It’s been over a year since I last posted here (times flies!); I had written about my thoughts on the then much discussed and overhyped Netflix series Adolescence. It is perhaps fitting then that I return to talk about another Netflix show which has inspired similar discussions about masculinity and the so-called ‘Manosphere’.

Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere follows Theroux as he interviews several men who present a glamourous lifestyle to a predominantly young male audience whilst also presenting an anti-feminist message. Theroux claims that the internet has been “taken over” by male influencers who offer men “cheat codes to win at life.” I was originally going to write a more in-depth review of this documentary but I wasn’t really interested enough in it to go into too much detail.

Theroux travels to Marbella and the USA to interview the ‘manosphere’ influencers and inevitably becomes part of the experience. Since influencers constantly create content, Theroux finds himself being filmed as he and his crew are filming and interviewing their subjects. The documentary also shows posts from Theroux’s subjects commenting about the experience.

Harrison Sullivan a.k.a. HSTikkyTokky, an influencer who made his money from fitness programs and sales, is a primary focus of the documentary as Theroux’s interactions with him bookends Inside the Manosphere. Sullivan posts online videos and also manages an OnlyFans account but tells Theroux that OnlyFans ‘disgusts’ him and, if he had a daughter, he would disown her if she was on the platform. While Sullivan appears to be aware of the contradictions of this stance, he doesn’t seem to care – he is, in the words of the late great satirist Tom Lehrer: “a man whose allegiance is ruled by expedience.” The most interesting part of the documentary is towards the end when Theroux interviews Sullivan alongside his mother Elaine. Elaine is critical of some of Sullivan’s views but turns on Theroux by accusing Theroux of gaining money and fame from profiling figures like Sullivan which is a fair point.

Theroux also meets “success couch” Justin Waller, who is associated with Andrew and Tristan Tate. Waller, along with a couple of other so-called ‘manosphere’ men engages in “one-sided monogamy” – in other words, Waller et al sleep with other women outside of their marriages but expect their wives/girlfriends to be faithful to them. Amrou Fudl a.k.a. Myron Gaines is another ‘manosphere’ figures who engages in one-sided monogamy and expresses a desire to have multiple wives.  However, he is more reticent towards the idea when Theroux interviews Fudl’s girlfriend about the subject (according to the documentary, Fudl and his girlfriend have since separated).

Despite briefly noting that many of the influencers he encountered had dysfunctional relationships with their fathers, Theroux doesn’t explore issues affecting men that deeply, meaning that the documentary is almost as shallow as the lifestyle that influencers like HSTikkyTokky present online. The hypocritical behaviour shown by the likes of Sullivan and Fudl also makes you wonder how much of their beliefs are deeply held or just simply for shock value to gain attention and subcriptions.

Like many politically charged words, the meaning of the word ‘manosphere’ has become distorted over time to now mean men who generally adopt a lifestyle and persona similar to Andrew Tate, a man whom I have little interest in. The manosphere, as I originally understood it, was a broad term to mean anybody who discussed issues affecting men and was critical of feminism. This obviously included a wide variety of men and women who rarely agreed with one another. I have given up using the word manosphere as it is now a convenient strawman for political commentators to attack.

Similar to Adolescence, Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere could have been shown on TV in the 2000s without any of the hype around the manosphere since it doesn’t really provide much insight into what the manosphere is and why it has emerged.

If you’re interested in Louis Theroux’s documentaries, watch one of his previous shows instead.