Jesse and Ashley Ridgway made national news recently because of their decision to end the life of their unborn child. The child had been diagnosed in utero with Trisomy 21, known to most Americans as Down Syndrome. For the Ridgways, Down Syndrome was, it seems, not compatible with their other plans.

Normally these decisions are made discretely and the work of killing the innocent child is done behind closed doors. The Ridgways’ story hit the headlines, not because some paparazzi invaded their privacy, but because they themselves broadcast the news to the known universe. The Ridgways are YouTubers–Influencers, even, with some four million followers online. The abortion of Ashley Ridgway’s pregnancy, the wilful murder of their child, became “content” for their channel.

The quest by many in the world today to exterminate Down Syndrome people is well-known. The abortion rate in Iceland for babies diagnosed in the womb with Down Syndrome is almost one hundred percent. Approximately ninety-seven percent of Trisomy 21-diagnosed fetuses are killed in Japan, with similar figures for the rest of East Asia. The Life Institute reports that some ninety percent of Down fetuses are “aborted worldwide.”

Reasons for ending the life of Down people–-whom studies have shown to be some of the happiest and most loving people on the planet–-run the gamut of the usual excuses for abortion. But the YouTube couple’s dramatization of their abortion raises a new specter in the ongoing geneticide–-the attempted elimination of a set of genetic characteristics by killing those who carry them–-against babies diagnosed with Trisomy 21. In a YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok culture, in which the image reigns supreme, the fact that a Down baby may not comport with an “influencer” business model needs to be taken into account. When one’s income depends on how many people react positively to one’s face on a screen, anything short of algorithmic perfection means lost revenue and, worse, lost “influence.” Bringing a Down baby into a family that lives by its profile photo would probably undercut one’s position in the ego industry that is YouTube and related online platforms. Down babies, to put it bluntly, just aren’t photogenic enough, the narcissists who flood the internet with their faces might think, to make the bottom line of monetized vanity work.

The flipside to what appears to be a global practice of anti-Down eugenics in the era of perpetual screentime is the disturbing “looksmaxxing” phenomenon garnering headlines recently. Braden Peters, known online as “Clavicular,” has become a posterboy of the looksmaxxing genre. Peters and his fellow looksmaxxers inject themselves with crystal meth (to suppress appetite), testosterone, and other substances, hit one another in the face with hammers to encourage photogenic bone growth, and engage in many other dangerous pursuits, all so that their faces will “ascend,” as the looksmaxxing language puts it, in their ranking scheme of who looks good online. A few weeks ago, Peters livestreamed himself getting plastic surgery on his nose , an exercise in narcissism or a cry for help, or both, perhaps.

Notably, Peters descended into the looksmaxxing subculture during the COVID pandemic, when he was stuck online all day and began researching how to become better looking.

Braden Peters may be an extreme example of what has happened to us as humans after spending a good two decades increasingly staring at ourselves on phone and computer screens. Most of us, I hope, don’t do drugs or hit our faces with hammers in order to sculpt our mugs for our TikTok followers. But Peters, while intense, is not an outlier. Many people are willing to make big sacrifices for their online lives. If you are reading this online knowing that your child, your dog, your friend is waiting to spend time with you in person, then you are on the looksmaxxing spectrum. Maybe you don’t plaster your face all over the internet. But you do buy in, to a certain extent, to the culture of online-over-all-else. You are caught in the algorithm whirlpool. Just because you are on the receiving side of it does not make much of a difference. Looksmaxxers need lookers. That, in a nutshell, is how the internet works.

Those who try to make a living in this maelstrom–and they are legion–are forced into more and more compromising positions. Some of them decide that their Down babies just aren’t worth the cost in clicks, and act accordingly. But it isn’t just the YouTube influencers whose cruelty and inhumanity stand out. It’s the world seeking perfection by destroying the good, the people across the planet, North America to Europe to Asia and beyond, who snuff out our brothers and sisters with Down Syndrome because, somehow, they just don’t fit in the age of the exalted image.

The geneticide of Down people continues, and shows every sign of worsening. The worship of looksmaxxed faces also proceeds apace. Are narcissism and the extermination of Down people related? Put your phone down for a moment, look around, and see the reality for yourself.