The Grifters of Male Rage

"Inside the Manosphere"—a review

Apr 17, 2026

Louis Theroux’s new Netflix documentary, Inside the Manosphere, takes viewers into a strange corner of online culture. The “manosphere” is a loose network of YouTubers, podcasters, live-streamers, online pranksters and more. The influencers interviewed in the documentary claim to teach young men how to become dominant, wealthy, and irresistible to women.

Their message is simple. Reject conventional morality. Pursue money, sex, and status. Many of these influencers speak about women with open contempt. Some drift into antisemitic conspiracy theories.

The manosphere pitches a specific idea about male worth. They claim that women enter the world with innate value—though they often contradict this by telling their followers to mistreat women. In contrast, they say, a man must earn his value through dominance, wealth, and sexual success.

This is a bleak message. It is also a brilliant sales strategy. First you convince young men that they are nothing. Then you charge them to become something. It is one of the oldest cons in the world, updated for the age of the algorithm.

At first glance, the documentary seems to confirm what critics already suspect. The manosphere is toxic and extreme. But the most revealing parts of the film are the layers of hypocrisy. The influencers selling this lifestyle often do not live it themselves.

Early in the film, Mr. Theroux asks influencer Justin Waller a simple question: How many kids do you have? The man hesitates. Later, we learn he lives with his two children and their mother—he describes her as his “wife” though they are not legally married—who is pregnant with their third child. The man leads a fairly conventional family life, yet he spends much of his online career telling followers that men should dominate women, avoid commitment and establish a rotation of multiple partners.

One influencer known as Myron Gaines brags privately to Mr. Theroux that he plans to have multiple wives. But when Mr. Theroux raises this idea of “one-way monogamy” in front of Gaines’s girlfriend, his facial expression immediately changes. He then says, “Who knows? Maybe I’ll only wanna be with one girl after all.” The credits of the documentary reveal that the girlfriend eventually left him.

One of the most candid moments in the film comes when the British influencer Harrison Sullivan (known online as “HSTikkyTokky”) speaks to Theroux over breakfast. When asked why he behaves so outrageously online, he gives a blunt answer. Sullivan says he is just about money. If he attracts attention, he can monetize it. Whether the statements are sincere does not matter. He can profit from it.

The manosphere influencers peddle luxury beliefs that are costly for their audience but relatively harmless for themselves. Romantic commitment and engagement with the real world for me; hedonism and manufactured rage for thee. The young men who take the manosphere message most seriously are the ones most likely to suffer from it.

Some manosphere influencers claim that “the Jews” control society for profit through economic and sexual manipulation of the general public. This is straightforward psychological projection. Many of these influencers run operations that extract money from fans through crypto scams, fake online universities, and overpriced subscription services. Sullivan, who at one point in the documentary says “F*** the Jews,” profits from sexual content made by OnlyFans creators through his Telegram channel.

A revealing moment is when one of the influencers says kids shouldn’t be watching his content and that their parents should be more responsible about overseeing what their kids consume. The filmmakers then show the same influencers on the street taking selfies with adolescent male fans. The young men depicted in the film seem to be looking for structure, discipline and a sense of belonging.

Theroux recently described himself as a “progressive” on the Modern Wisdom podcast. He notes, correctly, that it is striking how many of these influencers as well as their fans grew up without fathers. Theroux then claims, though, that all family structures “can work.”

The second claim sits uneasily beside the first.

The progressive view that children are equally likely to flourish in any family arrangement is contradicted by decades of research showing that children raised in stable, married, two-parent homes do better across nearly every measure. When that fact is overlooked or dismissed, boys who grow up without fathers seek guidance elsewhere.

A culture that prizes individual fulfillment over duty, and personal liberation over stable relationships, leaves young men adrift. The manosphere is loud and ugly. But it did not create the hunger it feeds on.

Here is my discussion with Ben Shapiro about the manosphere: