Warning: spoilers are not withheld

At one stage of Louis Theroux’s documentary, Inside the Manosphere, two young men are interviewed in Miami. They are followers of Andrew Tate, preacher of misogyny and a very aggressive form of masculinity presented as a solution to the problems that they face. But amongst the clear entertainment value of the documentary, the horrific, mobbish, violent masculinity on show from the Manosphere’s content creators like HSTikkyTokky, Myron Gaines, and Justin Waller, it is Theroux’s two young interviewees that provide the most important and hopeful lesson about the modern plight of men.

Why? Because they were cute. Not in the American sense, like good-looking. I’m not about to embark on a shallow analysis of their attractiveness level here. That would amount to nothing less than an abuse of the Substack platform.

No, they were sweet – they spoke softly of their troubles and how until recently one of them had been homeless. Like a lot of young men (and women), to a more extreme degree in the States but also in Europe, they were having what can only be described as a seriously bad time.

The Manosphere offers its Manlings something to believe in, preaching that the 9–5 model of work makes you as good as a slave that never really accumulates any significant power or wealth. Its ideology appeals to both an underlying anger at the societal model no longer seeming to make sense and a desire to take command of one’s life, starting with physical self-care. In the case of the chauvinistic content creators, this seems to be a tactic to get vulnerable men to join investment schemes that promise riches, blending ideas about physical self-care with misogyny to gain the attention of the confused and vulnerable.

While the two young interviewees told Theroux that Andrew Tate was their idol and had helped them to actively take control in the face of a society that gives you nothing for free, one of them even said that he refused to ‘believe’ in depression – seemingly his view was that it was a choice whether to suffer it or not, and to do so was pointless. Despite these questionable beliefs, the fact that the two men in question were not themselves violently and aggressively masculine contains an important message: other versions of masculinity could appeal to them too.

The leaders of the Manosphere might be obviously repulsive, as is the case with the Tates and HMS Tokky Tikky, but this doesn’t mean that all of their followers are. Men are clearly suffering some kind of crisis of belief. Large changes in societal structures tend to make people confused, and, be at women’s expense, the old world gave men a simple role as the household’s central provider. Now. increasing gender equality means that this central role has become confused, leaving men to make sense of things.

Having been used to steering the ship, they’ve now found themselves down in the hold with the crew, trying to work out what to do while feeling significantly queasy. And on top of the loss of their breadwinner status, men must also deal with the household itself no longer delivering the promise that it used to. It isn’t the case that a simple education and a subsequent job equal a home, a decent retirement, and the possibility of handing wealth over to the next generation.

In response, the modern man seeks to aggressively return to the old by putting women in their place and the leaders of the Manosphere’s videos are full of references to female stupidity, their place apparently being in the bedroom and the kitchen. But these feel like nothing more than the cries of those desperate to fight an inevitability; a few futile pushes on the water in the opposite direction of the tide. Old ideas don’t provide new answers.

Broadening their shoulders in the gym is one method of taking control, another is adopting language that makes you seem – at least to yourself – invulnerable. Theroux’s two interviewees spoke of being blessed on their journey, and one of them even claimed he refused to feel sadness about his brother’s suicide, suggesting that instead he would just move on and be strong.

Language like this is characteristic of a person desperate to believe in a self-crafted narrative because, if they did not, they would have to address the emotional difficulty of their lives. They would need to face the fact that, despite pathetic arguments to the contrary, depression does exist, and it exists at least partly as a result of being forced to live in an unjust society where the model no longer adds up.

At the end of Inside the Manosphere, content creator HSTikkyTokky attempts to flip the documentary situation by using Theroux himself for content, live-streaming him and asking uncomfortable questions. In response, the documentarian gets a sort of film revenge on him by showing footage of HS being told off by his mother (recorded pre-interview) in an almost bullying fashion, opening up questions of whether it is resentment and family dysfunction that has caused his misogyny. Such emotional abuse from the most important female figure in his life makes him seem like he’s been allowed to go out and play in the patriarchy for a while, only to return to the matriarch that really rules his psychological roost. At one point, he almost cowers, letting out the whines of a child who is annoyed at his treatment but dares not properly rebel against the real boss.

He got his payback by showing this clip, but Theroux, who represents a fairly soft and passive form of middle-class British masculinity and occupied a paternal role throughout the film, also seemed to lack the right tools to get through to the men of the Manosphere. For most of it he stood on the sidelines while being mildly disapproving of their general behaviour, at times bringing them down to earth after outbursts or particularly violent actions. Unable to break through to them, he was even drawn into direct confrontations where he had something to lose.

I think this is partly because Theroux is not the paternal figure that the lads of the Manosphere really need. The explanations he offered up for its existence were mainly financial and technological in nature, the others cited poor family structure and the absence of father figures. Those may be an aspect of the problem, but they ignore the clear role of emotional repression in contributing to it. The content creators are not angry, and their followers are not vulnerable, only because of inequality, the manipulative tendencies of the attention economy and a disrupted upbringing; they are so because they don’t have a language to address, or express, what is going on in their own heads.

Theroux’s failure to offer up anything of greater substance stems from him too being bound by an older form of masculinity that does not fully embrace a healthy understanding of one’s own and others’ emotional life and fails to confront depression and life’s difficulties head-on. He is therefore left powerless to do much more than simply observe them.

A masculinity capable of combating the Manosphere will unlikely come from Theroux’s generation or those older than him, as it is so often the source of arguments that suggest young people are too obsessed with their own inner lives; that interpret a healthy societal development in the form of an increased understanding of mental health as a crisis of over-diagnosis; that advocate trundling through life without addressing the consequences of what is going on in your head and how it affects yourself and others.

A positive and modern masculinity will come from thinkers who can take the good parts of the Manosphere and provide something in place of the bad, stopping men being attracted to its ideas by unashamedly valuing emotional openness, honesty, and care. It could offer new things to be proud of by combining stoic beliefs and a sense of physical and emotional self-control with pride in one’s emotional intelligence as a man.

This new, braver paternal figure could help HSTikkyTokky realise that his dysfunctional relationship with his mother might be at the root of his desire to take revenge on women and encourage Theroux’s young interviewee to acknowledge that he has the right to feel sad for his brother who killed himself and that life in a modern society is unjustly tough. It would say that it is good to look after your physical body, but it does not need to be made into a shield of muscle ripe for male aggression, at the same time advocating welcoming women as your equals and being truly excited by relationships marked by real equality, love, and humour. It would be brave enough to say that that too is only one option in the rich tapestry of ways of being that life now has to offer.

When change is upon us and we become overwhelmed, we tend to look for answers in the past that offer solutions from the dark, but the masculinity of the future will come instead from within the light.