Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere asks all the wrong questions

Over the past week or so, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d stepped into a time machine and been transported back to March 2025. Cast your mind back: Adolescence had just dropped on Netflix, and a moral panic was starting to set in about white working-class boys. Lurking in the background of the four-part series, which follows the arrest of a teenage boy accused of stabbing his female classmate to death, was the pernicious influence of Andrew Tate and the so-called manosphere in which he operates. Blaming the worst of all crimes on this self-proclaimed ‘misogynist’ influencer went down a storm at the time.

The Guardian hailed Adolescence as the ‘closest thing to TV perfection in decades’, while the Independent described its exploration of the ‘pernicious influence of the manosphere’ as ‘harrowing but compelling’. UK prime minister Keir Starmer wanted it to be shown in every British secondary school.

Exactly one year on, Louis Theroux’s latest documentary has once again put the manosphere under the microscope. The current moment feels like déjà-vu or, as Tate might say, a ‘glitch in the matrix’, because Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere also provides a superficial insight into a complex problem.

That hasn’t stopped critics from falling over themselves to praise the zany documentarian’s deep dive into the online world of hypermasculine content creators. Bragging about ‘one-way’ monogamy and the importance of material wealth above all else, these rage-baiting clowns have also sent celebrities into a tizzy. Everyone from Simon Cowell’s wife to Made in Chelsea’s Spencer Matthews – the same Spencer Matthews who gained notoriety as the bad-boy womaniser on the reality show – took to Instagram shortly after the credits rolled to issue a casting call for ‘better role models’ in society.

While documentaries like Inside the Manosphere offer celebrities an opportunity to declare to the world which way their moral compass points and to atone for past sins, they ultimately fail to grapple with why figures like Tate have such a hold on young boys.

Theroux does, at one point, attempt to unpack what motivates the main protagonists in this machismo movement. But he doesn’t get very far. Delving into the difficult ‘origin story’ of controversial streamer HSTikkyTokky (real name Harrison Sullivan), Theroux observes that ‘carrying the wounds of childhood can project trauma into the wider world’. Sullivan, we learn, was abandoned by his father.

It is to some extent understandable that Theroux ducked the question of why so many men find the ‘manosphere’ compelling. Honest answers may prove radioactive. But it is surely the most important question, and certainly would have led to far more interesting conversations, rather than shallow psychologising about the ‘wounds of childhood’.

For starters, what did the advent of the pill mean for gender relations? Did the #MeToo movement go too far? How about wokeism in general? Unintended consequences lurk everywhere, from sexual ethics to feminism.

And you don’t have to search hard to find them. The contradictions inherent in being a modern man are easily found on dating apps, where women routinely specify that they are seeking a ‘real man’ who is both ‘emotionally aware’ and ‘assertive’. It should be possible to traverse this thorny terrain without endorsing misogyny. In fact, dodging the hard questions in favour of platitudes will only reinforce the masculinity crisis.

The Tates of this world have gone where others fear to tread. That they have gone too far, and ended up in a sexist abyss, should not prevent the rest of us from asking whether the long assault on manhood has been a good thing. The old Louis Theroux would have asked these questions, and given us a much better documentary as a result.

Adam Chapman is a writer and editor.