We Can (Probably) Defeat Manosphere Culture by Ignoring It

The industry thrives off of attention, thus incentivizing it to get increasingly extreme to grow audiences and revenue. If we ignore it, we snuff the candle.

I’m currently watching Louis Theroux’s new documentary on Netflix, “Inside the Manosphere”.

The film centres around the rise and prominence of alpha male culture online. In the documentary, Theroux meets several popular influencers in these spaces and gives us an inside glimpse into their lives.

If you’re not super familiar with the manosphere world, here’s a quick breakdown. It’s basically an online community of men who engage in toxic masculinity and misogyny in an effort to better connect with their sense of manhood. The ideas promoted are often that men should take care of themselves through fitness, be high-income earners, and hook up with as many women as possible, but also marry a virgin.

We’ve seen a rapid rise in incels and the “male loneliness epidemic”. The manosphere culture is seen as a solution for many of the men in these communities. The thing is, though, is that this movement is largely predicated on bullshit. It’s driven by a small group of male influencers who exist to make money. How they make money varies; it could be a financial course, teaching men how to be “more masculine”, how to pick up women, etc. But the thing they all have in common is that they count on peddling to male insecurities to sell these courses and/or drive views to increase revenue through viewership.

An important thing to consider is that these men don't appear to have any accreditations to speak of. They’re selling financial courses without a certification, they’re telling you how to treat women despite not having a healthy relationship of their own to point to, etc. So these influencers are building their livelihoods on dishonesty and misrepresentation.

So to summarize thus far: men on steroids and with no technical training are appealing to young boys and men for the purpose of drawing them in to buy courses.

Now, what’s the best way to grow an audience quickly? Get attention. What’s the best way to get attention? Do or say something outlandish. These creators are incentivized to say wild things because it stirs controversy and gets views. Often, their social media accounts are monetized, so they earn money from views. And then they get the attention of vulnerable young men and sell them on their courses. They are financially incentivized to say horrific things because it makes them money.

So if we want to curb the rise of this content, the answer is relatively simple: stop talking about it. That way, attention plummets, and so does their money and livelihood. And then they go away, and their ideology stops spreading. I don’t believe it will ever go away completely, or at least not any time soon, but it can definitely be suffocated.

And yes, I am aware of the irony of saying “we gotta give these people less attention” while also writing a blog post about them. But I refuse to tag any of their stuff. Big media outlets do, and that improves the manosphere SEO in addition to marketing them to broader audiences, and driving views.

People who watch monosphere content “ironically” count too. I was listening to the Sounds Like a Cult podcast’s episode on the manosphere last night. One of the speakers mentioned that manosphere videos occasionally pop up on her boyfriend’s feed, he’ll show it to her, and then they watch them together. Two things with that. One, most social media algorithms are curated to the person’s interests, so despite that speaker’s reassurance that her boyfriend was left-leaning, I’d say keep an eye on that, hun. And, two, those views still count toward the manosphere influencers’ monetization.

Now I’m not saying no one should keep an eye on things. But maybe leave it to one person to scope out the situation and write a full report, provided on a third-party website, so we all know what’s going on and can write our think pieces, while also starving these creators of the viewership they count on. We need to find a way to keep tabs on movements like this and alert the public without also fueling the fire.

Unfortunately, men who say kind and thoughtful things aren’t going to get large media attention. Our media thrives off of what horrifies us, and now this shit is everywhere because we all collectively keep giving it attention. Don’t look at it out of curiosity. Don’t tag their stuff. We need to strike a balance between staying aware of people like this while also being mindful about what kind of attention they’re given and the repercussions of it.