For James, it started with muscles. He was about 16 and had become self-conscious about his physique, fearing that he wasn’t buff enough to attract girls. He found his way to a bodybuilding forum and began to work out. He can’t remember when it happened, but at some point trolls began to infiltrate the forum. They were visitors from another online community with a different focus.
“Their general vibe was quite mean,” says James, who prefers not to use his real name. “They’d take images people had posted of their impressive physiques and be like: ‘You guys forgot to work out your faces!’”
Despite the meanness, curiosity pushed James over to the forums, which were largely focused on facial aesthetics. He discovered a new world in which mainly young men and teenage boys scoured pictures of each other for perceived flaws and purported fixes.
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