arrived at Miami Beach nightclub Vendôme in a black Sprinter van, pulling up in full view of livestream cameras. Gaines could be seen repeatedly performing Nazi salutes from the back of the van as the group sang along to Kanye West’s “Heil Hitler.” 

Once inside Vendôme, the crew continued partying to the song in what appeared to be a VIP section. Peters filmed himself with one hand while holding a lit cigarette in the other as members of the group shouted the lyrics: “Nigga, Heil Hitler!”

The videos sparked widespread outrage, prompting hundreds of comments on the club’s Instagram page, a handful of employee firings, and criticism from Steven Meiner, the Jewish mayor of Miami Beach. Miami nightlife moguls like David Grutman issued Peters lifetime bans from their clubs and venues amid the fallout.

This created a problem for Peters.

During his livestream in mid-March, Peters could be seen standing alongside music manager Wack 100 (whose real name is Cash McElroy Jones) when Jones pulled out his phone and FaceTimed Hai Waknine, the owner of Bacara and several other Miami nightlife venues. After introducing Peters to Waknine on camera, Jones asked Waknine to help get Peters back into Miami’s clubs.

“Listen, Hai, I’m asking you to fix that. Let him come down to the club, wherever the fuck,” Jones says. “Fix it. I got business with the man.”

Instead, Waknine offered Peters something bigger: his own “streamer-friendly” nightclub in Miami Beach.

After watching streamers struggle to find venues willing to let them film, Hai Waknine saw an opportunity, his wife, CC Waknine, tells New Times. She says her husband met with Peters shortly after.

“Hai was like, ‘I’m going to give this kid an opportunity to come in with me to create this streamer club. It’s never been done before, and I see how difficult it is for streamers to film,’” CC Waknine says. “Clav was excited about it.”

It seemed promising. CC Waknine recalls Peters appearing “smart” and “articulate.” (Though at the time, she admits, they didn’t know he was not yet 21.) Within days, the plans were in motion, and Peters was officially a part-owner of the club.

“We were really excited for him to create something of himself,” Waknine says. “Everyone was like, ‘He’s just a streamer; how long can he last?’”

On April 14 — the night before Bacara’s grand opening — Peters was livestreaming in Miami’s Brickell City Centre with an Australian streamer and fellow looksmaxxer who goes by Androgenic. After spending the evening approaching strangers for content, Peters appeared to become heavily intoxicated while the pair were inside Blue Martini.

“How fucked up are you?” Androgenic asks from behind the camera.

“Dude, I’m gone,” Peters replies.

Moments later, the livestream cuts off. A clip posted online shows Peters being carried out of the bar and loaded into a waiting SUV. Police dispatch audio later shared online captured a caller reporting emergency crews responding to a “20-year-old male overdose” at Blue Martini’s address. A Miami Fire Rescue spokesperson confirmed responders were dispatched for a possible overdose but said the man had apparently been driven away before paramedics arrived. Peters reportedly left the hospital that evening against medical advice.

Hours later, Peters posted a photo of his scraped-up face to X, writing: “Just got home, that was brutal. All of the substances are just a cope trying to feel neurotypical while being in public, but obviously that isn’t a real solution.” He added: “The worst part of tonight was my face descending from the life support mask.”

Jackson, whose clients include far-right political commentator Candace Owens, influencer Woah Vicky, and comedian Adam Friedland, quit working with Peters after the overdose. Before he made the decision, he says, he consulted with addiction specialists, who agreed he did the right thing by “setting a boundary” with Peters as a “wake-up call.”

“I did believe that Clav could have been the Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton of his generation, and if he got clean and sober, I think he could be,” Jackson tells New Times. “But I don’t think what he was doing was sustainable or healthy. And the only way to make that clear was to quit, and so I made the tough decision.”

In the weeks following the overdose, several of Peters’ closest associates drifted away. Before long, a new figure began appearing at his side: Nathaniel “Nate” Kest.

Unlike nearly everyone else in Peters’ orbit, there’s little trace of Kest online. Yet within months, he had become one of the most influential people around the streamer, managing access to him and helping guide a series of new business ventures.

A 2021 profile photo on what appears to be Kest’s Facebook page depicts a young man with long, surfer-style hair — a stark contrast to the shaved-headed man in a kippah who has recently accompanied Peters in public and on stream. While Kest appears to have previously pursued music in the Los Angeles area, there’s little public information about him. His scant Instagram account, which has a single post from July 12 — a carousel that includes a photo of him and Peters on a private jet — offers few other clues. In one image he was tagged in last year, by artist Louis Carreon, Kest is described as a “young new art collector” in the Hollywood Hills; the post shows a painting Carreon says Kest purchased, depicting what appears to be a religious figure penetrating a naked woman, with the words “OnlyFans” and “hustle” scrawled across it. 

CC Waknine recalls meeting Kest over lunch at her rooftop bar, CC Rooftop Social Club, in Wynwood, during which her husband noted that Kest “manages a lot of OnlyFans girls.” 

She remembers being struck by the contrast between Kest’s current persona and what she understood of his background.

“I was actually surprised, because he was this religious kid,” she says, though she’s since come to question that impression. “I don’t even know if he’s religious or not.”

Beyond his growing presence in Peters’ orbit, Kest remains something of an enigma. Exactly when Kest began representing Peters remains unclear. Corporate records reviewed by New Times show that he and Peters have recently filed paperwork for several Florida companies tied to new ventures, including a dating app and a looksmaxxing app that appears to rate users’ “facial harmony.” Most recently, the two registered a company called ALTR MSO LLC, though its purpose is unclear.

Even people who tried to work with Kest say they struggled to learn much about him. After Kest began managing Peters, Waknine says she and her husband tried to help Peters secure business deals that could reshape his public image. They introduced him to high-profile business figures and discussed several ventures, including a peptide patch and a potential sportswear line with a major brand.

But the deals repeatedly stalled, Waknine says, because Kest would suddenly stop responding. At one point, she says, she and her husband tried to research Kest’s background themselves after he told them his family owned a major sportswear company. They couldn’t find much information.

“We were trying to work our way backward to figure out who he is,” Waknine says. “We still can’t find any information.”

Eventually, Waknine says, Kest became the barrier between Peters and the people trying to work with him. Then, she says, Peters “disappeared.”

“Clav, like, fell off the face of the planet,” Waknine says. 

Soon, Peters’ content evolved. Instead of focusing solely on his own transformation, he began helping others rebrand themselves for the attention economy. Many of them were OnlyFans creators.

Whether Peters is formally operating an OnlyFans agency remains unclear. But livestream footage, social media posts, and accounts from people involved with his projects indicate his business has become increasingly tied to adult content creators. In a clip from a March livestream, a young woman with platinum-blonde hair sits inside a Sprinter van with Peters’ team when she begins arguing with one of his cameramen.

“You’re 28 years old, on a 20-year-old’s livestream, trying to sell your OnlyFans subs,” the man tells her.

“Get the fuck out of here, you stupid ass,” she snaps back. “How do you even know everything about me? Are you a fan?”

“Well, I saw your manager was texting you, ‘Get on the stream more. Do this, do that,’” he replies.

“What are you talking about? Are you a stalker?” she asks him, before continuing: “I’m literally signed with Clav, you fucking retard.”

“Huh?” he replies.

“Shut the fuck up before I fucking say everything you don’t want me to say,” she replies. “I’m literally signed with Clav. Are you retarded and a half?”

As two young women, quietly seated in the back of the Sprinter van, awkwardly exit and apologize, the young blonde woman continues, pointing her finger at Peters’ team.

“Who the fuck flew me out here, you fucking dumbass? Shut the fuck up,” she says.

She was not the only person to suggest that Peters was exploring an OnlyFans management business.

In mid-April, OnlyFans content creator and Kick.com livestreamer Livy Alex claimed on a stream that someone from Peters’ management offered her a contract to work for his OnlyFans agency — an offer she says she declined. Weeks later, WIRED published an article about Peters’ relationship with OnlyFans creators, citing a “source close to Clavicular” who confirmed that “he has explored starting an OnlyFans agency but has concerns about publicly promoting it due to his audience’s dislike of sex workers.”

Meanwhile, the growing presence of OnlyFans creators on Peters’ streams became difficult to ignore. Although adult content creators had begun appearing in late 2025, by January, they had become a regular fixture in his broadcasts. That month, he streamed IRL (in real-life) dates with OnlyFans creator Alice Rosenblum. In May, he brought 18-year-old OnlyFans model Piper Rockelle to Bacara. By June, Peters had even managed to collaborate with Sophie Rain, one of OnlyFans’ biggest stars, who had publicly called him “weird” just months earlier.

There were other signs, too. In early June, Peters added a highlight to his Instagram profile titled “Be on Clav Live,” featuring a photo of him with Piper Rockelle and a link that takes users to an application form. While the form initially presents itself as a casting opportunity for future livestreams — greeting applicants with, “Would you like to be considered for future casting opportunities with Clavicular Streams?” — applicants are asked for their location, to submit photographs, and whether they have an OnlyFans account.

Caroline Schwitzky, who runs the Miami-based talent agency Urge Management, tells New Times she received a late-night call on March 25 from a California director casting young women for a livestreamed dating show Peters was hosting the following day. According to Schwitzky, the casting criteria sought women ages 18 to 24 — “not a year older” — and specifically requested “high fashion” and OnlyFans models.

Jeff Neiman, Peters’ attorney, contacted New Times before publication to deny that Peters operates an OnlyFans agency, calling any such reporting false. In a follow-up message, Neiman said questions about OnlyFans on the “Be on Clav Live” casting form were part of a screening process for potential guests and that anyone who answered yes would not be selected. 

A source close to Peters says that he has never signed an OnlyFans girl and that Kest does not “currently” operate an OnlyFans agency. Neiman did not address New Times’ broader questions about Peters’ alleged involvement in an OnlyFans agency, including accounts from creators and others cited in the story. He also did not address questions regarding the Chatham assault charges.

Kest declined multiple interview requests for this story, though he did respond to one such request by text in early June, asking whether the story was “a positive piece.”

“We’re moving in a more wholesome less offensive direction and would like to interview with people aligned with that,” Kest wrote.

While Kest initially agreed to set up an interview with Peters, he did not make him available by phone or in person for this story. Peters did not respond to several text messages from New Times.

Jackson says he’s “deeply concerned” about Peters’ relationship with Kest, whom he believes has isolated him. He says he’s received calls from people who have tried to do business with Peters but struggled to get in touch with Kest, as well as others who claim Kest “screwed them over.” To Jackson, “nothing about this guy adds up.”

Mostly, he’s just worried about Peters.

“Clav is being misled,” Jackson says. “And I think Clav, given his history of drug problems, is in a very dangerous position to be taken advantage of, whether that’s by Nate or someone else.”

Streaming a new face

It’s around 5:45 a.m. inside Dr. Miami’s plastic surgery office in Bay Harbor Islands, a quiet waterfront enclave between Miami Beach and the mainland. The brightly lit third-floor pre-op room is washed in Vice City pinks and blues. An acrylic painting of three women’s bikini-clad backsides hangs on one wall. A worn white mezuzah is fixed to the doorframe. In the corner, a pink twin bed sits beneath a canvas bearing a cartoon illustration of the celebrity surgeon Dr. Miami, who rose to fame livestreaming surgeries during Snapchat’s heyday and is best known for Brazilian Butt Lifts, or BBLs. 

In the center of the small room, Peters stands quietly while his girlfriend, Snyder — a thin young woman with long, beach-blonde hair — ties a disposable blue paper gown around his waist. 

Peters looks tired this morning after another late night of livestreaming. Once he is dressed in the gown and a pair of long white compression socks, a nurse asks to take a few photos of his face — specifically, his nose. She grabs an iPhone and a rectangular ring light before snapping the images one by one. Moments later, he settles onto the bed and answers a nurse’s pre-op questions. 

Any routine medications?

“No.” 

Any allergies? 

“No.” 

Any kids? 

“Not that I know of,” Peters says, laughing, glancing toward his girlfriend seated quietly on a hot pink couch nearby. 

When asked to list an emergency contact, Peters gives the nurse the name of his cameraman, Brock Mason, who is seated to his left. 

Not long after, Dr. Miami (whose real name is Michael Salzhauer) enters the room, drops onto a rolling stool, and slaps on a pair of purple latex gloves. The celebrity doctor looks at Peters and asks him to list the top three things that he dislikes about his nose, in order of severity.

“Uhh, the width, I would say the length,” Peters says, touching the bridge of his nose, “and like the angle of my nasal tip.”

As Peters and Salzhauer discuss the surgery, the cameras are already rolling. Mason is live-streaming the conversation to tens, then hundreds, then thousands of people on Kick.com in what they labeled the “first-ever livestreamed rhinoplasty.” (Whether that’s true is unclear.)

Less than an hour later, Salzhauer and another surgeon slice open and reshape that nose — specifically, through a nostril reduction and nasal tip derotation, to bring it downward and make his nose more “acute” and “masculine,” Salzhauer explains to me.

At around 7:10 a.m., Peters is lying on an operating table with orange antiseptic splashed across his face and his eyes taped shut. A doctor carefully places a tube down his throat. The rhythmic beeping of machines and spa-like music fill the background. In the corner, a large camera, ready to livestream the procedure, faces the wall. From the viewing room next door — a small seating area separated from the operating room by a glass wall — Snyder waits for the procedure to begin. 

Wearing a beige Alo sweatshirt and a gold Star of David necklace around her neck, she presses her hands against the pane and stares at the streamer’s limp body. The 18-year-old from Ohio, who now lives in Miami with Peters and does OnlyFans work, is visibly unsettled. 

She says he doesn’t need the surgery. “He’s literally perfect,” she sighs. 

It’s now close to 10:30 a.m., and Peters is slowly waking from the anesthesia. From the corridor connecting the consultation rooms to the surgical suites, nurses shout for him to relax and lie back down. He moans loudly.

When Mason and I enter the recovery suite, Peters is sprawled on a gurney, a young blonde nurse holding his hands down to keep him from touching his post-operative nose. The livestream continues from the adjacent viewing room. Hundreds of viewers look on, many demanding updates about Peters’ condition. 

Peters slurs his words and asks for water in a raspy voice. Mason insists that he needs a drink.

“He’ll aspirate,” a nurse replies.

A few moments later, the nurse looks at Mason.

“Are you his brother?” she asks, gesturing toward a disoriented Peters. 

“Close enough,” Mason responds with a shrug.

To Peters, this surgery was another apparently necessary step in his already extreme looksmaxxing journey. Online, fans had begun to accuse him of “descending” in his appearance, posting side-by-side photos of a jacked-looking Peters alongside more recent ones. Some even photoshopped pictures to make him look emaciated.  

Days after the surgery, a visibly medicated Peters announced during a late-night livestream that he had exited the Miami nightlife industry and sold his stake in Bacara. He boasted that he “made a lot of money” from the deal with the venue.

“I don’t give a shit about Bacara anymore…I already made my bag,” he says on stream. “I flipped those shares, I flipped those shares for a prof, bro.”

The announcement stunned the Waknines, who say it did not match the explanation Peters had given them privately. CC Waknine says Peters told the couple he planned to frame his departure as an amicable decision: that he appreciated their partnership, but the venture simply was not for him.

Instead, Waknine says, he did “the complete opposite.” 

“I don’t think he had anything to do with that,” Waknine tells New Times. “It was just really weird.”

Around a week later, TMZ reported on a letter from Peters’ attorney accusing the Waknines of failing to honor his stake in Bacara. According to the letter, Peters invested $400,000 in exchange for a 50 percent ownership share, but claimed that when he tried to formalize the agreement, his “former biz partner” told him, “handshakes are how men do business” and “You know who we are? What’s a contract?” Peters also alleged that the Waknines later demanded an additional $2 million before he could receive his share of the club.

When reached for comment about the letter, Johnny Donovan, a spokesperson for the Waknines, referred New Times to the statement he provided to TMZ, in which he said it was “hard to believe that, after all the help we’ve given this young man, he is now [sending us a legal letter] that we have not even received yet.”

“You live and learn,” the statement read. “At this point, the healthiest and most productive approach is to focus on making sound business decisions and preparing for what lies ahead. Our priority should be taking the proper steps to protect and strengthen our business while handling this matter professionally and responsibly.”

On the evening of June 10, Peters underwent another procedure as part of a series of surgeries he had scheduled ahead of a planned trip to Europe for Paris Fashion Week. Rather than spending another Wednesday night holding court at Bacara, he was at a Fort Lauderdale plastic surgery office getting an otoplasty, also known as ear-pinning surgery. The following day, he had additional procedures planned, including the removal of his wisdom teeth.

Later that night, Peters streamed from the desktop inside his downtown Miami apartment to show off his new ears and reveal that he’d received his passport earlier that day. Kest occasionally appeared in the reflection of the living room’s floor-to-ceiling windows throughout the stream. 

Peters bickered with followers who called him “botched.” One viewer commented that they missed Peters’ old streams.

“Yeah, I agree,” Peters replies, sounding almost mournful. A beat passes before he seemingly snaps back into character.

“Well, guys, I have to ascend. I’m 20 fucking years old. My entire career has been six months,” he says. “There’s just some things that need to be done.” 

Back in the fold

Outside a Starbucks in Miami Worldcenter, a gleaming maze of glass towers, luxury shops, and palm-lined promenades in the heart of downtown Miami, Jackson nurses a venti Earl Grey, reaching into a canvas tote stitched with the words “Off Record” for another Halls cough drop.

Just minutes earlier, he’d reunited with Peters and Kest over lunch at Earls Kitchen + Bar, where the three agreed Jackson would once again represent the streamer after dropping him in March following the overdose.

The reconciliation surprised Jackson, who says a mutual acquaintance helped clear up months of mistrust between him and Kest. After talking things through over lunch, he came away with a different impression.

“It very much seems to me like Clavicular’s in charge,” Jackson says. “It seems like he has come out the other side of a dark patch.” Jackson describes the young streamer as “much happier, much cleaner, much calmer, much more rational,” more like the young man Jackson had first met at the end of last year.

When I asked what the reunion meant for Peters’ plans, Jackson said the streamer intended to visit “a lot of colleges soon,” but couldn’t say more.

To Jackson, Peters represents something larger than one streamer. Unlike the child stars Hollywood used to manage, he believes Peters belongs to a generation that grew up online during the pandemic and now treats internet fame as a career in itself. To them, Jackson says, there’s no difference between an OnlyFans model and an actress.

“I don’t think we’re prepared for what’s coming,” Jackson says.