Louis Theroux Goes Inside the Manosphere for Netflix

This past season, Netflix's Adolescence racked up a bunch of awards, including eight Emmys. It's a powerful, fictional story that captured everyone's attention for its unflinching look at how "red pill culture" has had a profoundly detrimental effect on boys and young men. Netflix has now produced a Louis Theroux documentary, Inside The Manosphere, that looks at that culture from the creator side. It's not a companion piece, per se. But it does unveil the sort of content creators the character Jamie Miller might have been exposed to in the show.

If you're not familiar with Theroux, he's been making documentaries since the late 1990s, diving into taboo subjects and dark subcultures for the BBC and American television. For Inside The Manosphere, he convinced four of the red pill community's biggest influencers to allow him to interview them and embed himself with their crews for a couple of days.

Their reluctance is palpable from the very beginning of the documentary. All of these men are highly suspicious of media coverage. They think the mainstream media only publishes "hit pieces" about them. But it's easy to underestimate Theroux. His work exists outside the mainstream. And, when you're an "Alpha Male," someone of Theroux's physical stature coming into your multi-million dollar rental home in glasses and a cardigan isn't a threat. These guys think they're bigger, stronger, and smarter than Theroux. But you can see them start to understand that Louis has them figured out and that they've made a horrible mistake agreeing to be part of this documentary.

The Manosphere is huge. This documentary covers four of its major players. Their messages may differ slightly, but all of them loudly espouse odious views on women, sex, relationships, and racialized people. And they're all running some sort of financial or fitness scam via their Telegram channels and private apps.

HStikkytokky, a British influencer, was hiding from the police in Marbella, Spain, when Theroux met up with him. Born Harrison Sullivan, HS is a self-proclaimed racist, misogynist, and homophobe. Besides those things, his only strongly held beliefs are in making money and chasing clout. He's chosen to use violently hateful rhetoric to build his following.

Louisiana's Justin Waller is married with two daughters and tells his followers that a woman's only value is in her looks. He tells them women have never built anything of value or contributed to society in any meaningful way. He also says they don't really want to. Real women want their men to provide for them while they act as housekeepers and baby makers. He lives in Miami, Florida, separately from his wife and children. He practices "one-way monogamy," meaning he's allowed to have multiple partners, but his wife is not.

Myron Gaines is considered to be one of the most poisonous podcasters of the entire Manosphere. He also practices "one-way monogamy," but he isn't married. He has a girlfriend who keeps his living space clean while he hosts Cam Girls and OnlyFans stars in his studio, where he yells at them and calls them sluts.

Sneako, born Nicholas Balinthazy, is a conspiracy theorist who has been banned from all of the major streaming platforms for hate speech at one time or another. He still makes millions of dollars via Rumble and X and was recently unbanned from YouTube, where I found him making Minecraft videos. He has disavowed the red pill community but thinks a global Satanic cabal is in league with the jews to run the world and keep men down by sending out negative vibrations and spreading transgenderism via Sam Smith's music.

There are millions of boys, men, girls, and women who follow these people on social media and streaming sites. They are the mushroom-haircutted white boys you see at the mall. They are the young men working multiple jobs, trying to get by in a society that has devalued hard work. They are the pick-me girls who laugh at their own debasement because someone told them that their only value is in their looks, so they had better make themselves appealing to men before they get old. This is an ecosystem that has been growing unchecked since Gamergate, and now the voices that have been shouting poison into their viewers' headphones are also influencing politics and shaping laws.

There's a saying that men are afraid women will laugh at them, while women are afraid men will kill them. These are the type of men who would kill a woman for laughing at them. They roam the streets, gyms, and clubs like a pack of chimpanzees seeking validation from women, fan encounters, and the looks on the faces of the "betas" they want to intimidate.

I have to give a lot of credit to Theroux's interview style. It is not aggressive, but quietly persistent. He takes their beliefs seriously. He doesn't attack them, only asks that they be explained clearly, and then he gently points out their inconsistencies. It does not save him from becoming a victim of their ire or trolling from their commenters. But it does give Theroux a magical power over the documentary's subjects that makes them reveal themselves to him in ways they didn't expect.

None of these men are smart. They're just very loud. They've figured out that we live in an "attention economy" and they've learned to take advantage of that by generating a lot of attention. The show they put on for the Manosphere doesn't involve strongly held beliefs. They are currency. These guys are all in it to make cash and chase clout. The women who encourage and participate in their content are also looking for cash and clout. In that way, it's just another online grift. A perpetual cycle of clout chasing and clip farming so they can create viral moments that make them more money. They're not concerned with the morality of anything they promote. And, because they don't really believe anything they're saying or doing, they back down when confronted with their own words and actions.

The most insightful parts of the film are when Theroux gets to speak with the women in these influencers' lives. They go to great lengths to prevent him from meeting their mothers, wives, and girlfriends. But, again, Theroux is persistent. In some instances, as with HS's mother and Justin Waller's wife, there's a misguided belief that meeting them will somehow make their case. But the non-verbal cues these women give are very clear to viewers. Theroux is very gentle in asking sensible questions that force them to reexamine (or examine for the first time) what they're actually doing with their lives and where this will all eventually lead.

He asks HS's mom if she agrees with his content and if she raised him with these beliefs. HStikkytokky looks horrified as Thoreaux details the type of material he publishes for his mother. She's very quick to say that she doesn't agree with everything he posts. But, like a good "Boy Mom," she defends him anyway.

In their one-on-one conversations, Justin Waller makes it seem like his wife is an enthusiastic partner in his regressive relationship beliefs. But when Theroux finally meets her, we understand she's just rationalizing staying with him because she doesn't want to work for a living anymore. I can respect the desire to have a soft life. But if the cost of it is supporting the spread of hate and violence against women, I would send it back.

Myron Gaines' "girlfriend" actually left him after they shot this documentary. Although he was barred from speaking with her at first, Theroux happened upon her in Gaines' recording studio and started asking questions before Gaines chased her back into their living quarters. He also managed a brief conversation with one of Gaines' female employees, but that got shut down too. You can see the anger and fear in Gaines's eyes when he realizes what's happening. He knows that these women can reveal something about him that he doesn't want his followers to know. He's not as in control of his woman as he pretends to be online.

None of these men wants to risk being exposed as anything less than a strongman. That's why they appeal to, and are in society, with MAGA influencers and the Trump family. They put on a great show for their followers, but they are just fragile children who are shouting out childhood traumas to the world, expecting fame to fix them. They think the traditional family dynamic makes them weak because it was all they longed for when they were young, and they never got it. They talk about being trapped in a "Matrix" of society's expectations, where they are forced to accept the hand they've been dealt instead of setting their own goals for success.

But literally, no one is doing that, except themselves. The credo of the Manosphere is to be tough, have as much sex as possible, be bigger/better/stronger than everyone around you, and make sure they all know it. There's not a lot of wiggle room in there, and they don't understand they've built The Matrix themselves, for themselves. With Inside The Manosphere, Theroux dismantles their Matrix and leaves them all uncomfortably exposed.

There's a scene between Theroux, Gaines, and Gaines' girlfriend where she hands Gaines their dog to hold. It's a little fluffy thing, with bows on its ears and a pink harness. In the scene, they're talking about the idea of Gaines wanting multiple wives in the future and how she feels about that. She physically puts some distance between them, she grimaces, and tries to come up with an answer. Gaines immediately backtracks by explaining that he's too busy working to collect wives, so it's only a possibility sometime in the future, maybe. Gaines looks down at the dog and realizes that Louis Theroux just quietly destroyed his masculinity and the power-dynamic in his relationship. It's a little bit satisfying. Especially when you know Gaines posted a seven-hour-long crash-out video in response to the documentary being released.

Even HSTikkyTokky, with all of his tough words and big muscles, is revealed to be a complete Mama's Boy at the end. There's raw footage of him and his mother interacting before their interview. She's telling him something about going to get a ginger shot, and he whines, "But mummy, I don't want a juice!" He might as well have stomped his foot and sucked his thumb. In response to the time he spent talking to Theroux, HS posted a collection of highly edited clips attempting to make Theroux look like a friend of Jimmy Savile or just another "beta pedo" out to get him.

Sneako seems the most clear-headed about what purpose the Manosphere serves, selling products to teenagers. And while he has distanced himself from a lot of that scene by adopting some Islamic practices, it doesn't feel any more authentic than what anyone else is doing. When confronted on the street by young fans, he is visibly uncomfortable listening to them parrot his content. He says they're not his target demographic and blames parents for allowing their kids to watch his videos. He makes a valid point about parental responsibility. But, like a petulant child, he refuses to take ownership of his own part in the ecosystem.

Eric Bogosian wrote a play called Talk Radio in the 1990s that Oliver Stone adapted for film. A toxic radio talk show host admits to exploiting his listeners for ratings and then gets shot in the head by one of them. The Manosphere is the more nocuous grandchild of radio shock jocks, made evident by the popularity and discussion around Adolescence. At the conclusion of Inside The Manosphere, you are left with the understanding that these men really are just children who have never faced any consequences for their actions. They speak in hollow catchphrases that they don't really believe, and cannot authentically live the version of life they preach about because they haven't ever found partners who are 100% willing to participate with them. The Manosphere is The Matrix they're all so afraid of being trapped in, but they can't see it.

Inside The Manosphere is streaming on Netflix.