‘Get Huge’ Examines the Self-Optimization Movement That Drew Young Men Into Danger

What does it look like to pursue your best self?

For YouTuber and biohacking star Tony Huge — born Anthony Hughes — self-optimization reportedly required an intense amount of risky, illegal supplements, steroids, and drugs. He preached this to his 250,000 YouTube subscribers. If the process sounded familiar, that was because many of Hughes’ techniques had gone from niche subculture to mainstream popularity, helped along by the viral looksmaxxing star Clavicular. A new Hulu docuseries, Get Huge: Looksmaxxing To Death, moves beyond the viral 20-year-old to explore the world and legacy of Hughes, a biohacking expert who convinced hundreds of thousands of men to follow his teachings — even as mysterious deaths began to pile up around him.

Directed by Stacey Lee (The Secrets of Hillsong) and executive produced by Jennings Brown and Brett Neitchin, Get Huge takes a fast-paced, borderline-psychedelic approach to documenting Hughes’ life and career as a biohacking influencer. The three-part series began filming in 2024 and spent months getting close to Hughes and his inner circle, including fitness and looksmaxxing influencers Elon Muscular, Androgenic, Connor Murphy, and Hughes himself. The former bankruptcy attorney began posting on YouTube to promote his supplement company before leaving the U.S. amid an active F.D.A. investigation. Now living in Pattaya, Thailand, he films nearly nonstop, capturing his constantly shifting regimen of steroids, recreational drugs, and weightlifting while battling constant bans from YouTube and TikTok. “A day natty is a day wasted,” he says in the series, repeating his signature catchphrase into the camera, accompanied around the clock by what he calls his “harem” of Thai women. During his videos, Hughes claims he is living a man’s ideal life — one he invites viewers and fellow biohacking and fitness YouTubers to experience for themselves.

The Tony Huge Lifestyle

The documentary began as a result of one of Hughes’ Thailand invitations. In 2022, Hughes convinced biohacking influencer Leo Longevity — born Laith Abdallah Algaz — to move to Pattaya. (Clavicular has publicly praised the “protocols” for penis enhancement and stretching techniques that Algaz popularized.) The two lived together and collaborated often, posting hundreds of videos about biohacking techniques. But in January 2023, Algaz was found dead in a bathroom in the home he shared with Hughes. He was 34. According to People, an autopsy ruled that Algaz’s cause of death was blunt force trauma. But the mystery of how Algaz died captured the internet.

“Overnight, all of these YouTubers, influencers, these manosphere alpha-male-Joe-Rogan-wannabes turned into true crime girlies; these internet sleuths trying to solve this murder,” Brown tells Rolling Stone. “As a journalist, how could I not look into that?”

On its surface, Get Huge might resemble a true-crime series. Lee, Brown, and Neitchin filmed for months in Pattaya, gaining unprecedented access to Hughes’ daily life. They filmed in his home, following him from the gym to pharmacies to hours-long parties, orgies, and streaming sessions. And while Hughes denies involvement in Algaz’ death, he is shown struggling to balance downplaying rumors with using conspiracy theories to attract viewers. But the documentary’s central focus is what the crew found in Hughes’ appeal. Tony Huge’s success was not merely about the excess of his life, the size of his muscles, or the countless content hours he posted daily. His popularity was closely tied to his ability to give young men purpose — and community.

The Mystery Behind the Cameras

Algaz was not the only person in Hughes’ orbit who died. One influencer featured heavily in the documentary was Connor Murphy, a fitness YouTuber who turned to biohacking content after struggling to break out as an actor. Murphy moved from Los Angeles to Thailand and became a constant presence in Hughes’ videos, adopting the influencer’s exercise and injection routine. In July 2026, weeks after the documentary crew left Thailand, Murphy drowned at age 32. When authorities searched his home, they found it trashed, and witnesses reported the fitness influencer acting erratically before his death. Throughout the documentary, Murphy heartbreakingly dismissed his mental health struggles, often using their existence to inspire more extreme content while ignoring warning signs — problems that Hughes sometimes suggested treating with more substances.

“The more we investigated, we found this string of deaths connected to Tony. He had been pushing these men to experiment on their bodies. He actively brought in these lost boys who clearly needed a father figure and found it in Tony,” Brown says. “They’re on this quest of self optimization to become superhuman, but it ultimately leads to self destruction.”

Lee adds that there is a clear link between men drawn to looksmaxxing content and those struggling with mental health. Oftentimes, she says, the biggest biohackers and influencers in the space used their pursuit of physical supremacy to cover or ignore other feelings of inadequacy.

“When you have these deeper emotional issues, they aren’t going to be solved by a hit of testosterone or making your jawline bigger,” she says. “Looksmaxxing is a direct lineage from what Tony started all those years ago. Except it’s more nihilistic, because it’s saying the consequences of the future do not matter if you can make it, be successful, be a Chad, be Alpha right now. And I think that’s taken things to an even darker place than Tony would go.”

When Brown and Lee began this project in 2024, the world of looksmaxxing was a niche internet subculture. But in only two years, it had become mainstream — and with its growing popularity came the likelihood that a new generation of young men would follow Hughes’ teachings or those of someone like him.

“Tony came up 10 years ago with this philosophy of radical transparency. He got insanely popular because he was doing things that no one else was willing to do, and that formula worked,” Lee says. “Connor came up in this era, and other influencers came up in this era, and they’re all pushing the envelope further and further. And who’s watching but the next generation?”

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