I confess I didn’t have much appetite for Louis Theroux’s latest documentary, Inside the Manosphere. I didn’t doubt it would be a strong and insightful offering, I’m just sick to death of listening to men’s rights pundits like Andrew Tate spout their trademark misogyny, homophobia and antisemitism.
I knew exactly what they were going to say about “masculine energy”, women being idiots and the media being controlled by the Jews, all while flexing their muscles astride a Lamborghini or two. Why would I want to watch them saying it to Theroux, charming as he is? It’s nauseating.
And that is precisely what they did. 24-year-old influencer Harrison Sullivan, who goes by HSTikkyTokky, told Theroux, “I teach guys how to be proper guys, not these soy boy, gimps,” while walking around a Marbella villa, in a T-shirt that was several sizes too small. He later announced that he’d disown a gay son or a daughter who posed on OnlyFans, despite owning an agency that manages women on OnlyFans and regularly posing with them on his own social media platforms.
40-year-old lifestyle coach Justin Waller explained that “women don’t know what they want” and the importance of “one-sided monogamy”, by which he means that he gets to be the community dick while the missus stays at home with the kids. And then there was Amrou Fudl, AKA Myron Gaines, who wanted men to know, “you’re the dictator of the relationship. What you say goes” and that “women deserve less” (the title of his book).
And all of them were flogging something. Sullivan promotes crypto investment schemes and pornography subscriptions. Waller sells online programmes to teach men how to become businessmen; and Gaines makes his money through his podcast Fresh and Fit, which monetizes over 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube through ad revenue, sponsorships and high-tier channel memberships.
Quite clearly each of Theroux’s interviewees thought of their time on screen as an advertising opportunity and were duly “on” throughout. They all rattled on about men being leaders, “The Matrix” and their bitches, but pretty soon, they all seemed to run out of puff. Theroux deployed his trademark, deadpan persona and didn’t take the bait, and once all the chest beating was done, there was nowhere left for them to go but circle back and say it all again. There was no substance here, no genuine world view or philosophy to articulate, just willy-waving.
As I watched the predictable diatribe of jacked-up, protein-fuelled testosto-drivel, it suddenly made sense. This is all bullshit, isn’t it? And I don’t just mean in a moral or ethical way, although it is certainly that. But after sitting through 90 minutes of clanging balls and gym routines, I arrived at the conclusion that these men don’t actually believe what they are saying.
They put this stuff out there because it brings them attention, likes and a following amongst angry young men who look at their own lives and want to know why they don’t have enough to make ends meet each month. They dish out blame, and then convert this frustration into a ready market for their podcasts, dodgy finance opportunities and get-rich-quick schemes: “You too could live this life if only you’d man up and buy my products.”
It’s the oldest con in the book. Make people angry, peddle a bunch of easy answers and flog the man-investment app and an online course in alpha-ing while you’re at it. I don’t believe any one of them wouldn’t do a complete 180 and start lauding the virtues of feminism if their audience and income led them that way. Hating women is the message, but its not the medium. It’s all a marketing ploy and a way to make money. To put it another way, it’s a grift.
And then you realise, the entire spectacle is precisely that: a performance. A fact made clear as Sullivan insisted on filming Theroux, who was filming him, filming them. Every second of time together was being repurposed for online content. Go to the shops? Livestream it. Going to the gym? Take a photographer. Night out at the club? Better bring a lighting rig. They had all become exaggerated characters in a production of themselves. They were simply playing a part.
Oh, they talk a good talk, but even they don’t actually live the lives they claim to. We saw Sullivan getting told off by his mum for saying mean things online, and Myron Gaines seemed to walk back on his claims about wanting multiple wives as soon as his girlfriend came into the room. Both men appeared to panic at this crack in their carefully choreographed façade, and Gaines refused to let his girlfriend appear on screen again.
The closest we came to really seeing the wizard behind the curtain was when Theroux asked Sullivan, “Why not try to be a good person,” and he answered, “If I’d only done good things, I’d have never blown up on social media in the first place.”
I am not going to downplay the harm influencers like this can have on impressionable young men, who are looking for easy answers and someone to blame; but maybe we have been focusing on the wrong thing? By constantly trying to engage rationally with the immorality being peddled in the manosphere, we give them exactly what they want. These people thrive on controversy and outrage. They have monetised hate and bigotry.
Theroux actually came unstuck at several points precisely because he tried to meet their misogyny with reason and common sense, but it’s not about deeply held beliefs that can be challenged. It’s about money. It’s always been about money.
Theroux started to dig into the murky financial quagmire these grifters operate in but wasn’t able to get much further than showing the £500 he invested in one of the promoted finance schemes was lost within weeks.
Young men look to these influencers to achieve a very narrowly defined version of success and masculinity, and they are being duped. We aren’t dealing with young men being radicalised online, they are being conned online. These men talk at great length about being “outside the system” when the truth is that they are every bit as much of a wage slave as you or I. They are foot soldiers of capitalism, taking money from those who can little afford it, and getting told off by their mums for being naughty.
This isn’t the dawning of the age of man. It’s a masculinity pyramid scheme.
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