“I thought I did something wrong to upset people in France, but it turns out the French are impolite shitbags. No AC, terrible economy, horrible quality of living. I’d be pissed too.” So tweeted the bone-smashing, looksmaxxing influencer Clavicular. The social media star, who grew to fame through a series of drastic steps to change his appearance, is visiting France but failing miserably at what his brand is built on: successfully approaching and picking up girls merely based on his looks and fame.

It turns out that in Paris, unlike in South Florida, few care about Clav’s pick-up artistry. The women that he has approached on the streets have broadly rejected his appeals. In one instance, Clavicular approaches two girls sitting by the side of a road. “You look very beautiful. What are you guys up to later tonight?” When one of the girls replies that they’re going to a restaurant, Clav responds, “A restaurant? You don’t want to spice it up a little bit and hit the club or something?” The other girl curtly responds: “Not tonight.” The whole embarrassing endeavour shows a stark disconnect in America and Europe’s attitudes towards fame and dating, exposing the former’s vapidity in all its sordid glory.

Though Miami may be an extreme case, given its materialistic culture and status as America’s OnlyFans capital, the US as a whole is becoming more parasocial — and, arguably, porn-addled. Last year, the US had the most traffic on Pornhub, while the country also accounted for just shy of half of OnlyFans traffic. According to the Washington Examiner’s 2023 investigation, 2% of American women aged 18 to 45 are on the platform, and 67% of the platform’s revenue goes to Americans. The bottom line is: women making money being naked online is very, very big stateside.

That’s the thing, though. Clav seems, fundamentally, to respond to incentives. And if in Paris, the incentives mean that he must be able to hold a normal conversation with a normal adult female human being, then so be it. That’s the best possible outcome, at least. “Trying to conversationmax so I can be well rounded,” he tweeted, introspectively.

Ultimately, Clav’s latest virality is not important because of how much he hates France and how little Parisian girls are (rightly) paying attention to him, but because it’s a reminder to us Americans of what a normal country looks like. In a normal country, and France, like any nation, of course, has its flaws, people aren’t obsessing over someone who hits themselves in the head with a hammer. In a normal country, the sexes can interact properly and converse about something other than sex. Clav, in other words, got mogged by the French. And that is a beautiful thing.

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Nikos Mohammadi is a student at Columbia University.

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