I would not like to be a kid right now. It was hard enough growing up and trying to make your way. Judging and being judged are part of it, but what I found out this week, aw man, I don’t know how these kids survive.
I found out about the PSL scale — a hyper-detailed attractiveness rating system that’s migrated from incel* forums to TikTok to high school hallways, where teenagers now casually inform each other they’re “mid high-tier normies” or “subhuman.”
GQ just published a deep dive into this phenomenon, and the piece lands like a gut punch wrapped in a spreadsheet.
The system rates facial attractiveness on an 8-point scale using four criteria: harmony (how your features work together), dimorphism (how distinct you look from the opposite sex), angularity (facial sharpness), and miscellaneous features (eyebrow thickness, nasolabial folds, canthal tilt — because apparently we’re all one spreadsheet away from self-hatred).
The scale starts at “subhuman” and climbs through “low-tier normie,” “mid-tier normie,” “high-tier normie,” “Chadlite,” and finally “Chad” at the top. For women, swap “Becky” for “normie” and “Stacy” for “Chad.”
The acronym PSL comes from three forums: PUAHate (Pick Up Artists), SlutHate, and Lookism — all deeply misogynistic incel communities where looksmaxxing took shape in the 2010s.
One of those forums gained notoriety after a user murdered six UC Santa Barbara students in 2014, citing the community as inspiration in his manifesto.
That’s the origin story. Misogyny, violence, and the belief that appearance determines destiny.
And now it’s just how kids talk.
From Incel Forums to TikTok — The Normalization Pipeline
“Everyone my age knows about it,” says Xavier, a 17-year-old quoted in the GQ piece. “It’s very, very mainstream, and it’s become something that everyone memes about.”
Researchers flagged this shift as early as 2023 — TikTok was facilitating the “normiefication and normalization of incel ideology and discourse” through PSL lingo.
Now influencers post sponsored content promising viewers they’re one shampoo order away from Chad status. Five-hour livestreams titled “LOOKSMAXING RANDOM HOMELESS PEOPLE” rack up views.
The language has seeped into everyday teenage conversation — not as ideology, but as vocabulary.
Xavier mentions a friend with “negative canthal tilt” (the angle at which your eyes sit on your face) who gets mocked for it. “Looksmaxxing introduced these new things that supposedly define how good you look that no one would ever really think about before,” he says.
The cruelty is casual. The damage is cumulative.
The Brutal Mechanics of the PSL Scale
The PSL scale divides humanity into tiers using a normal distribution.
The bottom ~1% (PSL 0-1.5) are “subhuman” — considered ugly by the entire population and “extremely undesirable,” according to a popular guide on Looksmax.org.
Some sources stretch “subhuman” as high as 4, covering half of humanity.
The middle 92.7% (PSL 1.5-5.5) are normies and Beckys, subdivided into low, mid, and high tiers. Low-tier normies include Steve Buscemi and Michael Cera — “noticeably below average and widely considered unattractive.”
High-tier normies are “some of the most good-looking people you may see on a daily basis” — Jake Gyllenhaal, Cristiano Ronaldo, Gigi Hadid, Dua Lipa. Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet are a high-tier Becky/high-tier normie power couple.
The top 1% (PSL 6-7) are Chadlites and Stacylites — models and the most attractive actors. Past 7 are true Chads and Stacys, “the most beautiful people on earth.” Tom Cruise, Matt Bomer, Margot Robbie, Angelina Jolie.
Beyond 7.75 are the mythical “True Adam” and “True Eve” — the best-looking humans in history. Mathematically, there should only be one in every 12 billion people.
The most common True Adam candidates include Jon-Erik Hexum (an actor best known for dying in a Russian roulette accident), Argentinian model Hernán Drago, and Russian B-movie star Vasiliy Stepanov.
The system also factors in “sexual market value” (SMV) — your job, wealth, height, and facial rating — to convert your PSL score into a “real-life rating” out of 10.
Some people include penis size in the calculation.
This is what passes for objectivity in the looksmaxxing community.
The Psychological Toll — When Self-Worth Becomes a Spreadsheet
Even Mep, a 16-year-old who moderates the Looksmax.org Discord, has become uncomfortable with how his peers react to their ratings.
“Kids at the age of 13-14 are out here talking about ‘is it over?’ Or which human growth hormone dose is the best or which surgery they need to get the love they never got,” Mep says.
One Discord poster wrote: “You’ve not felt pain until you’ve been sub5 and under six feet tall and lived with parents who’ve refused to allow you to shoot HGH and peptides because of religious testimony and pseudoscience.”
This is the logical endpoint of the PSL scale — teenagers calculating their facial worth down to the decimal, then catastrophizing when the numbers don’t add up.
Sosnick notes that at his age (28), he can simply close the computer and put thoughts of eyebrow thickness and nasolabial folds out of mind.
But as a teenager, maybe he would have asked Mom for a Bimax double jaw implant.
The Tough Way to Live — And the Damage That Lingers
The PSL scale is harsh, biased, often racist, and not gender inclusive. Rating is usually done by teenagers on the internet, meaning it’s mostly subjective and generally mean.
But the system presents itself as objective — a scientific assessment of facial attractiveness using 46 different dimensions, color-coded spreadsheets, and tier rankings.
The illusion of objectivity makes the cruelty feel factual.
Xavier admits the terminology has made him more self-conscious: “It’s definitely pointed out things in my appearance that I wouldn’t necessarily have noticed before, like I might find more flaws in how I look.”
His friends mock him for his narrow clavicles.
The language has become so normalized that teenagers use it casually — not as ideology, but as shorthand for insecurity.
And the damage compounds. Every “mid high-tier normie” comment. Every “subhuman” joke. Every Discord rating session where a stranger tells you your undereyes are weak and your bone mass is insufficient.
This is the world teenagers are navigating — where self-esteem gets quantified, ranked, and color-coded in a spreadsheet born from misogynistic forums.
Tough way to live.
*Incel – a member of an online community of young men who consider themselves unable to attract women sexually, typically associated with views that are hostile toward women and men who are sexually active.