Mewing (orthotropics)

What someone in two hundred years would need to know to understand it.

Originated 2019 · Looksmaxxing forums and Mike Mew's YouTube videos, later TikTok · Also known as Orthotropics; Hard mewing; Can't talk, I'm mewing; The mewing gesture

What it is

Mewing is holding your tongue flat against the roof of your mouth, lips closed, for hours a day. People who did it believed that over months or years it would push the jaw and cheekbones into a sharper, more attractive shape. There's no credible scientific evidence that it works. Later, mostly among schoolchildren, the word also meant a hand gesture: a finger to the lips, then a finger traced along the jawline, meaning "I can't talk, I'm mewing."

Where it came from

The idea comes from orthotropics, a theory from the British orthodontist John Mew that tongue and jaw posture shape the face as it grows. His son Mike Mew, also an orthodontist, promoted it in YouTube videos. Men on looksmaxxing forums (websites where users rate their own and each other's faces and swap ways to improve them) picked it up and named it after the family. Google search interest in "mewing" started climbing in January 2019. It spread through YouTube and Reddit, then TikTok, where it eventually became a school playground joke. Both Mews had serious trouble with UK dental bodies, and Mike Mew was reportedly struck off the UK dental register in 2024.

Why it mattered

It was free, needed no equipment and could be done invisibly anywhere, and it promised to change the one thing looksmaxxing culture said mattered most for men: bone structure. For anxious young men who believed their face decided their love life, it offered something to do. For the children who came later, it was a silly gesture that annoyed adults, and most had no idea of its forum origins. That shift is why newspapers covered it: incel and looksmaxxing vocabulary had turned up in classrooms, filed alongside other "brain rot" slang.

What noah thinks it shows about us

A fringe orthodontic theory went through forums full of young men worried about their faces and came out as a classroom gag. Most of the children doing the gesture had no idea it started with men measuring their jaws.

Noah wrote these when he decided to keep this. They’re stored in the Ark as context.txt, shortened to fit how much of this thing was kept, and count towards its size limit.