Louis Theroux’s Foray into the Manosphere Only Scratches the Surface of the Societal Malaise that Makes it Possible
The most astute person in Louis Theroux’s latest Netflix documentary about the manosphere was a woman. The mother of Harrison Sullivan, known as HSTikkyTokky asked of Louis Theroux: “If you don’t agree with what Harrison is doing, then why are you making money off of it on a programme by publicising it?” She got to the heart of the manosphere (or lack of it), by highlighting the absolutely central role that money plays in this debased world. Hats off to Louis Theroux for another great documentary where he used silence to allow the subjects to talk themselves into shameful embarrassment. And yet Theroux failed to get to the bottom of why the whole thing stinks.
As well as HS Tikky Tokky, also featured were Sneako, Myron Gaines and Justin Waller, friend of the Tate brothers. Brutal opinions were shared on their channels casually and maliciously about one-sided monogamy (where the man can play around but the woman can’t), the Jews, fat girls, thick girls, slag girls, the satanic cabal running the world. For me one of the saddest points in the documentary came where Myron Gaines and his then girlfriend Angie were discussing his plan to take on multiple wives. Poor naïve Angie visibly winced, becoming immediately sad and diminished (they have since broken up). Most reviews of the documentary have focused on this ugly aspect of the manosphere, with one Telegraph reviewer claiming it left him “quivering behind the sofa”.
Yet as HS’s mum clocked, there is more to this grim world than misogyny and antisemitism. It is imperative that as a society we look carefully and honestly at this issue rather than reflexively thinking the solution is just banning the content creators, unpalatable as they are.
I watched this on the same day my 17 year-old-son was shown it at his college. I hastily convened a focus group of his mates and asked their opinions. Like HS’s mum, they knew instinctively that there is more at play here than live-streamed hate speech.
Firstly the class element. HS is recognised as being a basic chav. Justin Waller was raised in a Louisiana trailer park. Here Louis Theroux is wrong in his final summary where he talks about the manosphere influencers feeling like they’ve lost the historic “entitlement of men”. Easy for Westminster and Oxford educated nepo baby Louis Theroux to believe there is such as a thing as ‘male entitlement.’ For men like HS and Justin Waller, basic chavs, roadmen and trailer trash, such a concept has never existed. Their lives and the lives of the men that preceded them has always been one of grift and often outright misery.
Sadly the manosphere offering, whereby these influencers livestream their daily lives insulting or ‘dropping game’ on women, is enjoyed by similar demographics, those who don’t have purposeful and loving lives of their own. It is the latest iteration of the class divide. Teenage boys from stable homes who go to college, play sports and music and have mates and part-time jobs have no time or need to watch this internet slop.
So one of the questions that should be urgently asked, is: who are the boys watching this, why have they got so much time on their hands? Presumably viewers overlay with the 510,000 male NEETs currently in the UK and half of the 1.2 million persistently absent school children. It was HS who said: “Thirteen year-old boys shouldn’t be watching my stuff. Why aren’t the parents stopping them?”
Secondly, the role of women. Given their overt mistreatment of women, it is discomforting that all the manosphere influencers rely on a steady stream of women willing to go out with them, join their harem, appear on their podcast or livestream with the manosphere men their Only Fans content. All the male influencers talked about their love of women and stood in awe of their beauty. There is a poignant longing to be loved by these goddesses combined with a revulsion for the same girls if they chose to place their affections elsewhere. Female sexual liberation is treated with contempt, yet monetised by these men who easily resemble pimps.
My teenage focus group found this area troubling, with one boy saying: “Why do these girls prefer money to self-respect?” Louis Theroux was shown a video made the previous night of HS being given a blowjob by a girl he’d just met. “Why did she do it?” Theroux asked in his usual guileless manner. HS shrugged. “For the clout?” Even he understood she didn’t do it for pleasure. Have we plumbed such depths as a society that we do now elevate money, internet fame and fleeting carnal pleasure above loving relationships and personal integrity?
Thirdly, the role of money. As HS’s mum recognised, there is money to be made. The manosphere influencers combine the selling of sex in various forms with investment tips and financial upskilling courses. Again, the question remains: how are our economics so broken that young men have to look to these people as a solution to low income? Similarly for the girls involved: are they doing this out of financial desperation? Where are the proper jobs? Where are the high wages? How useless is our education system that subscribing to an Andrew Tate Real World course for $99 a month or joining Only Fans is viewed positively by so many young people?
Finally, the generational divide. It was funny to see how these young men had no idea who this documentary king was. One kept pronouncing the X in his surname. That poor old Louis Theroux seems to have experienced a significant thinning of his hair and unfortunate pattern baldness or alopecia around the nape of his neck, stood in stark contrast to the muscular physics of the manosphere men. At only 55 Theroux was referred to as “old man” or “Grampa”. The show was almost the internet meme come alive: Weak men create hard times, hard times create strong men. My teenage focus group were unconvinced that these physically strong but morally broken men would create good times, but they did land on an optimistic note. One 18 year-old said: “It’s too late for that lot, but another group of children will come along who will be different and maybe keep the fitness stuff and ideas about being responsible for yourself and making a good living, while also being decent, and nice to women.”
Let’s hope so.
Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence coach.
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So the author fondly imagines that her teenage son and his schoolmates are going to give their honest opinions about women to her son’s MUM?
It’s like summoning them all to a Feminist Inquisition. They would have been more relaxed and honest with her HUSBAND.
So true. Hilariously put.
Thank you! I expected lots of downvotes, as usual. 🙂
It seems to me that these “toxic” men are simply copying the ways of armies of man hating women that populate social media and the world at large.
Not sure why it’is a problem when men do it.but fine when women do it. Actually it’s applauded when women do it.
Maybe I meet an unusually well adjusted class of person but out in the real world I just don’t encounter much in the way of man or woman hating. I am sure both exist, but I tend to think that we get a somewhat exaggerated picture of it. That’s not to say it isn’t damaging, but most people I know seem to have fairly positive relationships with people of the opposite sex.
Same here. That said, media aside where the distortion of reality is stark, I do encounter a toned down version of the same thing. In other words, women making the odd negative remark about men being quite ok, but a man making any negative generalisation about women is likely to be accused of being a chauvinist or at the very least get a sideways look. So yeah, no “hating” but definitely a tone.
Social media is just that but on steroids.
Yes – though in my admittedly limited experience (I don’t do much socialising these days) that’s more of a middle class tendency.
If the tone is a slow steady drumbeat of never-ending misandry I’d agree with you. There’s the steady beat of subtle misandry where men/boys are always portrayed as pathetic, stupid and useless, with regular heavy beats of socially acceptable shite like Adolescence which portrays men/boys all as would-be rapists and murderers. Overlay that with the entitlement women feel they have to mock and ridicule men in public – “just a man”, “male tears”, “male fragility” blah, blah, blah – and, yeah, it’s a tone that being playing in my ear almost my entire life. And I long ago had enough of listening to it.
Yes, and “Manflu” & “Mansplaining”! Here is a horrible example of how women always receive lighter prison sentences than men (unless they are Lucy Connolly protesting against the murder of children):
Lincolnshire driver, 18, raced car at 100mph before crash that killed teenage friends | Lincolnshire Live
“A speeding 18-year-old driver who partied and went on a skiing holiday in the months after she killed two teenage passengers in a crash has been sentenced to 14 months’ detention [and banned from driving for only 3 years].”
“Madeleine Lonsdale, who had raced another car at 100mph during a trip to a petrol station to buy snacks, alcohol and vapes, partied “repeatedly” and choreographed TikToks in the months after their deaths, Lincoln Crown Court heard.”
See the photos of the teenage boys she killed.
The Globalist “Great Replacement” Judge is no doubt rewarding her for taking two blond young men out of the gene pool.
May God rest their immortal souls.
Exactly. Bonnie Blue had an article in The Spectator last December.
https://spectator.com/article/i-stand-with-nigel-farage/
Her real Satanic mission was to encourage Gang Rape in western nations, where it was ALMOST UNKNOWN before the Globalist-sponsored Mass Invasion from the Third World.
I guess the author talks to teens more than I do. Doubtless all sorts of unhelpful behaviours and attitudes are floating about, as they always have been and always will be. Are things worse? I don’t know. I am suspicious of people who propose “solutions” to “problems” of this nature. Is there a “manosphere”? Who is in it? Am I in it? I’m a man. I talk to other men and women and make and female youth of various ages. Are they in the same “manosphere” or “womanosphere”? Some people I talk to/come into contact with seem to me to talk bollocks a lot of the time and don’t behave in ways I approve of, others not so much. There is a mix of attitudes which to an extent go in line with social class and sex, but only to an extent. Other than the common problems of thinking “covid” was not a scam, and a tendency towards loving socialist tyranny among the educated, most people I meet don’t express nutjob opinions of the kind you see on the internet. Putting people in boxes is a natural human tendency, to try to make some kind of sense of an infinitely… Read more »
Yes, I would agree 100%. There have always been men that hate women, women that hate men, women that hate women ( often whilst simultaneously fawning over and ingratiating themselves with men. Think the trans ideology, as a modern example ) and men who hate men ( think white CEOs/Chief Constables/military top brass discriminating against white male candidates, as examples ), and this will never change.* The reason it will never change is that people are individuals, first and foremost, before they are their sex, race or any other so-called ‘protected characteristics’. So people whose default position is to always revert to an ‘us vs them’ mindset, usually because they harbour some sort of long-standing grudge or a victim mentality that they project onto others are just playing into the hands of ‘the enemy’, who seek to divide us, in my opinion. There’s really nothing to be gained from this continuous complaining and/or blaming of one sex or the other because various faults lie with all individuals, not just one entire sex. I just think in life that some people are always going to be more prone to hate others based on one characteristic or another, or haul their grievances… Read more »
It’s hard not think that the last part, about the effects of “DEI”, is not intentional.
One of my pet peeves (I have many) is that articles are written as if women have deep insight into the motivations of men. Sure they have insights but I suspect they only apply to a subset of cases.
I’ll even go along with the idea that there are some ‘toxic males’, but I don’t see much about ‘toxic females’ in the mainstream media.
Let’s do away with money shall we, see how we all get on.
Nobody is forced to buy anything in the free market at gunpoint.
We are of course forced at gunpoint to buy health “care” and public “services” from the Government in the UK.
At gunpoint? An exaggeration! OK – don’t pay your taxes and see who finally turns up on your doorstep and what they are carrying when you’ve chased all the other callers demanding money away.
Zero interest in watching this but fortunately Kathleen Stock did, so that the rest of us don’t have to. Here’s an excerpt of her take on the show; ”The guiding philosophy seems to be a mash-up of stoicism, misogyny, anti-wokery, conspiracy theories, sex positivity for men, and whatever else has already worked big numbers for Andrew Tate. There’s not much point looking for internal coherence; ideology is entirely dictated by what might draw bored eyeballs. Ironically, for people who talk a lot about overcoming the “slave mindset” and escaping “the matrix” — meaning the 9-to-5 grind, labouring away fruitlessly for the benefit of shadowy elites — these are men almost entirely made up of other people’s projections. They can’t do or say anything that might lose them the commodity of public attention, and they are constantly thinking of ways to get more. Back at the top of the pyramid, the streamers also seem miserable and haunted. “If I’d just done good things, I’d have never really blown up on social media in the first place,” TikkyTokky plaintively tells Theroux as if this explained it all. Everyone seems trapped in a degrading role, shafted by their own limbic system — the… Read more »
Kathleen Stock always gets beneath these topics really well – her writing in Unherd is always a mixture of common sense and sound philosophical wisdom.
“Have we plumbed such depths as a society that we do now elevate money, internet fame and fleeting carnal pleasure above loving relationships and personal integrity?”
It has always been thus, but 50 years ago when I was a lad there was no internet to post these experiences on.
Money and fleeting carnal relationships have, I suggest, been common throughout history. Why do some expect men and women to behave differently now.
One looks at the state of the world and one wonders how did society get like this. I haven’t watched the programme yet but it strikes me that the reason that men and women loathe each other is because there is a vacuum at the heart of their existence. Just observing modern human beings and how they behave and interact suggests they lack basic education either from the state or from their upbringing. Today’s system of education panders to progressive whims and agendas. Any meaningful life values, either from a religious or philosophical perspective, have been programmed out of them by so-called progressive, anti-cultural ideas that denigrates traditional values. DEI being a classic example.
Hopefully the pendulum will swing back before it’s too late.
The pendulum will swing back, via Muslims… numbers wise, that’s a certainty… and they don’t have a problem with a lack of religious structure… it’s just based on the 7th century