Drink tart cherry juice for sleepmaxxing! Add protein in everything for proteinmaxxing! Eat raw garlic for spermmaxxing! Online influencers are telling you to take your health to the max with highly specific — and sometimes highly unusual — changes.
“Maxxing” is an online trend applied to advice for aspects of health including sleep, diet and fertility. But much of this maxxing advice can be unhelpful or unhealthy or go against the steady, personalized changes many experts recommend.
The term’s roots trace back to the concept of min-maxing in Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games. Players maximize or minimize different traits in their characters, said Adam Aleksic, author of “Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language.”
Incels, groups of men who describe themselves as involuntarily celibate, adopted the maxxing terminology online as they focused on “looksmaxxing.”
Their relentless pursuit of physical perfection by any means necessary eventually went mainstream. Social media users poked fun at the original intent by applying maxxing terminology to all kinds of other things.
