✨First off shout out to the MOD yesterday for getting back to me so quickly and allowing me to do this :-)✨ I think I've covered most bases in the post below, but feel free to ask me any follow up questions!
Ofc, I'm not entitled to a response so if uninterested it's all good lol

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Hi! I'm currently in a public speaking class that has an anthropology-ish focus to it; we have a project where we have to do research on a specific culture or subculture (online subcultures accepted).
We have to interview a certain number of people within said culture and then talk about whatever overarching patterns/trends we see connected throughout each interview. We are not allowed to make an "opinion piece" on the culture (e.g. "Looksmaxxing is evil aahh"), we just telegraph whatever the actual people involved think of it.

The project will not be profited off of or published through a journal; it's moreso a "practice" of research we'll likely be conducting later on in our respective fields. But we are welcome to keep building on whatever we learn during this project later down the line!

Why Looksmaxxing?

I find Looksmaxxing interesting because as much as there is a lot of hoopla in the media and online about it, there is little to no info from the actual people involved in it.

Content creators have a financial incentive to exaggerate their speech and actions to drive up interaction-- they're not the average person who is doing Looksmaxxing. In the preliminary research I did, I actually didn't find any academic projects that interviewed people directly from Looksmaxxing (instead it was mainly speculation about the people who practice it). YouTube essayists have incentive to "doomsday" their videos when talking about Looksmaxxing. I think it's clear what I'm getting at here.

I'm genuinely curious about the more mundane experiences with Looksmaxxing and some deeper perspectives/philosophies that I can't actually infer just from reading rating posts.

What does the Interview entail?

The caveat is that the interviews much be recorded for the professor to verify we're not bullshitting essentially, but (since it's not like, Grad school) no personal info or faces needs to be shared. It will be totally anonymous. I've been using Discord and the CraigBot to conduct my past few interviews, and so far it's been very convenient since most 18-25 yr olds who are online use Discord. If you're interested but prefer a different website/application it's ok! I'm flexible =)

The questions would primarily be surrounding your own experiences regarding Looksmaxxing, your perspective on other peoples' perspectives on it, and whatever else you may want to talk about that I might be unaware of or forget to cover. I understand that the voice recording aspect can be uncomfortable though, I will do my best to make it a more comfortable experience.

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If you have time to kill and might enjoy talking about your own thoughts on Looksmaxxing that you haven't had the opportunity to talk about to most other people, please reach out!

(Outline of the overall project for extra verification or if anyone's curious)