Louis Theroux, right, interviews Nicolas Kenn De Balinthazy, an influencer who goes by Sneako, for the Netflix documentary Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere.Netflix
If the phrase “we are doomed” has been rolling around your brain lately, with good reason, allow me to offer new evidence, via Netflix, that there is indeed every reason to be worried for the future – and it’s not just the guys currently in charge and the wars they wage.
A new documentary offers a behind-the-scenes peek into the “manosphere,” an easily accessible ecosystem of blogs, podcasts and streams for which the term “male chauvinist” seems insufficient. Here, influencers tell their viewers how to think about women (second-class citizens who can and should be bossed around), gay people (worthy of parental disownment), Jews (the source of many of the world’s problems) and life in general. Get the lifestyle that is your male birthright: luxury cars, grand homes, hot women – in “one-way monogamy” arrangements, if you so choose (never mind what your girlfriend wants).
This is misogyny, homophobia and antisemitism dressed up as motivational speaking. If this is what young people are watching, we’re in trouble. And they are watching.
Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere exposes this in the British journalist’s signature breezy style – where he chats up controversial figures in a nonconfrontational manner that results in on-camera gold. This time he’s not only out to make fools of these guys – not difficult – but also to try to understand the appeal.
Related: In the manosphere, the Hockey Canada trial’s not-guilty verdict is viewed as a vindication
Last year’s sobering fictional Netflix series Adolescence opened many eyes to this world hiding in plain sight on our kids’ screens. Rather than witness the actual online content, the viewer watched as the toxic influence made a monster of one sweet, vulnerable boy. This documentary turns the camera on the manosphere itself.
“So this is my dishwasher over here, my cleaner,” an influencer named Harrison Sullivan – who goes by HSTikkyTokky – says as he shows Mr. Theroux into his lair in Spain (where he’s stuck, facing charges back home in Britain for a car crash; he will later plead guilty). Mr. Sullivan is talking about a young woman in a slight pink swimsuit, who good-heartedly disputes the description. “I’m not the dishwasher,” she protests, with a giggle.
Ellie Nutall, left, and Harrison Sullivan (known to followers as HSTikkyTokky) appear in Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere.Netflix
The scariest element of the documentary is not what the influencers spout, as grotesque and idiotic as that is. It’s the kids who watch, idolizing the idiocy and soaking up its toxic messages. One group of boys gathers around an influencer known as Sneako, taking his photo at what appears to be a sporting event, jumping up and down with excitement. “Fuck the women!” one kid yells repeatedly. Another: “All gays should die!” A grinning Sneako, real name Nicolas Kenn De Balinthazy, responds, “What have I done?” with a laugh.
On a New York street, another thrilled group of what appears to be young teenage boys encounters Sneako. “People heard the wrong things,” one boy says. “I think generally he’s not that bad of a person.”
Sneako has been banned from a long list of platforms for unsuitable content: hate speech, misinformation. He has said that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote, that shadowy authorities are putting something in the tap water to make people trans. In one well-cited example, he asked a German woman about her sex life. “How about we role-play,” he suggested. “I’ll be the Nazi and I’ll shove you in the oven like a dirty Jew.”
Some of the influencers peddle conspiracy theories with a confidence that is dangerous to the unformed brain. Aliens helped build the pyramids, assures Ed Matthews. Amrou Fudl, who goes by Myron Gaines (author of the 2023 book Why Women Deserve Less), highlights a video stating that women retain DNA from every man they’ve had sex with, via their sperm. Mr. Sullivan accuses Mr. Theroux of being a puppet: “The Jews are your daddy.”
The conversations are clipped by the influencers’ teams and go viral, without context or counterargument, targeting an audience that is young and vulnerable – and in a few short years (or perhaps already), old enough to vote. As the documentary points out, in the last U.S. election, “manosphere talking points began to converge with the mainstream political conversation.”
It’s all monetized, of course. You can pay to have your influencer read your comment out loud, you can buy into financial schemes (they get a cut), you can enroll in online programs, including Justin Waller’s “The Real World” – “the number one school in the world,” his promo states. It’s run by infamous brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who are facing human-trafficking charges.
Parents, check your credit-card statements.
And check in with your sons (and daughters).
After watching the film, I asked my 17-year-old son, with my heart in my throat, if he knew the influencers profiled. He recognized two of them – Sneako and Myron Gaines. He despises them both, he told me (using language I can’t print here).
My relief was palpable. But fleeting.