From bingeing episodes of Botched or Tattoo Fixers, to scrolling through plastic surgeons on TikTok as they dissect a celebrity’s overdone face, feature by feature, to watching in horror (and fascination) as looksmaxxing influencer Clavicular smashes his jawline with a hammer – it’s never been clearer that beauty failures and extremes have become entertainment. With tweakments and plastic surgery procedures increasingly accessible and normalised, more people than ever are turning to the knife or syringe – sometimes with unsuccessful results. And as fillers migrate, procedures heal unevenly or are performed without proper precaution, it seems we can’t look away. But what is driving our fascination with these beauty fuck-ups?

The visual language of this content alone delivers enough shock value to grab our attention and reel us in. Even when this content is clearly disturbing, it’s that extremity which keeps audiences engaged (though we may hate to admit it). According to psychologist Dr Kirk Honda, it’s a form of morbid curiosity. “Watching a cosmetic procedure fail functions as a kind of low-risk simulation for us to learn from,” he says. When someone undergoes a cosmetic procedure to change a feature about themselves, others watch closely as a kind of test – hoping it works but also finding relief if it fails. 

Some of this is down to schadenfreude, says licensed therapist Kara Mayer Robinson, a feeling of pleasure or satisfaction in knowing something bad is happening to others. “It’s normal that people are fascinated by other people’s beauty screw-ups,” she says, adding that it’s part of our psychological DNA. “There’s negative bias, a psychological survival instinct that makes us more likely to notice negative things than positive things. If we spot a potential threat, it boosts our chance of survival.” When we are alerted to these dangers and hazards, our brain takes note. So when someone’s screw-up pops up on our screen, our brains are wired to tune in.

When the subject is a celebrity, this becomes even more irresistible because it taps into our competitive impulses. “When we want what someone else has, like beauty, fame or money, we like it when they lose it,” says Robinson. “If we crush that competition, we’re more likely to come out on top. Theoretically, of course – in reality, we know we’re not about to replace Bradley Cooper or Madonna.” 

There is also an element of reassurance – a temporary sense of comfort that we’re better off not undergoing procedures ourselves. “When others are brought low, we feel elevated by comparison,” Dr Honda says. Seeing this outcome offers a brief alleviation from the pressure to improve our appearance and triggers a self-protective loop: “at least I don’t look like that”, “I made better choices”, and so on. And maybe that’s the real draw: even if we know that perfection is unattainable, we love seeing living proof from those who have actually braved the quest (in some cases literally putting their life on the line to get there). At the expense of others’ misfortune and pain, we’re taught a potentially valuable lesson about the folly of seeking perfection.

Dr Michael Salzhauer, better known as Dr Miami also links the appeal of botched beauty back to human nature. The current looksmaxxing craze exposes the lengths people are willing to go to transform themselves: the risk, the cost, all of it. There is a shock value here, but for some people it’s also relatable. “Underneath all of it is the same thing; it’s always been this very human obsession with beauty, belonging, and what we’re willing to do to feel like we’re enough. There’s a reassurance in seeing that you’re not alone in your vulnerabilities,” he says. And we are clearly not alone in that curiosity either.

One of the first, and biggest, examples of the beauty fuck-up genre is the hit series Botched, which ran from 2014 to 2024 and helped patients reverse both the aesthetic and emotional damages of cosmetic procedures gone wrong. Co-hosted by Beverly Hills surgeons Dr Terry Dubrow and Dr Paul Nassif, they solved just about every case imaginable: distorted breast implants, uncanny nose jobs, injections with cement and one of the most common: patients with illegal procedures from abroad. 

Dr Dubrow puts the show’s eight-season success down to its candid authenticity. “These are genuine complications with real emotional and medical stakes,” he says. Looking back at his time on Botched, Dubrow doesn't believe the show was offering its audience reassurance about their own appearance or self-worth, but instead tapping into a broader fascination. “People are drawn to transformation, but also to the reality that when plastic surgery goes wrong, it can be life-altering. It is both curiosity and consequence,” Dubrow says. 

Dr Salzhauer warns against getting too captivated by the spectacle, however. “I don’t think anyone should be finding their self-worth in someone else’s worst outcome,” he says. “When bad results get turned into entertainment, it takes the weight out of what is genuinely a serious medical decision.” This is especially true when you consider the fact that many people have tragically died from botched procedures, often carried out by cowboy practioners. In their virality, there isn’t room for the emotional, physical, and mental nuances behind treatments and surgeries gone wrong. In feverishly scrolling past these clips, we forget the heaviness of it all. As Dr Salzhauer urges, we’d do well to remember that “these are real people. They’re not a cautionary tale.”