Arrested Development: Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere and the Boyish Men of the internet
Louis Theroux dives into the lost boys' colony of men’s influencers exposing what instant gratification and a rage economy has left for our young people.
Written by Cameron Cade; edited by Charlotte Lewis
I am always impressed by Louis Theroux as a documentarian. His unjudgemental approach to some truly reprehensible people, leaving them unguarded is fundamental to basically every documentary he does. That skill has never seemed more important than when he deals with the lost boys colony of The Manosphere.
Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere is the iconic English documentarians newest documentary as he falls down the rabbit hole of the “Manosphere”, a collection of right wing influencers who target young men’s insecurities surrounding fitness, dating and finances.
It becomes quickly apparent how youthful these “manosphere” influencers are in all aspects. They’re bragadocious, athletic, “playful” jesters, but at the same time they are impulsive, prone to ego damage, contradicting behaviour and shallow-thinking, often refusing accountability. These “teenage boys” are stuck in an extreme arrested development fueled by the social media rage economy, one that encourages the young men to remain like little boys.
Ed Matthews is the particularly obvious example. At one point Louis trails the floppy haired lad through Marbella as he hits on women like an 18-year-old on his first night out (he is almost 25).
Unsurprisingly, Inside the Manosphere centres the men in this bubble, but Louis does take as many opportunities to interact with the women propping up this content factory. In one instance bypassing influencer Myron Gaines to speak directly to his partner Angie. In comparison to Gaines who is constantly brandishing his masculinity in such a glaringly overcompensating manner, Theroux and Angie speak honestly about her feelings for Myron in such an honest way that it immediately causes Gaines to soften. Even if he does respond to her loving comments with “She’s really great. She’s been really helpful”...
Theroux’s focus on the influencers and not the impact these grifters have on your average boy may raise some eyebrows. But it really highlights the core of this “movement” as a moneymaking venture first: one which is run by a series of escalatingly outlandish men with their own insecurities.
At its core, the manosphere is fueled by masculine insecurity in the same way that the cosmetics industry is fueled by the feminine insecurity. Frequently, Theroux confronts one of these influencers directly with their insecurities, asking about their networth, making a joke about their physique and they immediately soften and the hypermasculine persona seeps away.
There’s a turn halfway through, as is often the case with Theroux. His unjudgemental approach becomes more confrontational in the face of the hypocritical nature of his subjects. HStikkytokky’s contradicting attitudes to the porn industry became a sore spot for the influencer.
Theroux doesn’t necessarily raise any new information about these influencers that the unfortunates who are already aware of these influencers, but it’s the connections he forms between conspiracy theorists, the alt-right, the manosphere and the political shift in young men that are the true takeaway from the documentary. These aren’t a group of inconsequential grifters, these are people with clear paths to political influence.
“Men aren’t meant to be happy” is one of the quotes I left with engrained into me. The always-online, always on-camera, always performing nature of these influencers is often cut away by Theroux’s cameras that catch their moments of “weakness”, where their masculine personas drop and they look sad at their core. Sneako seems embarrassed by his young fans approaching him in the street. HStikkytokky is aggravated at the suggestion that his audience is composed of young boys. Myron Gaines is uncomfortable by discussions of his attitudes to monogamy. Theroux’s investigations into the early lives of these influencers and the misery that informed their upbringing further illustrates this. The end result is an eco-system of miserable teenage boys in the bodies of adult men fronting to other miserable teenage boys by insulting and demeaning men and women alike.