<
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jun/06/mogging-is-suddenly-everywhere-is-that-a-problem>
"Until recently, if someone had said “mog” to me, I probably would have assumed
they were talking about the children’s book cat created by the late great
Judith Kerr. If asked about “mogging” or being “mogged,” I would have been
completely baffled. But for many members of gen Z and gen Alpha (or anyone who
is just a bit too online), the slang term, which means to outdo or outshine
others, is everywhere.
Mogging’s origins are in the manosphere, where it began as a verb derived from
the acronym “Amog” (alpha male of the group). In misogynistic forums in the
2010s, to “mog” came to mean to outdo someone in terms of sexual desirability.
Mogging has been adopted by “looksmaxxing” influencers such as Braden Peters,
known online as Clavicular, who encourage men to try to alter their looks –
sometimes in extreme ways – to increase their “sexual market value”. Such an
influencer might talk of “frame mogging” another person in a photo or video – a
variation on mogging that specifically refers to being more muscular.
Even now, as the term has begun to be used much more widely, and in a
tongue-in-cheek way, it is still typically associated with looks (a friend of
mine, for example, was described by her boyfriend’s younger siblings as
“mogging him” in a photo). But increasingly, mogging can mean besting others at
basically anything. The gold medal Olympic figure skater Alysa Liu said in an
interview last year that her main competition strategy was “to mog”, while a
23-year-old colleague of mine tells me that she and her friends joke about
“walk-mogging” when they overtake people on the street."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
