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Male influencers sell a lifestyle they often don’t live themselves.
A new Netflix documentary takes viewers into “the manosphere,” a loose network of YouTubers, podcasters, live-streamers and online pranksters. Those interviewed in Louis Theroux’s documentary, “Inside the Manosphere,” claim to teach young men how to become dominant, wealthy and irresistible to women. They pitch a specific idea about male worth. Women enter the world with innate value, they say, though they often contradict this by telling their followers to mistreat women. A man must earn his value, the logic goes, through money, sex and status. Otherwise, he is worthless.
This is a bleak message. It is also a brilliant sales strategy. First you convince young men that they are nothing. Then you charge them to become something. It’s one of the oldest cons in the world, updated for the age of the algorithm.
At first glance, the documentary seems to confirm what critics already suspect. The manosphere is toxic and extreme. But the film reveals the gap between persona and reality. The influencers selling this lifestyle often don’t live it themselves.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Wall Street Journal
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Rob Henderson is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.