Inside the Manosphere: What Louis Theroux Didn’t Show You | Ep. 155

The Netflix series Inside the Manosphere has sparked a lot of conversation, and Louis Theroux’s take on this online world has brought even more attention to how extreme male influencers are shaping some young men. In this episode, we unpack why these voices are growing so quickly - and why young men are turning to them in the first place.

We look at the culture around modern masculinity, how audience rewards drive creators to become more extreme, and why some influencers mix genuine self-improvement advice with messages that spiral into hostility towards women. We also explore the bigger social context that often gets ignored - including what’s happening on the female-influencer side, the backlash around “toxic masculinity,” and why so many young men feel they’ve lost any clear sense of role or direction.

Topics we cover include:
• why certain influencers build massive followings by being controversial
• how paid groups, “courses” and investment schemes work behind the scenes
• why young men can be vulnerable to extreme voices
• how misogyny and misandry feed each other online
• what happens when traditional roles disappear without anything replacing them
• why balance and cooperation matter more than culture-war talking points
• how social platforms reward the most divisive personalities

If you’re trying to understand the manosphere - or why it’s suddenly everywhere - this episode offers a grounded and balanced look at the forces driving it, and how Louis Theroux’s documentary fits into the bigger picture.

If you find it helpful, like and subscribe for more conversations on culture, psychology and wellbeing.

Learn more about Fiona's speaking and media services: https://fionakane.com.au/

Credit for the music used in this podcast:

• Intro Music by  Musinova from Pixabay
• Outro Music from Pixabay

Transcript

Welcome And Why It Matters

Fiona Kane 0:13

Hello and welcome to the Wellness Connection. I'm your host, Fiona Kane. Today I'm going to be talking about the Netflix series Inside the Manosphere. It's Louis Thoreau's latest documentary. A lot of people have been talking about it, so I thought I'd watch it and uh chat to you about what I feel in regards to this documentary. It actually reminds me of I did talk about this previously when I talked about uh Adolescence, that TV series. So if you sort of go back, I think it was a couple of years ago, I don't know, but when I talked about that, some similar things because in adolescence they were hinting at what the boy was influenced by. And this series is where they're actually just going through and actually looking at these influences. So anyway, um, so the manosphere influences Essentially the Manosphere is referring to this this group of male influencers who the ones that he showed in this and and the ones that are the I I suppose look, what am I trying to say? In all of in all of podcasting the internet influences and all of that sort of stuff, there's a whole range of people. And of course there's extremes in there's extremes, right? So this is really focusing on the extreme. So there's a lot of podcasters who aim at male audiences or speak to male audiences who are giving really good advice uh and you know, saying the other way around, people who aim at female audiences, all that jazz. But then there are ones who are, you know, they're on the extremes. And he was referring to the ones that are a little bit more, well, much more on the extremes here. And so he was essentially talking about this group of male influencers who, you know, um a lot of things start with a a level of truth in that these guys are selling success, and what they're doing is they're saying to young men don't sit around waiting for luck to happen for you or for life to just serve you or give you what you need. If you want to be successful, if you want to be uh do well in life, you have to go out and make it happen. Great, excellent. So, you know, so it's so a lot of these things is it starts at a basic truth that's actually a really good truth. And they were talking to sort of some of the fans of the influencers, and this this is the stuff that they were saying. They were saying it in very particular speak that that influencer had used, but they were essentially saying, you know, I want to do well and I can't sit around feeling sorry for myself, I've got to make it happen. So, you know, from that point of view, a lot of things, yeah, like I said, they started a basic truth and and a basic good. That's a good thing. They want to make it happen. It's just how that, what that looks like, that's that is the issue, or who you're listening to in regards to who you're getting advice from in regards to this. Um, they these particular influencers that Louie was talking to, they seem to all sell courses and things, and a lot of them sell the Tate courses, the Tate Brothers courses. And so a lot of it seems to be, well, if you join my uh what's the group, the um I what's Signal group or whatever it is, you join the group, you pay to join the group, you pay, I don't know,$49 a month or something like that, and um, and you get all sorts of advice. And I suppose they can say things within those groups that they can't say as much online uh in public, but it seems to be like all about residual incomes that they're going to get as well from these influencers. If they get hundreds of thousands of fans and they get these fans all to pay the$49 a month, they get a percentage of that, right? And so they're making money off these kids. And and also uh some of them have like investment things. If you put in, I think Louis put in like£500 in the beginning. If you put in£500 into this investment thing and follow my instructions of how to invest, you know, you'll make lots of money. And I think at the end of it he had£190 or something, but yeah, that's that kind of stuff. So they they seem to be making well, they are making money off these young people, and not just the money that they're actually paying for those sorts of services, it's more of the money they're making from the clicks and the the ads and the all of the revenues that they get from social media or um all the platforms, right? So uh uh it's a business, it's a business model, I suppose. And the thing about business models and this this kind of business model, when we're um when we are online, like me as well, like all of us, anyone who's online who's doing a podcast or doing YouTube or you know, trying to get attention in some way or trying to get traction in some way, there obviously there's rewards for certain types of behavior online. So there are absolute rewards for being controversial, or you know, there just is. And so uh you can see that it's I've talked about it before in regards to audience capture as well, that when you realize the thing that works, you keep doing the thing that works. And so what can happen is we can uh and I think that happens a lot with um like with political and uh podcasters and social commentators, where we find that every people reward us because we talk about a certain topic, so then we talk about that a lot more. Um, that's particularly um well, you see it a lot when people start talking about um, you know, the Jews did this and the Jews did that, and they're responsible for everything. You know, they get a lot of reward for that, and then they just seem to go down that rabbit hole and and off they go. Um, so there is a lot of reward for certain topics or being controversial, whatever. And so these young influencers, you know, they've got what I would say is terrible attitudes towards women, and again, they they start from a a truth place as in I think that I don't think there's anything wrong with the fact that I think societies work well when there's a certain level of traditional roles, that you know, obviously women do make good nurturers and carers and mothers, men breadwinners, and that's great. It doesn't mean that you can't change that up and you know, women can't be breadwinners and men can't be nurturers and all of that sort of stuff. But I I feel like you know I don't think the 50s housewife thing is necessarily ideal. We don't want to go back to that, of course. But at the same time, we've gone to the point where we're we're completely rejecting everything about what was good about being homemakers, that sort of thing. So, you know, they they're sort of starting from that point of view saying, hey, look, if we revert back to, you know, when things were a bit more simple, uh, that um, you know, families will do better and all that kind of stuff. So they're kind of starting from that place, but then they're perverting it and yeah, it's it's not good where they go with it. But ultimately, uh, they have learned that if they say lots of uh things that make men feel better and make men feel good that they'll do well. And so what they do is they say a lot of horrible things about women, essentially. But the the thing is too though, when you do look at this, I the problem is okay, we look at the manosphere and we look at the problems with the manosphere, but we won't do and there are problems with it, don't don't get me wrong, there are definite problems with it. I I don't like the idea that young any young men are being are listening to a lot of these a lot of these influences. It's really, really nasty stuff. So I am not trying to defend these guys at all. However, as a as a society at the moment, we won't won't talk about the other side of it, like the female influences and some of what they do, and how you know, just as much as the men in the manosphere uh have you know promote misogyny, uh the other way around, the women in the whatever the woman's sphere, whatever you call that, they promote misandry, right? They hate men. So yeah, I I think as a society at some point we've got to just sort of rather than kind of just look at these, look at these manosphere people, it's like, well, where do they come from? Why are they there? What's the vacuum that brought them there? And let's, you know, and what are we, what are what's happening on the other side of things that might be pushing this as well? So I think we just need to sort of come at this with more balance, uh, because what these men are reacting to is this all these years and years and years of, you know, max masculinity is toxic and blah, blah, blah. And the problem with the fact that we've taken away roles and we kind of go, anyone can do anything, and there's no such thing as gender, and we're all the same, and uh, girl boss, we can do everything, blah, blah, blah. The problem with the that in the extreme, which is kind of what we've done now, is that a lot of men feel like they don't have roles, they don't have a place, and um, and so they're feeling quite lost, and that's part of what's leading to this. Also, it's perfectly okay to show a lot of hate towards uh men. It's very normal and very natural, and it's it's happening all of the time. And uh, and so they're kind of reacting to that as well. They're kind of going, well, why is it okay to hate us, hate on us? And so they're responding to that. And you know, you can argue the same on the other side, and the problem is we can argue to the cows come home. Let's maybe just have a better way of approaching this where we work together, as opposed to, you know, um, these are all, you know, men are all just um, you know, men are all useless and women are girl bosses and we're better, and blah, blah, blah. How about, you know, men are good at certain things, women are good at certain things. Uh, some people are good at both or the other, and that's fine as well. Let's work together, make it happen, right? Let's just come together with all of our, all of our unique skills and uh make society work and make the world work, you know. That's probably a better way of approaching it overall. But um, anyway, so there's things that um, you know, these these young men, it was like one of them was like live live casting for seven hours at a time with them just following him around. He was in some, where was he? He was in Spain somewhere, um, Ibiza or something like that. I don't know. And he was so he was just causing trouble and he was like getting people to come and meet them and then beating them up. And supposedly these people were bad people, but I don't know. It's that's kind of like beating them up for clicks or whatever. You know, I think there's courts and things, there's um a law for that. Uh so they're obviously just getting up to a lot of trouble. And look, I suppose it's a sort of thing like a young gang of men roaming around drunk on a Friday night kind of thing. It used to be it's that, right? But it's that on steroids because they've got money, they've got clicks, they're getting lots of attention for doing it online, and they're reaching millions of people rather than the people just in the neighbourhood that they would have been in before. So it's nothing new from that point of view that, you know, men, testosterone, whatever, have a few drinks, get up to no good. But this is just doing it to doing it as a doing it as a job, really. Doing it as a way of as an income and as a job and as a role. And and it's very clear too, when you see these men, when you kind of saw a little bit more of the slightly more behind the scenes or slightly more relaxed versions of them, they weren't quite as sure of themselves as they make out that they are. They obviously had women in their lives who had a certain amount of say about things as well. And um, you know, a lot of it's a facade, a lot of it's just you know, it's made up for the cameras, right? So these men are getting paid for this job of playing the controversial man who, you know, he-man kind of role. That's they're getting rewarded and paid for that. And you know, that in in our society now with young people, when they interview young people about, you know, what's what do you want to do when you get older, what do you want to want to be when you get older, and they they all a lot of them say influences, right? So once upon a time we wanted to be a movie star or a rock star, or it might have been a fireman, or all those other kind of just uh normal people kind of jobs, I suppose. And um and now and we or we wanted to be, like I said, a movie star or whatever. But at least there were sort of things that there was a sort of like we wanted to do something that had some sort of skill involved, but the way and I'm not saying there's no skill involved in being an influencer, there certainly is a skill. You've got to be a good salesperson and you've got to have a good back end of people who know how to who who know how to do the interweb stuff, like know how to uh you know repurpose videos and do all the things that they do on TikTok and all that stuff, like make things viral, all that sort of stuff, which is what they do. They essentially will go out and record stuff, and they've got people in the background constantly making these little TikToks and pushing them out everywhere and making moments go viral. And so there's certainly a level of skill to that, but it's not the same as the level of skill of having to go and learn a craft or an art or a trade or something like that, right? So uh so maybe it looks attractive to young people that it looks like something that's that they could do that would might be a bit easier, I don't know. And maybe it just, you know, these people and all their videos, you know, getting around in their sports cars and their good clothes and their and the entourage of people obviously just looks appealing for young people and they they want to be part of that. They also, I think when you what these influences sell is these they're talking a lot to people. So they talk about they talk about the matrix, and the matrix is in their in their language, the matrix is the people who in everyday jobs and everyday life who were just going along and fitting into society kind of thing. And they say that you know you don't have to live like that, you can make your own rules and blah blah blah and live outside of the matrix. And you know, I suppose if you're I don't know, if you've if you've got a life ahead of you that looks like it's gonna be a bit of a dull life or hard like hardworking life, if you're maybe, you know, going to be doing, I don't know, digging trenches or doing whatever it is that's like sort of a hard, hard work that you're gonna get paid low money for in some small town or something, and you see that you couldn't maybe have a different option, you could see why it would be really appealing as well. That maybe um this life of drudgery that I I might have to have, maybe I don't have to have that. These guys are selling that, so they're talking to the young men saying you don't have to be that, you can do this. And um, and also too, the other thing that I've talked about before, and that bear's mentioning because I think it really contributes to this, is if you look at the way that people are meeting and dating and things these days, there's not so much of that happening. Young people aren't meeting as much as they used to, and they're not dating as much, and they're you know, they're not um coupling up as much as they used to, they're spending much more time online and they're experiencing life through online, and you know, everything's about you know uh swiping on on Tinder or whatever all those apps are called, and so they're not really learning how to have healthy relationships, and because they're looking at people online, they're maybe not looking at their local people, and you know, once upon a time you'd pair up with the people in your local group, right? So the people you went to school with or worked with, or the people who you were around who you were around, those people would ultimately pair up, and there was sort of someone for everyone kind of thing. But these days, if you're looking online, there's a whole whole lot of potential perceived options online. You're not necessarily looking at your local people, and that's a real disadvantage, I think, for young men in particular who aren't actually seeing and being around real women and being seen by or getting dates or you know, being part of that. And I think that that also is making those young men feel quite left out and quite angry, and that's part of what draws them to these sort of communities as well. So then when the influencers say, Well, you can be like us, and then you can control the women, and these, you know, these you know, these women will do as they're told and and you know know their place, and you'll get all these hot women who will do whatever you like, that kind of stuff. It's probably quite appealing to people who feel a bit angry that you know they're being rejected, they feel like they've been rejected by women. So there's probably some of that playing into this as well. Um, what Louis does also bring up, even though he doesn't talk a lot about why they're doing this, he does sort of start to hint at he's noticed a bit of a pattern, which is a lot of them have had sort of past where they've had some sort of trauma of um, whether it be abuse or just not having father figures around, you know, surprise, surprise. So that there's these men who've been really hurt by situations in their life and felt really vulnerable. You know, it's not unusual for people who, when they've felt really vulnerable and when they've been really hurt, to turn around and sort of create a really kind of hard outer shell and to sort of lash out so that no one can hurt them anymore. And this is kind of what that whole facade of, you know, like I'm a he-man and I'm tough and I control my world and my woman does what you know she says what I say that she should do, and and I'm tough and strong and all of that kind of stuff, and rich and you know, basically invulnerable. It's like no one can harm me now. And that's what a lot of these, a lot of these men, that's the way that they kind of that's their persona. Uh, and then when a couple of different times throughout the series when Louis, uh not series, that the movie, when Louis just questions different things, you could sort of see it crumbling slightly, and they didn't like it when it, whenever they felt vulnerable, they would lash out or withdraw and and you know get away from him and then lash out. Well, yeah, what they would normally do, not lash out to him, because they're this online warrior type thing. What they would do is they would withdraw from him and then lash out online about him. So um, so it's interesting that you could see whenever he made them feel vulnerable, they lashed out at him. Um, and calling him, you know, saying he was associated with um I won't use the word on here, because again, there's those words that YouTube gets upset about, but um, but uh it sounds a bit like PDF file and things like that, right? So when um yeah, they lashed out in that way, which tells me that they're more vulnerable than what that they are quite vulnerable, right? They're just acting like they're not. And that is again, it's just not an unusual type of character. It's just instead of just a character that you know in your local, it's someone who's doing this online and um really good salesmen and making a lot of money out of young people who are listening to them. And if the young people are listening to them about relationships with women or how to treat women, uh that's obviously not so good. Uh, and uh, you know, and some of these he didn't talk about, you didn't show these influences last night, but there are certainly are influencers who are very obsessed with their looks as well, like male influencers. And these ones are telling young men that they need to, you know, um, what's that about? I think they sort of tell them that like the size of like between their nose and their mouth, is it called the friend? Whatever anyway, that measurement uh it controls your success in life and things like that, encouraging them to have all sorts of surgeries. So there's that side of it too, that's they didn't show last night, it wasn't really about that, but um, but yeah, anyway, uh that that there's a lot of stuff online that's uh really negative uh for men and for women. And you know, I I think it is worth talking about what is going on with these young men, why are they in this situation? Uh the young men who are following them as well. I mean, and I think it is a big part of it is a lack of dads around, uh, a lack of um uh positive influence from males, and there's all sorts of reasons for that that I'm not going to go into in this episode because it's too much too too much to talk about, too many aspects there. So not having the dads around is a really thing, a really uh negative thing. I think not having the male role models is is really not good for uh these young men. Also, uh, like I said before, I think our online world where we're not actually having relationships with individuals, we're not learning to know get to know people as people, and um and I think that just basic society society is lacking basic values. I think that our our society throwing a lot of basic sort of probably healthy Christian values out of the window and saying that anything goes and and not having boundaries and not having you know safe spaces and boundaries. And safe spaces, I don't mean safe spaces in like, oh, I'm triggered, I'm triggered snowflake, I need a safe space. I mean mean more like safe spaces as in children do need boundaries, they need boundaries to feel safe so that they can test the boundaries and grow up and become strong. That's what I'm talking about, uh a safety in that way, safety in uh healthy boundaries to help people build become strong, not safety in protecting someone from hurty feelings, not talking about that. But because we don't have that as much anymore in our society, I think that uh that's really and we and we have less purpose. And because there's so much changing in the world, uh jobs are changing and relationships are changing and dating is changing and AI has come along, and a lot of people are gonna be useless and they're gonna need to find different ways of making money. There's a lot of change happening, right? And I think that all of that change is contributing to this people feeling vulnerable. And people lashing out. I think that women have been lashing out at men for a long time. Men are lashing back. And it's I don't think it's healthy. I think that we need to find common ground. And I think all of this only meeting people online is not healthy. The other interesting thing about this, these influencers or these manosphere people is their weird relationship with it's kind of weird because they've got this codependent relationship with these women who are kind of like the uh the only fans type um models. Well, for anyone who isn't in this uh who isn't in this space, they call themselves only fans models, but essentially they but they're that's porn, right? Um they sell sell themselves online and different levels of membership and all of that sort of stuff as pornography, but they call themselves only fans models. And they have this weird relationship where they like to have these kind of girls hanging around with the pool around them and making them look good. And and often they actually one of their business models is actually to own the homes that these girls make or the their content in, or own the webcam service that these girls all work for, or like some sort of business model around basically these girls making porn online, and um and at the same time they're hating on these girls and saying how they're you know all of the language that people use around that type of girl, right? Really negatively, uh treating them badly and treating them like they're then then they're nothing. And you see, you see it, there's a type of podcast. There's there's two different podcasts I've seen do this. So one that they one they showed on this is called Fresh and Fit, I think. The other one I think is called um the whatever podcast. And they'll have these types of girls on the podcast, and the types of girls who, when they ask them uh how many name three countries, they can't name three countries, right? And then they'll use that as their well, I told you that women were stupid, like kind of thing, you're right. And so it's it's kind of like they have this weird symbiotic relationship where they're both content creators and so they both need clicks and likes and subscribers and all of that. So they work together. So the women who know they're hated by these men and and and treated really badly by these men will want to work with them because they also make a lot of money by working with these men and get a lot of clicks and likes and all the rest of it. And I don't know, it's it's this weird relationship that they have where they yeah, weird bedfellows put it that way, where they uh work together. So that's another sort of strange kind of thing that I've I noticed in this, in this particular special, is that yeah, this weird sort of symbiotic relationship that they have with each other. You know, um the other thing that um one other thing that people are complaining about a lot is there was one sort of uh there was one scene where this man's looking around, I think he was in Miami and sort of saying, look at all of this, you know, men did it all. And yes and no, like well, you know, women actually birthed all those men, so women were part of that. But women have invented stuff as well. But you you can look at like I get it when when men sort of do the thing where they say women wouldn't survive without men because we're the ones that keep all this going. Well, they're right, because you know, they're the ones that are down in the sewers and and um up in the skyscrapers building them and and you know when the SES are out rescuing things and up in there's been a storm and they're fixing wires and stuff. It's largely men that do those jobs. I'm not saying women don't either, I'm just saying it's largely men. They do make our society work in that way. But again, like I said, it's women do a whole bunch of stuff too, and we're part of it, and it all just works together. They can do that because we're looking after other things. Um, so it's sort of it's just it's not kind of just one or the other. But you know, it does. I I read something in where I was looking at um, here you go, news.com.au, I just uh by Lauren Robinson. And you know, she talked about this, and I thought, you know, she was responding to them, saying that men did all this and men make all of this, and she was saying what women do as well. And you know, she's absolutely right, and she's talking about what women have invented, and she, you know, she explains how the you know the actress Hedy Lamar, um, well, she made she created the the backbone of the of of Wi-Fi. So apparently the technology that formed the basis for Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth, she uh she invented those, uh, which is I think pretty impressive. Um, so during World War II, she co-invented frequency hopping technology alongside composer George Antheel to prevent Nazi forces from jamming Allied torpedo signals. So, you know, it's good on her. And uh and there are women, apparently, a woman created the windscreen wiper, dishwashers, but you know, Murray Curie and radioactivity, uh her or her medical discoveries uh were pretty amazing. Apparently, there's women involved in things like CCT, caller ID, you know, lots of things. So women have created lots of things and lots of things that are around us. So I think that these again, these shows where they say, Oh, men, women didn't do anything, but men have done an awful lot too, and they do do an awful lot. So, hey, let's figure out a way of just knowing that we all contribute, and um, and some people contribute in you know, in ways, you know, the same just I like look, I can't do the same thing as what a lot of men can do, but some women can, and that's great. And the same the other way around, a lot of men can't do things that women can do, some men can, that's great as well. But why can't we just work together and say we're good at different things and sometimes we're good at the same things, and let's work together and make it happen. But look, I think at the end of the day, my answer to this is I think we have to encourage people to see people in person, encourage people to have conversations, encourage social groups and things where you know men and women get to be together and talk to each other and get to know each other, get more offline and more into the real world. But I think it is important to understand these things exist. Um, and I think actually, if you're a parent of uh young men particularly, you might want to, well, young women as well, actually. I think it's not it's worth probably watching this together and um talking about it together because it's it's it's you know, you can't pretend these things aren't online and these things aren't there, and you don't you think that your sons might not be attracted to it, but they might very they might be, you know. So it's actually, I think it's better to have the discussion about it and talk about it and just break it down as a family and talk about these things rather than just hope for the best and hope that they don't look at those things or get involved in those things that I think can be very, very negative. Anyway, uh please like, subscribe, share, uh, and um, you know, let me know what you think about this topic and what what you thought of the special. And hope you have a great week. I'll talk to you again next week where I like to have conversations about uh real conversations about things that matter. Okay, thanks. Bye.