Inside the Manosphere: What Louis Theroux reveals and what we still aren’t talking about

With a recent surge of debate and media attention, the manosphere has truly captured the interest of the public. After the success of the TV drama Adolescence, Netflix’s latest offering from Louis Theroux explores the world of high-profile male influencers who are mainstreaming damaging ideologies on social media platforms. The documentary focuses on the entrepreneurial side of content creation, exploring the dissemination of content through short, clickbait clips which maximise audience engagement and monetisation opportunities. The featured male influencers profit from selling values of hyper masculinity and misogyny to often young male audiences, with a constant drive to create more and increasingly extreme content to maintain their popularity.

While the documentary offers valuable insight into the economic incentives behind the mainstreaming of the manosphere and how these influencers reinforce misogyny while preying on many vulnerable men and boys, some important aspects of how this content resonates so strongly with audiences are not fully explored.

Muscles, money and misogyny

“I teach guys to be proper guys, not these little soy boys” - Harrison Sullivan, Louis Theroux: Inside The Manosphere

The pressure to perform masculinity in a world where traditional norms are shifting is a struggle seemingly faced by the loyal followers of these male influencers. The uncompromising tone and certainty offered by this content can be persuasive for young men who feel uncertain about their place in a rapidly changing social environment. Theroux acknowledges the appeal of masculine messaging in offering direction and a sense of hope to people facing difficulties. The documentary focuses on influencers’ wealth, status and controversial statements, and the way their young fans sometimes describe them as role models. This risks creating a worrying impression that young men are deliberately seeking out extreme content and are inspired primarily by discriminatory messages and promises of financial success.

Instead, the broader body of content on mainstream platforms through which these influencers build trust with audiences centres on motivational and self-improvement lifestyle advice. There is seemingly a gradual escalation towards online material promoting highly polarised or misogynistic worldviews that focus on a one-dimensional perspective of what it means to be a man, in which algorithms connect honest guidance to harmful ideological content, a topic which receives considerably less attention in the documentary.

Understanding the appeal of the manosphere requires looking beyond its most controversial voices. The wider ecosystem online works to offer encouragement and perceived belonging amidst cultural change. Theroux frames this as an exploration of emerging online spaces where men are reshaping contemporary ideas of masculinity, but gives relatively little attention to exploring the cultural changes which have left young men feeling abandoned and without guidance in modern society.

Often, young men are enticed by this content through humorous and supportive videos which do not display overt misogyny, instead encouraging self-mastery and clear-cut identity guidance, which resonates with many young men today. These influencers construct a sense of community and belonging through motivational messages and the endorsement of rigid masculine ideals, which they describe as declining in modern society and needing to be reinstated.

The parasocial mentor relationship that forms then allows for gradual acceptance of more overt ideas when they are later amplified by the algorithm, often perceived by young audiences as entertainment through banter, whilst they are slowly desensitised to the harmful ideas portrayed.

Without recognising the appeal of the main body of influencer content, which acts as guidance for men, there is a risk of an overly blame-focused approach towards young men and boys who find themselves in a cycle of algorithmic recommendations for this content. This focus on the most extreme messaging from the media has parallels with recent TV coverage. For example, Netflix’s Adolescence, a TV drama focusing on a 13-year-old boy who murdered a girl from his school and touches on the extreme ideas of misogynistic ideology and toxic influencers, contributed to a moral panic about young boys intentionally seeking this harmful content. Instead, we need to focus more on why some young men and boys feel their only guidance comes from online influencers, who offer a façade of encouragement while amplifying insecurities by pushing traditional roles and toxicity.

Relationships and resentment

“I love women, and I actually understand them. So, since I understand them, I know what’s best for them” - Myron Gaines, Louis Theroux: Inside The Manosphere

Interestingly, many of the featured influencers rejected the notion that they were misogynistic, claiming instead that they understand female nature and ‘love’ women. Their appeal in dating advice is centred on the idea of being knowledgeable mentors, often presenting controversial and misinformed claims about gender as undeniable truths, rather than hostility or ideology.

Despite their claims, research shows their rhetoric and narratives are inherently misogynistic, fostering resentment and frustration towards women through the idea of male victimhood. Current research (led by Emma Pountney, co-author of this article) analysing videos from Myron Gaines, a popular ‘manosphere’ influencer, shows that he consistently reinforces his misogynistic ideology, despite his unchallenged claims in the documentary of loving women.

Within mainstream spaces, feminism is critiqued harshly as oppressing men, with intense male grievance directed at women who are perceived as inherently immoral and unfaithful; this allows misogyny and hatred towards women to flourish. Whilst the documentary does show the rigid enforcement of traditional gender norms in the influencer community, including the concept of ‘one-sided monogamy’ and men presented as aggressively dominant over women, it does little to focus on how influencers build narratives of female cruelty and male victimisation. This seemingly allows influencers to maintain their legitimacy by denying their misogyny and being able to reframe their ideas as mentorship and honesty, even whilst their broader messaging encourages resentment towards women. This rhetorical framing attracts audiences who may not perceive this content as ideological, but rather as practical guidance for navigating modern relationships.

Where ideals of hyper-masculinity through wealth and success are well documented by Theroux, and their being unavoidably tied to female subordination and the reinstatement of traditional gender hierarchies built on assumptions of women being ‘lesser-than’ is an idea not fully explored, despite the clear harm this is causing to those in society today. When young men are engaging with these platforms, we cannot ignore the negative effect this will have on women in society. Acknowledging this more explicitly within the documentary would have been helpful in giving a significant platform to this serious and growing societal challenge. The fact that these ‘influencers’ have traction tells us that more needs to be done for young men and boys.

A way out

“We are all increasingly inside the manosphere… it is up to us how we get out” - Louis Theroux, Louis Theroux: Inside The Manosphere

Whilst the findings of the documentary are incredibly concerning, it is crucial that we do not treat Louis Theroux: Inside The Manosphere as a uniform picture of all men and boys. The behaviours and ideologies showcased here represent a small but highly visible subset of online actors. Most young men and boys do not hold these views, and many actively reject them. A growing number of boys feel caught between conflicting social expectations, and it is precisely this sense of uncertainty and vulnerability that makes them susceptible to these influencers in the first place.