Arts & Entertainment

Steve Grand says ‘people love to hate good-looking, white, gay men’

musician says he doesn’t expect people to understand him

Published

11 years ago

March 24, 2016

Mariah Cooper

Singer Steve Grand (Photo by Christopher Free)

Musician Steve Grand is known for his music as much as he is for showing off his body. In an interview with PrideSource, the 26-year-old singer says the hate he gets is because he’s good-looking.

“I’m not so bad. People have (such) incredibly low expectations of me, that I just need to show up. For my performances, I need to not be terrible and people will be impressed. I just know people have really, really low expectations of me and that’s what the Internet does,” Grand told PrideSource.

“I’m such an easy person to target. Young, good-looking, white, gay men – we love to hate those people. But there’s been a real person there the whole time,” Grand continued.

Grand, whose music video “All-American Boy” has more than five million views on YouTube, also addressed the struggle to be taken seriously as a musician while having scantily clad photos of himself floating around the internet.

“I don’t have that high of expectations for the general public – I mean, we don’t even understand things that really actually fucking matter, like, with this election. So why should I expect people to take the time to understand me? I don’t matter. And people don’t even care about things that do matter,” Grand says.

“I take my music seriously. I’m a good musician and I’m a good performer, and I also like to work out my body and show it off sometimes. It’s a fleeting thing; when I’m 50, I’m not gonna look like this,” Grand continued.

“Everybody has to feel like they have to be a special snowflake. People can’t just look at a picture of a hot guy and let it be beautiful. It has to be some statement about them. Let people just fucking appreciate what is beautiful and let things be beautiful if they’re beautiful,” Grand concluded.

Related Topics:All-American Boy PrideSource Steve Grand

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Online Culture

Clavicular charged in alleged rape of teenage influencer

Online personality’s real name is Braden Peters

Published

14 hours ago

September 23, 2026

Joe Reberkenny

Braden Peters a.k.a. "Clavicular" (Screen capture via NBC News/YouTube)

Online personality Clavicular, whose real name is Braden Peters, has been accused of rape.

According to NBC, Aleksandra Vasilevna Mendoza, an 18-year-old influencer known online as Alorah or Alorah Ziva, accused Peters of sexual assault, and the case is making its way through the court system.

The alleged incident occurred on May 23, 2025, when Mendoza was 17.

According to a criminal complaint from the Chatham (Mass.) Police Department, Peters called her an Uber to his family’s home. Once there, he allegedly got her drunk on vodka while they livestreamed on Twitch and then raped her. His mother and grandmother were allegedly in the house.

The documents allege Clavicular committed rape, drugging a person for sexual intercourse, and procuring and providing liquor to a person under 21.

According to court documents acquired by NPR, Mendoza began communicating with Peters on Instagram, where he paid her to appear on his livestreams to help her “make her name known on social media.”

According to those documents, Peters arranged for the minor to come to Cape Cod home to participate in a videostream for his 437,000 followers on Kick, 1.2 million followers on TikTok, and more than 1 million followers on Instagram.

At his home, Peters allegedly instructed Mendoza to say she was 18 on his videostream and to claim the alcohol on camera was water instead of vodka. Mendoza said she felt peer-pressured to drink the spirit and that she became noticeably intoxicated after a couple of drinks.

The allegations go on to state that after stopping the stream, Peters and Mendoza kissed on a couch and then had sex in his bed without her consent. Mendoza said she did not receive a sexual assault forensic exam after the incident. NPR does not name alleged victims of sexual assault.

The charges come months after Mendoza sued Peters in Miami, accusing him of sexual battery in connection with the events of May 2025. The civil lawsuit also separately alleges that he injected her face with a non-FDA-approved fat-dissolving substance during a November livestream in Florida.

Peters is known for his “looksmaxxing” concept of vanity, which is at the core of his online presence. The “looksmaxxing” culture he has helped cultivate combines elements of incel culture and heterosexuality, with the stated goal of attracting the opposite sex. He has gone as far as to say he has undergone “bonesmashing,” or hitting his own face with a hammer; taken anabolic steroids to more rapidly grow muscle; and used crystal meth as an appetite suppressant.

At the same time, looksmaxxing has been described as having elements of homoeroticism, with “looksmaxxers” appearing more concerned with impressing other men than women. Peters has multiple times pointed to openly gay actor Matt Bomer as the gold standard for male facial aesthetics.

Peters’s arraignment is scheduled for Oct. 14.