You’d never peg John Mew as an influencer. He’s a 95-year-old orthodontist who lives in a castle, complete with a moat, in Sussex, England. In the medical community, he’s a pariah, a purveyor of theories so controversial that the British General Dental Council revoked his license in 2017. Chief among them is the idea that common dental treatments like braces cause terrible damage, and that special tongue exercises known as “mewing” can both straighten your teeth and make you beautiful. Mew spent most of his life as an outcast, but over the last decade or so, he’s followed a path to celebrity that’s bizarre even by the twisted standards of the internet. Walk into any middle school classroom in America right now, and you’re likely to find kids who know something about his ideas. Mewing is a full-blown viral phenomenon on TikTok, and a few months ago, John Mew logged on for the very first time to meet his new fans.
“Hi, I’m John Mew,” the orthodontist said in an inaugural video that’s racked up 4.6 million views. Mew sits with his thin frame dwarfed by a preppy sweater and a houndstooth jacket. He speaks in a refined English accent, his words halting but deliberate. “I’m actually the inventor of mewing and of orthotropics, so if you want a quick opinion, just ask me.”
Mew spent the last 50 years promoting the idea that crooked teeth have almost nothing to do with genetics, the explanation held by mainstream orthodontists. His theory of “orthotropics” goes beyond the teeth, however. Mew argues the way you hold your jaw and your tongue dictates the growth of your face, and because of modern lifestyle changes, we’re facing an epidemic of drooping, narrow faces with hooked noses and recessed chins. This doesn’t just make you unattractive, Mew says, it can lead to breathing problems such as sleep apnea, and, as a result, an early death. Essentially, you were born to be beautiful, but if you’re like most people, the new world has robbed you of that privilege. But Mew doesn’t just identify a problem, he offers a solution.
“It’s because we’ve adopted a modern lifestyle—we eat soft food, we live in houses, we don’t breastfeed very long, various other things—it’s disrupted the growth of our face,” Mew said in an interview with Gizmodo. “I’m simply saying that if you put your tongue on your palate, swallow, and keep your lips together and your cheeks working correctly, then you’ll be good-looking.”
According to Mew, braces are a scam that makes these problems worse. Instead, his treatments include palate expanders, dietary changes, and mewing, his namesake technique. Mewing is a do-it-yourself exercise where, essentially, you press your tongue up against the roof of your mouth and suck in air to create a vacuum. This, Mew argues, is the path to a beautiful face.
“Orthodontists, I think for understandable reasons, but certainly for reasons of their own, don’t want the public to know this,” Mew said.
Mew shared a catalog documenting decades of his patients’ before and after pictures, most of them children who, for the most part, look noticeably better in the later photos. Of course, a slideshow doesn’t meet the burden of proof by scientific standards. Mew has published a number of papers about orthotropics, but his work has never graced the pages of first rate journals.
To say that his peers reject these ideas is an understatement. Many orthodontists describe Mew’s work as both ridiculous and dangerous. “While proper tongue posture plays a role in oral health and development, mewing oversimplifies the complexities of facial structure,” said Myron Guymon, DDS, president of the American Association of Orthodontists in an emailed statement. “There’s no scientific evidence to support its claims of reshaping the jawline, and the potential risks outweigh any unproven benefits.” In a blog post, the organization wrote that DIY treatments like mewing carry the “potential for irreversible and costly damage.”
He spent his career mocked and rejected by fellow orthodontists, but at an age when most people fade into the obscurity, Mew is relishing a newfound online fandom. In one video captioned “Fame at last,” he struggles to his feet and waves to a cheering crowd. Mew’s face is narrow, but his jawline, despite his age, is strong.
A troubling fandom
If you’ve heard of mewing, there’s a good chance it’s because of TikTok. The process became such a popular trend that kids supposedly use it as an excuse not to talk in class. (The accepted online wisdom is that the technique only works with extreme consistency, and you can’t speak with your tongue pressed against your palate.) But mewing has a more ominous history.
Over the last ten years or so, Mew earned fanatical devotees among incels. Incels, short for “involuntarily celibate,” are a predominantly male movement of people who believe they are doomed to a life without sex and love thanks to body issues, psychological problems, and other shortcomings. It’s a nihilistic community that promotes self-hatred, with deep ties to misogyny, violent extremism, and even mass shootings. “Weak jaws” are one of the many faults that incels believe make them hopelessly unattractive. Mewing, a self administered exercise tied to a philosophy that argues you’ve been maimed by a cruel and unfair world, offers a seductive promise. Some incels latched onto the idea that mewing can make you appealing to women who might otherwise find you grotesque.
For some, the connection to incels casts a shadow of illegitimacy across Mew’s ideas, which Mew rejects as little more than an insult. “I didn’t even know what the word incel meant. I don’t see how that relates to me,” Mew said.
According to Mew, it isn’t the incels that are responsible for his fame, it’s his son. Mike Mew’s exposure to orthotropics came early; as a child, his father used Mike as a test subject. Today, the younger Mew’s jaw is undeniably defined, and he dedicated his life to spreading the gospel. Mike became an orthodontist himself, and started making YouTube videos on the subject over a decade ago,
“I think it’s your birthright to have a healthy, well-developed face,” Mike Mew said on a Zoom call. ‘m not saying I’m right. I’m just saying we need to have a scientific debate on why teeth are crooked. We’re treating it symptomatically instead of treating the case. No one is doing the basic research to back up what I’m saying, because no one wants to hear answers they don’t want to hear.”
Mewing began to spread from the niche caverns of the internet thanks starting first with a Reddit forum in 2018. r/mewing is an echo chamber where young men post before and after pictures, convincing each other that they have a problem and mewing is the cure. The scientific body of evidence to support mewing and orthotropics is thin, but a growing army of the extremely online swear by it.
Reddit offered mewing a doorway to the mainstream. The topic went viral in the later months of 2023. Recently, it’s been covered by the likes of the Today show, Vogue, Discover magazine, and countless other local and international outlets. It’s also the subject of a new Netflix documentary called Open Wide, produced by the tastemaking studio A24.
From his TikTok videos, you wouldn’t know John Mew has a legion of fans in the most nightmarish offshoots of the web. He just seems like a cheerful old man promoting his ideas and enjoying retirement. In one video titled “First week on TikTok,” Mew navigates the social media website on an ancient looking Windows desktop. “Now I do profile,” Mew says as he steers the mouse, walking through the platform step-by-step until he arrives at his own page.
“John, do you want to say anything to your TikTok followers?” the cheerful woman filming the video asks. Mew laughs. “I’ve nothing to say, no. I’m still learning.”
The unlikely influencer
Most influencers spend years fostering the kind of celebrity Mew enjoys. He waltzed on to TikTok to a prebuilt audience, and with just three months and 17 low-effort videos, Mew attracted a steadily growing faction of 34,000 followers who fill his post with adoring, jargon-filled comments.
“You’re so inspirational. I’m on a 2 year mewing streak. Thank you for all you have done,” one comment reads. Some blur the lines between sincerity and satire. “bro invented mewing and created generations of sigmas. a true mogger through and through.” Others responses are more unnerving. “Thank you for saving my bloodline.”
Mew’s ideas are increasingly popular, but the medical community seems no closer to accepting orthotropics. Some online posters also say their experiments with mewing worsened their problems, caused other deformities, or just led to painful side effects.
John and Mike Mew say their theories are rejected because they challenge the orthodontic dogma, both men are the subject of serious medical malpractice allegations, which they categorically deny. One woman reportedly accused John Mew of continuing to treat her child after she withdrew her consent. The UK General Dental Council revoked the elder Mew’s license, and the organization is currently trying to do the same to his son. Mike Mew is currently going through a malpractice lawsuit centered around claims from a mother who argues her son was harmed by his treatments. Mike Mew said his treatments are all above board and he’s confident the lawsuit will come down in his favor.
On an internet increasingly fractured by algorithmic bubbles, you could easily encounter Mew’s beliefs and prescriptions without hearing about the controversies, or the alleged downsides. A 2020 New York Times Magazine profile described how Mew spent his forced retirement locked away in his castle, “feuding about orthotropics on Facebook.” But where he may have lost the battle with the medical establishment, it seems he’s winning the war of online public opinion.
Mike Mew said it’s just a matter of time. “We’re doing 100 million hits on TikTok a day,” he said. “The only question is how long until that cohort feeds through the system and starts asking their orthodontist questions that they can’t answer. Because as soon as they have kids of their own, they’re not gonna buy into this crap that’s being sold to the rest of the population.”
On TikTok, John Mew cheerfully responds to his followers. He encourages them to keep up their “mewing streaks,” suggests they should consider forging braces, and claims his techniques are a cure for sleep apnea. Mew also shares his thoughts on other subjects too, such as his love for intermittent fasting and concerns about the “damaging” ideology of political correctness. There’s only an occasional hint at the controversy that surrounds him.
“I know nothing about TikTok, but they know all about me,” John Mew says in one video. “I was born too early for the computer world.”
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