Why is everyone talking about ‘the manosphere’?
Perhaps because UK documentarian Louis Theroux just made a feature-length documentary for Netflix called Inside the Manosphere.
Louis Theroux ... who’s he again?
A tall, bespectacled, now middle-aged, mildly spoken Englishman. He has made documentaries about everything from life in prison to porn to Jimmy Savile.
So what is the manosphere?
It’s a group of male social media influencers who target lost and confused young boys on TikTok, YouTube, X and Twitch. There are thousands of them. They traffic in archaic notions of masculinity, offensive opinions on women and the LGBTQ community, and incredibly mixed messages about how men should exist in the world: have a traditional family life while having multiple sexual partners; be disgusted with men speaking about their feelings while doing nothing but speaking about your own feelings; think for yourself ... but also invest in these cryptocurrencies.
What sort of material do they produce?
Well, Myron Gaines from the Fresh and Fit podcast likes to assemble vulnerable young women on a panel to humiliate and insult them. HSTikkyTokky wanders the streets flirting with/annoying women while also promoting cryptocurrencies and managing “camgirls”. Sneako attends pro-Trump rallies and believes women shouldn’t be allowed to vote. All of them offer advice and, sometimes, courses.
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Do they really believe this stuff?
Sort of. The social media algorithms favour contentious material. HSTikkyTokky tells Theroux that he originally posted apolitical prank videos, but the more controversial he became, the better his material started to perform. Like bold babies, they get more attention by saying bad words.
[ Louis Theroux on masculinity, marriage and more: ‘Would you like me to cry now?’Opens in new window ]
But do they really believe this stuff?
It depends on whether their mams are present. When Mammy TikkyTokky (Elaine Sullivan) is present, HSTikkytokky tells Theroux a lot of his more offensive moments are simply about garnering views.
I wanted to see more material about the women looking aghast on the peripheries, people like HSTikkyTokky’s mam and Myron Gaines’s now-ex-girlfriend Angie, who looked genuinely unsure of his innovative “one-way-monogamy”.
Seriously ... do they really believe this stuff?
I suspect they’ve been radicalised by their own algorithmically turbocharged bullsh*t by now, but it doesn’t really matter. The most wounded and alienated young men you know are watching this material and perhaps believing it. On more than one occasion, Theroux’s subjects are approached by children on the street.
These boys are being told they must be cold-hearted bigots and that instead of working at a boring old 9-to-5 that has social utility, they should drop out of school and spend all their time manufacturing clips for the ever-hungry online machine – and all their money on courses by their parasocial crushes.
