Louis Theroux's ‘Inside the Manosphere’, now on Netflix, is one of the most accessible introductions to the world of online misogyny that many parents know exists but have struggled to fully understand. If you haven't watched it, do. It is an important 90 minutes.
Theroux interviews Harrison Sullivan, a fitness coach turned online personality with over a million followers, who describes his content as teaching boys to be "proper guys." He sits with Myron Gaines, who claims, in his own words, to understand women better than they understand themselves, and who rejects the label of misogynist entirely. Theroux presses, the men deflect, and the viewer is left in little doubt about what is actually being sold. As an introduction to the influencers themselves, their business models, and their appeal, the documentary is genuinely valuable.
But it is a starting point, not the full picture. And for parents, the detail beyond it matters.
What the documentary touches on less is the mechanism by which ordinary boys end up watching this content in the first place. The assumption many parents make is that a young man would have to actively seek out extreme material. Yet researchers at the University of Birmingham and Australia's eSafety Commissioner have documented something rather different. Boys rarely encounter the extreme content first. They arrive through fitness videos, financial advice, confidence coaching and self-improvement content, material that seems entirely benign. The algorithm then does the work, gradually connecting motivational content to more polarised material, normalising each step before introducing the next. By the time the messaging becomes overtly misogynistic, a relationship of trust has already formed.
This is the nuance worth sitting with. The young men drawn to this content are not, in the main, looking for hatred. They are looking for certainty, belonging and guidance, and the influencers offer those things first. The ideology follows gradually, carried by algorithms designed to keep them engaged rather than safe. According to the eSafety Commissioner’s research, almost half of children aged 10 to 17 have already encountered offensive or sexist content about girls and women online, not because they went looking for it, but because the platforms served it to them.
Watch the documentary with your children if you can. But the more important conversation is less about the influencers Theroux puts on screen and more about what your children actually watch, why they find it compelling or not, and how the platforms they use are built to keep them watching more of it.
If you'd like to talk through how to approach these conversations, get in touch.