John Mew, 95-year-old inventor of ‘Mewing’, joins TikTok
Never would you consider John Mew as an influencer. He is a 95-year-old orthodontist living in a castle with a moat in Sussex, England. In the medical community, he is a pariah, a provider of controversial theories that led to the revocation of his license by the General Dental Council in 2017. His main idea is that common dental treatments like braces cause terrible damage, and that special tongue exercises known as “mewing” can straighten your teeth and make you more beautiful. Mew spent most of his life as an outcast, but over the last decade, he has followed a path to celebrity that is strange even by the twisted standards of the Internet.
A Troubling Fandom
If you’ve heard of mewing, it’s likely thanks to TikTok. The process became such a popular trend that reportedly kids used it as an excuse not to speak in class. (You can’t talk with your tongue pressed against the palate.) But mewing has a more sinister history.
Over the past decade, I have gained devoted followers among the Incels. Incels, short for “involuntary celibates,” are a predominantly male movement of people who believe they are doomed to a life without sex and love due to physical, psychological, and other deficiencies. It is a nihilistic community that promotes self-hatred, with “weak jaws” being one of the many flaws that incels believe make them inherently unattractive. Mewing, a self-administered exercise linked to a philosophy that argues you have been mutilated by a cruel and unjust world, offers a seductive promise. Some incels cling to the idea that mewing can make you attractive to women who would otherwise find you grotesque.
According to Mew, it is not the incels who are responsible for his fame, but 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 has dedicated his life to spreading the gospel. Mike became an orthodontist and started making YouTube videos on the topic over a decade ago.
Mewing began to spread from specialized internet forums, starting first with a Reddit forum in 2018. It is an echo chamber where young people post before and after photos, convincing each other they have a problem and that mewing is the cure. The body of scientific evidence supporting mewing and orthotropics is scarce, but an increasingly online army of people swear by it.
Reddit offered mewing a gateway to the mainstream. The topic went viral in the latter months of 2023. It has recently been covered by the likes of and many other local and international media outlets. It is also the subject of a new Netflix documentary called “Wide Open,” produced by the A24 tasting studio.
In an increasingly fractured internet of algorithmic bubbles, one could easily find Mew’s beliefs and prescriptions without hearing about the controversies or alleged downsides. In 2020, described how Mew spent his forced retirement locked in his castle, “arguing about orthotropics on Facebook.” But where he may have lost in the battle with the medical establishment, it seems he is winning the war of online public opinion.
Mike Mew stated that it’s just a matter of time. “We are getting 100 million visits on TikTok per day,” he said. The only question is how long it will take for that cohort to feed the system and start asking their orthodontist questions they can’t answer. As soon as they have their own children, they won’t accept this garbage being sold to the rest of the population.”
On TikTok, John Mew cheerfully responds to his followers. He encourages them to maintain their “meow streaks,” suggests they should consider fake orthodontic appliances, and claims that his techniques are a cure for sleep apnea. Mew also shares his thoughts on other topics, such as his love for intermittent fasting and concerns about the “harmful” ideology of political correctness. There is only an occasional hint of the controversy surrounding him.
“I don’t know anything about TikTok, but they know everything about me,” says John Mew in a video. “I was born too early for the computer world.”
