The Manosphere Is Terrifying. It’s Also Extremely Embarrassing.

If you haven’t heard of the manosphere before, lucky fucking you, because it joined my list of anxieties somewhere between “the Carrington event” and healthcare premiums long ago.

The manosphere is the once-shadowy, now fairly mainstream part of the internet where men who have chugged so much creatine they look like pink balloon animals spew a hateful grab-bag of rhetoric from the bowels of dank podcast studios. Topics vary from your run-of-the-mill misogyny to Great Replacement Theory, all connected by the throughline that men in general are “under attack.”

I’m not quite sure what “attack” these men are “under,” and after an hour-and-a-half of Inside the Manosphere, Netflix’s deep dive into this digital playground by British documentarian Louis Theroux (best known for his insightful takes into niche, extreme subcultures and being, yes, cousin to Justin), I’m not convinced they do, either.

Take Louis’s first subject, Harrison Sullivan, better known as HSTikkyTokky, a manosphere influencer we first meet at his Ibizan villa. Louis lets us know that it’s been challenging to connect with figures of the manosphere, because so many of them are suspicious of mainstream media. That said, HS doesn’t seem to really know who Louis Theroux is or what he does, except that his camera crew has way better gear than 5’6” stringbeans who follow HS around with Androids for his near-constant livestreaming.

A riveting day in the life of HS is something like this: wake up, drink his weight in protein powder, dawdle around an outdoor gym, “hit up birds,” and terrorize a nightclub with whatever repugnant body spray he’s been using since the eighth grade. In between this stacked schedule of important events, HS makes his money like so many of his manosphere colleagues: by spewing an endless stream of social media content promoting his “courses” and “investment app.”

Between shots of HS strolling the prom in Shein beach sets and repeatedly clobbering an arcade punching bag (the manosphere equivalent of bringing home the biggest hunt, I guess?), we are treated to a sampling of the HS ideology via heavily-edited, obscenely-overstimulating social media clips: Homophobia, Misogyny, Racism, Inc.

However, when pressed on his views, HS isn’t just hesitant to explain them to Louis — he seems almost bored. Gone is the fervor and passion he reserves for his audience of teenage boys, suddenly replaced with an apathetic lack of conviction for the views he so fervently peddles on Instagram live. OnlyFans models “disgust” him, but HS remains an active investor in an OF management agency, runs ads for OF girls on his platforms, and makes enough money from said endeavors to regularly get shitty fades off the back of these women. This is the type of blatant hypocrisy at the center of the Manosphere, proving that many of the ideals from the community’s leaders are a performance designed to generate profit, rather than a legitimate moral code they themselves abide by.

The same goes for Myron Gaines, a Miami-based podcaster known for his exceptionally toxic Fresh & Fit podcast. My honest first thoughts of Myron? He’s nervous and quiet, a little nerdy, the kind of hyperactive kid who probably spent his prom night arguing with strangers in chat rooms about which Dragon Ball Z character was the most lethal.

Like HS, he fumbles his explanation of what the manosphere means to him for Louis’ cameras. It’s messy. Something about men being men and also, needing to be men? Anyway, his ultimate thesis is that he’d really love to have multiple wives someday…until his then-girlfriend Angie (the pair have since split), is asked point-blank by Louis if she’s as chill as Myron claims she is with starring in a Sister Wives reboot.

Angie balks. And interestingly, so does Myron. This is a man who — in thirty-minutes time — will invite a table of bottle service girls into his studio and mock them mercilessly about their weight, their looks, and intelligence, but for all this hyper-masculine posturing, the podcaster shrinks to the size of Lord Farquaad when his girlfriend tells him she’s not interested in sharing her husband, even as a hypothetical.

What about the “women want to be told what to do” thing we’ve been hearing from spliced clips all documentary long? The “women’s place” bullshit? Despite the manosphere preaching to its millions of fans about masculinity and strong men on Lives, the inside of it looks a lot like a padded, child-proofed playpen of little boys live-streaming their tantrums.

None of this is more apparent than Louis’s final meeting with HS. When Louis arrives back to Marbella, he’s met with a surprise guest — Elaine, HS’s mother. HS has been growing steadily more hostile toward Louis over the course of filming: shutting down during interviews, playing on his phone instead of engaging. Sulking like someone just took away his favorite blankie. But with Mummy there, HS launches into total manosphere attack mode. He’s finally the aggressive, obnoxious, alpha male who harasses Louis about everything from his relationship with former film subject Jimmy Savile to the Israel-Hamas war.

Oh, and did I mention this is all being livestreamed, too? HS can’t even bully Louis on his own. Half of his half-baked “gotcha!” moments are directly regurgitated from comments fed onto his screen.

Elaine jumps in, as well, reminding Louis that though she may not “agree” with HS’s views (Elaine — feminism’s newest trailblazer!), he too is profiting off the manosphere in the making of this very film. It’s less of a poignant critique than reactionary finger-pointing from World Champ Boy Mom, and hard to take seriously with her slimy son smirking in the background.

The manosphere is a very real, very scary phenomenon with wide-reaching impacts on our cultural, political, and social sphere (Sneako, one of the film’s more toxic subjects, was invited as Press to Donald Trump’s inauguration despite being banned from nearly every major social platform). There’s little to respect about men “selling ideologies,” as Sneako puts it, for greed, even less when the rhetoric is as hateful and toxic as the central belief system of the manosphere. The bottom of the barrel? Profiteering off of hating women, while still needing your mommy to fight your battles for you.

Written By Zoe Yohn