Billy Corgan Runs Into Clavicular, Teaches Him What Alternative Rock Is

If you are unfamiliar with Clavicular, the 20-year-old manosphere-associated looksmaxxing streamer guy, just skip this post. Keep it moving. You're better off not knowing. I'm jealous of you, honestly. You lead a charmed existence. Don't blow it now. Clavicular has only been on Stereogum once before, for getting into a nightclub brawl during a Frost Children DJ set earlier this year. But now we're putting our "Clavicular" tab back to work because he met Billy Corgan over the weekend.On Friday, Clavicular taped an episode of the Howie Mandel Does Stuff podcast. That episode isn't out yet, but Clavicular livestreamed the whole thing on Kick, as he often does. If you made it an hour and 45 minutes into the stream, then you got to catch a magical moment where Mandel gave Clavicular a tour of his studio, which is also used by other podcasters, like Conrad Flynn of Running With The Devil fame. It's where Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Capes records The Magnificent Others, his own podcast. Corgan happened to be recording that day, so he and Clavicular came together in a real meeting of the minds.An important thing to understand about Clavicular: He doesn't know shit about shit. He is a stupid baby. He has a few talking points that he repeats again and again in his absurd jargon, and that's the entire point of his existence. He had no idea who Corgan was, though he managed to be polite to the guy, complimenting his jacket and such. Their excruciating six-minute interaction led to Corgan giving Clavicular a brief definition of the entire concept of alternative rock. Previously, Clavicular was seemingly unfamiliar with the idea.Billy Corgan would be the first alt-rock star to have any contact with Clavicular. That just makes sense. He also seemed to understand the broad outlines of Clavicular's whole deal, and he seemed vaguely amused to be put in the position where he'd have to talk to the young man. Early in his conversation with Corgan, Clavicular ran back his oft-repeated taking point about how he doesn't always like having sex because he could be using that time and energy to make more money or further looksmaxx or whatever. Corgan told him, "You sound like a rock star coming out of his twenties and into his thirties," then used the term "maturitymaxxing."When Clavicular asked Corgan what he does, Howie Mandel jumped in to introduce Corgan as a "superstar," and Corgan responded, "See, if I was truly a superstar, he's know who I was." Upon hearing about Corgan's decades-long career in music, Clavicular said, "I gotta learn how to do that... What my theory is is I could just white-label other people's music under my name and moneymaxx." Corgan and Mandel both got a good laugh out of that. Then this exchange happened:CORGAN: I was part of the generation that came into the '90s playing sort of a different type of rock. We call it alternative rock.CLAVICULAR: Alternative rock — I think I've heard about that before. That's where you, like — it's super, you know, loud and brutal? Like heavy metal?CORGAN: No. Imagine rock music that's about more honest things than rock traditionally would make music about. So we were more honest about feelings and things that had happened to us. So that generation sort of embraced the fact that it was a more honest form of rock.CLAVICULAR: No, that's good. It's a good way to, like, be a storyteller, I guess.CORGAN: Well, what was funny is that there was no sense that it was gonna get big. So when it got big — does it make sense what I'm saying? You make this music, and you're playing in clubs to fucking nobody, and then one day it's massive, and you're playing on MTV back when MTV mattered. And so it became big music, but not because it was trying to be big music. It became big music because it was honest.That's certainly a simplistic description of the '90s alt-rock phenomenon, and you can definitely quibble with certain aspects of it. But if you have to explain "alternative rock" to a stupid baby, that is an excellent way to do it. Corgan wasn't even a dick to Clavicular, and Clavicular ended things by telling him, "I'll have to check that out. We'll give it a listen in the car on the way home." If you really hate yourself, you can watch the whole thing happen below.Please note that Billy Corgan didn't have to explain alternative rock to Olivia Rodrigo, Clavicular's generational peer. This isn't a young-people-today situation. It's just this one guy Clavicular, who seems to function largely as a reason for older people to feel both bemused and superior.