Last week, at 4am, 19-year-old Sammy Amz was scrolling through X when something caught his eye: a popular Twitch streamer was competing in a 1v1 “mog-off” with a stranger, and losing.

The next day he opened the Omoggle gaming website and began to play. Quickly he matched with another user – green dots appeared on their faces onscreen, as the website began to compare their measurements: canthal tilt, palpebral fissure ratio, nose-to-face width ratio and so on.

Omoggle enables one stranger to “dominate” another in a contest of looks, which in online slang, is called mogging. It uses facial recognition to analyse and score the faces of competitors between one and 10. Omoggle’s ecosystem is based on Omegle, a now defunct site that randomly matched strangers for video-based online chats.

“It’s not [scored] by looks, but it’s like, how your head is shaped, how your face is shaped,” said Amz.

A week later, Amz had already competed in hundreds of mog-offs, along with some of the biggest UK streamers, emulating a trend that began in the US. On Tuesday, the Amazon-owned live-streaming platform Twitch got onboard, changing their rules to allow for “participation in current trends”, such as Omoggle. Previously, its community guidelines had prohibited the use of websites that connect a streamer to a stranger’s video feed, because of the risks of accidentally exposing its users to harmful content.

To decide on a mog-off winner, Omoggle uses something called the PSL scale. The letters stand for “Perceived Sexual Market Value,” but originally, they represented three incel sites: PUAhate.com, Sluthate.com and Lookism.net. These online forums encouraged young men to develop an obsession with their physical appearance. For some it was nihilistic, and seemed to promote resentment against women who were perceived to only value physical attractiveness in men. For others, the goal was to maximise their potential attractiveness, known as “looksmaxxing”.

On Omoggle, which has thousands of concurrent players at any given moment, you get points for winning or losing each match. You are then assigned a status level on the mogging scale in a chess-style Elo ranking system. This scale is an adaptation of the usual manosphere rankings that have “subhumans” at the bottom, different tiers of “normie” in the middle, and “chads” on top. Omoggle is mostly similar, except subhuman has become “sub3”, and a new category of “molecule” has been added beneath that.

Dr Paul Marsden, a chartered psychologist with the British Psychology Society, specialises in how emerging technologies affect people’s wellbeing, young people in particular. He is quick to point out that the PSL system is “nonsense”, and thinks it is part of a wider shift in society towards quantification.

“The world is changing, so what do I stand for?” is the question on people’s minds, said Marsden. “Some people move to numbers, some people move to religion.”

He said older generations should avoid a moral panic and try to be aware of the ironic approach young people can take towards things that might seem outlandish to others. “Gen Z meme-ify everything. I think it’s fabulous that they’re treating contemporary life with humour,” he said.

Earlier this week, as Omoggle went viral, Twitch began warning streamers that their guidelines prohibited “randomised video chat services”. Their issue wasn’t with mogging per se, but the difficulty in moderating content on streams when they are used as a platform for a less strictly moderated app.

In their announcement on Tuesday, Twitch encouraged caution around the use of such sites, but said they would continue to be allowed on the platform, “to give you more choice around the content you stream and allow for participation in current trends”.

Addressing the potential for explicit content to appear as random users of the third party app are matched, Twitch recommended that its users “quickly remove” themselves if that situation arises by “switching scenes and not engaging further”.

A Twitch spokesperson said its aim was to empower creators while protecting them from harm. “We’ll continue to enforce against content from randomised video chat sites if the content itself violates our guidelines by featuring sensitive or otherwise prohibited content.”

Amz, who gloats about being on a “200-win streak”, said he didn’t think Omoggle was harmful. “I don’t think anyone takes it seriously.”

While mog-offs are mostly done for entertainment online, many take the underlying philosophy of looksmaxxing seriously.

“I would say the culture is honestly a good thing,” said Nicholas Graff, a 16-year-old from Iowa whose Omoggle video went viral. “Like maximising your looks. It might be degrading to some people but overall, I don’t mind it.”

Some influencers have spoken out against the trend as it develops in the UK. “Every generation has their own version of looksmaxxing,” said a TikToker called Thoka in a recent video. “But this is too far.

“I don’t tell men how to be men, but this ain’t it. How can people get so jobless that their version of entertainment is going on websites to do mog-offs,” he continued. “Go touch grass.”

Saudi Arabia’s state oil company reported a 26% jump in profits in its first quarter as its east-west pipeline allowed it to ship millions of barrels of oil out of the Gulf despite conflict in the Middle East.

Profits at Saudi Aramco hit $33.6bn (£26.9bn) in the first three months of the year, while revenue rose nearly 7% compared with a year earlier to $115.5bn.

The boost in profits came even as Aramco grappled with attacks on its infrastructure and a halt to exports through its Gulf ports.

Amin Nasser, the company’s president and chief executive, said: “Our east-west pipeline, which reached its maximum capacity of 7m barrels of oil per day, has proven itself to be a critical supply artery, helping to mitigate the impact of a global energy shock and providing relief to customers affected by shipping constraints in the strait of Hormuz.”

The strait, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas supply normally passes, has in effect been closed since the start of the US-Iran war in late February. Aramco’s east-west pipeline allows it to ship oil from its east coast to the Red Sea port of Yanbu.

Disruption in the strait has triggered a spike in global energy prices, with Brent crude – the international benchmark – trading at about $100 a barrel, about 40% higher than before the conflict.

Nasser, who previously warned that the continued blockade of the strait of Hormuz would be a “catastrophe” for global oil markets, said it would take months for the market to return to normal even if the strait reopened immediately.

“If trade flows resume immediately or today through the strait of Hormuz, it will take a few months for the oil market to rebalance,” he wrote in an emailed statement to Bloomberg. “But if trade and shipping remain curtailed by more than a few weeks from today, we anticipate the supply disruption to persist and the market to normalise only in 2027.”

His comments come as the US awaits a response from Iran to its proposals for an interim deal to end the conflict. In recent days there has been fighting in and around the strait, after Donald Trump’s announcement and then pause of a naval mission aimed at opening the waterway.

Aramco said it would maintain its quarterly dividend at $21.9bn, after increasing the payout by 3.5% at the end of last year.

Saudi Arabia relies heavily on Aramco’s dividends to fund domestic spending. The government directly owns more than 80% of the business, while its sovereign investor, the Public Investment Fund, holds 16%.

Aramco, which is headquartered in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, employs more than 76,000 people globally and is one of the biggest businesses and oil producers in the world.

The leader of Plaid Cymru is hoping to become Welsh first minister as early as Tuesday after his party won a historic victory in the Senedd elections, soundly beating Labour and holding off Reform UK.

Plaid fell short of winning a majority in the Welsh parliament but Rhun ap Iorwerth said on Sunday he hoped that other parties would work with him and told UK Labour not to punish Wales over the result.

Asked on BBC Radio Wales when he hoped he would be elected as first minister, ap Iorwerth said: “We’re ready to go as quickly as we can. We hope for it to be Tuesday. If there’s a delay it won’t be much. We want to get going. ”

Ap Iorwerth said Plaid had put a clear programme for government on the table that he hoped would get backing from across the Senedd. “We want actively to get support of people in other parties. I will explicitly co-operative,” he said.

The Plaid leader said he had spoken to all the party leaders except Nigel Farage who, he said, “didn’t feel he wanted to speak with me”.

Labour was left with just nine seats in the Senedd, ending 100 years of dominance in Wales.

Ap Iorwerth said: “Labour can go in one of two ways now on a UK level. They can decide to punish Wales because Wales turned its back on Labour and say: ‘Right you’re getting nothing now.’

“In which case it’s difficult to see Labour planning any way back. Or they reflect and recognise the indifference shown by UK Labour leadership to Wales has to come to an end.”

Ap Iorwerth suggested he did not believe Keir Starmer would remain in Downing Street for long, saying: “I will guide the next UK prime minster, whoever that might be, to start looking at Wales in a different way.”

Asked if Wales may be treated differently if someone like Andy Burnham took over from Starmer, ap Iorwerth said: “I think you might be right. It is clear to me Keir Starmer has been getting it very very wrong in the indifference shown towards Wales. Keir Starmer can change his ways or Labour can choose someone else to do things in a different way.”

He also said he believed there could be cooperation with the other nationalist parties in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Speaking on BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, he said: “There are a number of different ways that we can work together. There are ways of looking at policies that we have in common, the way that we use the natural resources off our coasts, for example.

“But there’s a deeper sense than that, too, of being able to make a stand together to call for less inequality within these islands.”

Ken Skates, the interim leader of Welsh Labour after the former first minister Eluned Morgan resigned, said its members would meet on Monday to discuss how they would approach the vote on the next first minister but described the idea of his party teaming up with Reform to try to keep ap Iorwerth out was “deeply unpleasant”.

He said their relationship with Plaid would be “mature” but they would serve the people of Wales, not ap Iorwerth’s party.

The actor David Morrissey has spoken of how “terrible” social anxiety contributed to him becoming an alcoholic.

“I am a recovering alcoholic,” Morrissey, who has been sober for 21 years, told Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.

“Drinking first was about anxiety. I’ve had this terrible social anxiety and that helped me get through it.”

He said he started drinking in his teenage years after the death of his father and then “in my adult life, I couldn’t stop. I wasn’t drinking to be convivial. I was on my own in the pub. That was really hard and very hard for my ex-wife and people around me.”

Morrissey, 61, is regarded as one of the UK’s most versatile actors whose many TV, film and stage roles have included the ruthless, monstrous Governor in The Walking Dead, Gordon Brown in The Deal and a dedicated detective in James Graham’s Sherwood.

Born in Liverpool, he grew up on a new council estate in Knotty Ash after the family’s back-to-back terrace house was demolished. The first of his desert island discs was You’ll Never Walk Alone by Gerry and the Pacemakers.

His father died when Morrissey was just 15. Joe Morrissey, a cobbler, was 54 when he suffered a fatal haemorrhage after a long-term and terminal blood disorder.

Morrissey told Laverne that he was in a “terrible state” after the death of his father, and reflected on the “trauma responses” – depression and anxiety – that followed.

He left school at 16 and spent six months travelling with a theatre company called Zip, based in Wolverhampton.

“I knew that, academically, I was never going to be able to go to university or anything – that was never going to happen to me,” he said. “So, I had to make it happen somewhere else.

“It was hard for my mum, but I knew I had to cut the strings and find independence. They say that hyper-independence is a trauma response. I do tend to cut off sometimes.”

He got sober after calling a former colleague he knew was in Alcoholics Anonymous and whose number he had kept for two years.

“I was in a terrible, terrible state, and I phoned him quite late, early in the morning time.

“He came round my house and just sat with me. And I’ve not drank since that day, really. So, it’s been tough.”

Morrissey added: “When I stopped drinking, I didn’t stop being an alcoholic. My behaviour was still very self-destructive for many years.” He said his career “rescued” him and that it makes him “feel safe”.

Morrissey said he was drawn to being an actor after watching an episode of 1970s TV drama Colditz, starring Michael Bryant, during which the main character “pretended to go mad in order to escape” from a situation.

He said: “That troubled me. It really upset me. I identified with him, his character, his situation, and that sort of thing that bubbled up inside me. I wanted to find out how to control that or understand it.

“I went looking for acting, I went looking for a way out.”

He added: “When I’m in work, I feel safe. Not necessarily in control, but I feel it’s where I should be in my life. In my life, I’m less confident. I’m always looking for an exit strategy in every situation.

“I’m much better nowadays, but for a long time I was really telling myself I wasn’t enough and all that stuff, and that added to the alcoholism, and the inability to stop.”