Transcription
British journalist Louis Thuru recently made a documentary about the manosphere, a cluster of men who create online content for boys and other men where they teach them how to be masculine and how to treat women. I watched it and I had a few thoughts specifically on the way that poverty, trauma, and social media algorithms encourage unethical behavior, on the ways in which we're failing young men who don't have positive role models, and on the fact that a lot of these content creators are putting on a facade. They're not who they say they are, but they're creating an entire generation of men who will believe the [ __ ] up things they say. Let's talk about it.
So, the first thought that I had from this documentary was that it seems like a lot of these male content creators are so desperate to make money, likely because of not having enough financial stability growing up in childhood, that they don't care if the way they're making money today is immoral. They just want money. Like HS TikTalki was saying, "I'm a businessman. I'm a salesman still now. My kids are going to be very, very happy." The documentary went into how he was raised by a single mom who worked very hard to try to provide for him. Than Justin. He also didn't come from money. He grew up in Louisiana in what was described as a highly volatile family. It makes me think about how if you weren't raised with money, what can sometimes happen is that you idealize wealth and you assume that it will make you happy. It will assume that, oh, the reason I wasn't happy in this and that way was just because I didn't have money. If I had money, you know, my childhood would have been perfect. You don't realize that that's not really where happiness comes from. There are plenty of wealthy children that are still miserable. Sure, like not having all of your basic needs met definitely will make you unhappy, but not having more, you know, not having luxuries isn't necessarily what's stopping you from attaining happiness. And so, if that's the way that you think about things where like all that matters is money, you don't care if you're showing your children how to be an immoral person, they're just going to live a vacuous, meaningless life, and they're probably not going to be happy if you raise them to be these like spoiled, entitled brats.
Anyway, the documentary was filled with imagery of materialism and this like very flashy image of success, which made me think about how for people who have experienced poverty trauma, if they see wealth in their sight, it makes them feel safer. That poverty that I experienced, it can never touch me again. It's so far away from me. I'm safe here. But if they don't see that like polar opposite of poverty where they are constantly surrounded by luxury, it doesn't feel real to them. Deep inside, they still feel insecure. They still feel unsafe. It's not enough to simply have, you know, enough in investments that you could retire at any point or to have your own house with like no mortgage or to have enough in savings for however many years. It needs to feel undoubtable that you can never be poor again. And for a lot of people, they think that means surrounding themsel with excessive materialism. Only then will they feel safe.
The part that I found most fascinating from the documentary was when HS TikTalki was talking about how if he hadn't done some things to upset people, he wouldn't be where he is today. As a content creator myself, this is something that I'm constantly grappling with. Social media incentivizes immoral behavior. Let me give you an example. So, recently I made a video discussing a book created by an aranged mom. And I pinned two titles against each other to see sort of which one would perform better. One was "I read another aranged mom's book" and the other was "What this aranged mom's book reveals about forgiveness." And then the thumbnail was a screenshot of one of her Tik Toks and me holding up her book and on there I wrote "Forgiveness is not owed." Do you have any idea how much better that video would have performed if I had instead titled it "Estranged mom is delusional" and instead put in the thumbnail a really unappealing photo of her with like flames coming up behind her and write on the thumbnail "So narcissistic." That's like a very common thumbnail structure that a lot of people use, especially on like gossip channels where they're like sending you all this imagery that like this person is literally Satan. This person is evil personified. They are all bad. That type of like polarizing content is what does well on social media. Money comes and goes, but integrity at the end of the day is all you have. The one thing that cannot be taken away from you. And this happens with sponsorships, too. Like you guys have no idea how many sponsors I've turned down simply because they were like not ethical brands. Think about that for a second. Think about if you were in that position to have to decide between a sum of money they could provide for your family and your sense of integrity. It is no surprise that a lot of these men choose to take the money at the cost of their integrity, especially if they have a history of poverty trauma where they don't ever want to be in that position again.
But this is not just something that content creators need to take responsibility for because at the end of the day, it's caused by algorithms that all of us use. If we want ethical content creators, we need to change the way algorithms work by not constantly just craving negativity, by consuming ethical content that leaves the world a better place rather than a worse place. By supporting content creators outside of algorithms like signing up for their newsletters, by not engaging with outreach farming where people are just saying the most outrageous things they can think of because attention brings them money or by engaging in more positive content, you know, like giving a like, leaving a comment when somebody is like just doing something lovely like, I don't know, making a video of like gardening where it's like, okay, I don't feel really strongly positive towards this person, but I would rather this person succeed on the algorithms versus somebody who's just constantly [ __ ] on other people. And it's kind of sad that like for people who are very outrageous, who are outrage farming a lot, they can say the worst things in the world with no repercussions, actually more rewards because again, we live in an attention economy. Whereas the standards are so much higher for moral people because if you build an audience based on moral behavior, that audience is more likely to be moral than the audience of like somebody who's following like a terrible person. And if you then [ __ ] up even in the slightest bit, if you maybe change your mind about something that previously you agreed with your audience on, you're going to get a lot more repercussions for that small thing than the person saying outrageous things ever gets. We live in a society that incentivizes immorality. Isn't that a little bit concerning?
And I think this like greed and this desire for materialism also partly explains why a lot of these content creators resent women. They're envious of the things they perceive women get simply because they're beautiful. Like they think that the average woman is just constantly getting invitations to go on yachts, which um I think is pretty rare in my experience. I don't know, fellow women, can you let me know in the comments? Have you ever received an invitation to go on a yacht? But even if it were true, even if like every single woman was constantly bombarded with like offers of extreme wealth and materialism because she's a woman, what these men failed to realize is that they would only be getting those things because of sexual objectification. And those perks that they get go out the door the second they sleep with the men or don't sleep with the men or get older. It's like these content creators don't understand that these aren't things that women are just handed as a result of being born female. They're the payout you get if you agree to play along with the game of objectification and dehumanization. You know, like the woman who was in HS Tiki's house that he referred to as his dishwasher and she was just like giggling along to his misogynistic insults because she gets to experience the material benefits of being in his orbit. That woman, in my opinion, has chosen, okay, I'm going to experience all this objectification and dehumanization, literally being compared to an object, a [ __ ] dishwasher, because I get certain material perks. Most women don't like that kind of contract. Most women are not going to want to sign up to that or even if they do sign up to it, they're probably going to experience a lot of trauma as a result of it.
And these men in the documentary were always talking about like the matrix. The matrix they fear that's like trying to keep you down, that's trying to keep you in poverty. But they themselves are a matrix. Louis Thuru did a great job of showing how they exploit the most vulnerable men who are looking up to them with like gambling and an investment sponsors that are really shady. It's not too different from how like disenfranchised boys turn to gangs as an easy way to make good money and then they go on and exploit other people as part of being in those gangs.
And this is a good segue into my next point, which is that it really seems like young men and boys are craving role models. A lot of them are in pain and they're not sure where to look for other men that they can find strength in. A lot of these guys in the misosphere position themselves as like coaches that will teach men how to be men. HS TikToki said, "I coach boys how to be boys." Justin Waller identifies as a success coach who gives advice to men. It was sad to see in the documentary how boys were coming up to these guys, calling them role models. And it kind of begs the question, what is going on with men these days? That they are crying out for role models so desperately that they'll turn to these like clearly immoral men for that type of leadership.
Louisie explored this a little bit when he met up again with two of the fans that came up to one of the guys he was interviewing. But one of them talked about how he was homeless recently and crying himself to sleep and his role model in the manosphere helped him gain it sounded like an internal locus of control and find the strength and the hope to sort of pull himself out of that situation. At some point we people who care about mental health must reckon with the reality that a lot of men are craving this type of motivation. That a lot of men maybe don't relate to the like gentler more validating form of motivation that can be quite common with like therapy or therapy speak. And if they don't find that tough love motivation anywhere else, they're going to find it from really problematic and exploitative role models. Like sometimes people get mad at me because I really value internal locus of control. I really value people, you know, taking responsibility for their lives even if there are environmental issues going on that are outside of their control. But I am never going to stop preaching the importance of that because a lot of people seek that type of empowerment. A lot of people feel really powerless in the world and they need something to help them feel more powerful. They need the hope. They need the motivation. They need to feel resilient and to be able to pull themselves out of difficult situations. Other people, they don't connect to that as much. Other people, they pull themselves out of difficult situations by a more gentle, validating approach. But if we just take this like one-sizefits-all approach to everybody, including men who have been socialized to not be so in touch with their feelings, then we're doing them a disservice. We're letting them walk straight into the hands of the manosphere.
I did think it was really interesting how this guy who was previously homeless, he was telling Louie, "We don't believe in depression." And pretty immediately afterwards, Louie was asking him what happened with his brother and he said he took his own life. It was just like such an ironic moment of like he doesn't believe in depression and yet most likely his brother was struggling with depression. There's a real need for men who have been socialized to not care about feelings to better understand mental health struggles, but if we only use like acceptable forms of motivation or like certain language that doesn't appeal to them, we're just going to push them away and they're never going to learn about mental struggles. It's sad because these guys, they seemed like nice guys and they were talking about a matrix without realizing that they're actually the ones being pulled into one.
As to the question of like why do so many guys these days struggle to find role models? I have a few theories. One is of course high rates of abandonment by fathers. And I don't think that this needs to be a discussion about single mothers. I think that this needs to be a discussion about paternal abandonment. Because while boy moms certainly can cause a lot of harm, at least they stuck around. I think it's really [ __ ] up the way that this conversation around fatherlessness is often framed as like blaming the woman who actually stood behind to look after her children. If a child is born and they know that like they had a same-sex parent, so like a boy has a dad somewhere and he knows that that dad wants nothing to do with him because a lot of socialization tends to come from the same sex parent, particularly as it concerns like how to express your gender and so forth, it's understandable that they're going to feel some sort of inner conflict about the fact that their samesex parent wants nothing to do with them. Think about the worthlessness that a boy would probably feel if he knows he has a dad out there who wanted nothing to do with him. So then when these guys were saying, you know, you have no worth as a man. Women are born with value, men are not, literally feeding them their unconscious beliefs about themselves and that's what draws them in. And I think that's different from say like a woman choosing to have a child on her own with IVF and that child doesn't have a father figure or like two women deciding to have a child together because in that situation, there's no parent that exists out there that wanted nothing to do with them. There's something very painful about knowing that there's a parent out there that doesn't want to be involved in your life, that doesn't really care about you, especially if society so strongly values socialization being passed down by the same sex parent. And that is, I think, part of the problem is our constant overemphasis on gender roles. Women provide this for children, men provide that for children. Of course, there are trends where like dads tend to be more playful and like rough house with children. Moms tend to be more like nurturing and comforting to children. Yes, we know that that is the case, but ultimately anyone can do any of these things. You don't have to like fit a certain archetype of parenthood based on your gender.
And I think part of the problem is framing these men's need for a role model as needing a male role model. What you ultimately need as a child is role models, period. It doesn't matter what gender they have. What matters is that you have one. A teacher who truly sees you, an uncle who cares about you, an older kid at school who feels like you're a younger version of them. The problem is that a lot of these boys are socialized into never really wanting to see a woman as a role model because they're taught to not value women as anything but a sex object. And so even if there are maybe opportunities of women in their lives who could be role models for them, they reject that because they're never going to see a woman as a role model. They struggle to hold admiration and appreciation for what women do.
And also I think another reason why people are struggling to find role models these days is is we're living in a really difficult time. You know a lot of financial instability, political fear. Sometimes it feels like we're on the brink of World War II, which means that a lot of people are just kind of looking out for themselves and their own. Like a severely underpaid teacher is not going to go above and beyond to mentor a child who seems to be struggling at home when they're barely able to keep their classroom under control. A father isn't going to go take his son to play catch after a 12-h hour work shift because he's exhausted trying to provide for his family. Unfortunately, in times of hardship, people get selfish because they focus on survival or they're just doing the bare minimum to survive because anything more than that is like they just don't have the energy for.
And I think another reason why these boys are pushed towards the manosphere is bad actors profit off of straw manning feminism. They speak ill of things the feminists fought for like women's right to vote, women's right to open a bank account, no fault divorce. They take a term like toxic masculinity, which all it ever meant to say was that there's a particular type of masculinity that society pushes and they straw man it and they say, you know, this means that feminists think all men are toxic. Unfortunately, I do think that a lot of boys and men have sort of internalized this notion that they're toxic just because they're male. And that kind of self-fulfilling prophecy can be dangerous. And I think like actual feminists, actual advocates of different kinds who truly care about the causes they preach and aren't just um you know trying to weaponize these movements. That was never their intention to make boys feel like they're inherently toxic. But unfortunately, I think there are some segments of the population who take this advocacy so so far that they do kind of send the message, hey, like if you're part of this group, like there is something intrinsically bad about you. And I didn't realize how bad it was until I lived in Seattle for a few years. If you want, I can maybe make a video about that on Patreon.
I also thought it was interesting how pretty much all of the people interviewed in this documentary refused to admit what they are. You know, like when called misogynists, Justin Waller said, "I love women." Myron Gaines said, "I love women." It's like they don't understand that there's a difference between desiring women and actually loving women. And the fact that they don't understand that shows that they're either emotionally stunted or putting on a facade. Sneo didn't understand that yelling Hitler does in fact make him anti-Semitic. HS Tickytalkie was saying it's not anti-Semitic to say the Jews. It's not homophobic to say you would disown a gay son. I'm just curious like what do these men think is a misogynist, is a homophobe, is an anti-semite. What does that actually look like? Somebody who commits literal hate crimes? Cuz to me, like Myron Gaines says some of the most outwardly misogynistic things I've ever heard a man say. Like I truly can't think what would be a more misogynistic thing to say than the things he says. But I noticed Myron Gaines likes to fall back a lot on the Mott and Bailey logical fallacy, which is where you make this like really extreme claim. And then when you're pushed on it, you immediately backtrack. So when Louis played the video for him where he was saying like "you have a right to demand sex whenever you want it, who cares what your girl thinks?" He immediately backtracked and he said, "Am I saying that, you know, if your girl's on her period, you should insist to have sex?" No, that's not what I'm saying. Okay, so you made an extreme claim, but what you're actually saying is more subtle. And also notice that like the way he backtracked gave him just enough plausible deniability to still have his fan base think he does mean what he originally said because the thing of like her being on her period. If a fan were to come up to him and be like, "What do you mean, Myin? Like I I thought you said I can request sex whenever. Now you're saying that's not the case." He can say, "No, no, I just meant like not when she's on her period cuz it's gross." I thought it was very calculated the way he sort of retreated from that position because it insulated him from criticism from his own audience while also insulating him from criticism from dissident. He made an extreme claim that his audience is going to eat up. He retreated when his dissident call him out on it, but he retreated in a way that his audience is still going to make sense of.
So, is this all a facade? Is this all just a way of making money in an attention economy where outreach sells? H just sticky flat out said, "I do it for the money." Myron Gaines got paranoid when the woman who recruits his female guests for the podcast was talking to Louis. Like, what was he so worried that she would reveal? He's certainly not worried about being framed as a misogynist because he says the most misogynistic things. So, is he actually worried that she might reveal he's faking it? He was also pretty paranoid about his girlfriend Angie talking to Louis. And when we actually heard from Angie, she was saying he's very different behind the camera. He's like much sweeter. When she came up on screen, he like pulled her in for a hug. You know, when he's on camera, he has this like incredibly hateful look in his eyes. Like truly one of the most unlikable faces I've ever seen. But then when he's with his girlfriend, he he's just like seems to like sweeten up. He doesn't seem as like filled with hate anymore. And then when they were talking about how he wants to have multiple wives and Louis was asking his girlfriend Angie about that, she was sharing her ambivalence and he again immediately backtracked. So Mott and Bailey, he's like, "I'm going to have multiple wives." Girlfriend pushes back on it. Immediately backtracks. Oh yeah, we'll see. we'll talk about him. Or how he framed it as if like his girlfriend was coming to like serve him and like clean his house, but when she actually came over, he said he needs some help cleaning it. Oh yeah, my girlfriend is going to come and like clean the whole place for me versus, "Hey, Angie, could you help me clean?"
On some level, I feel like you do need to hate women to make this type of content and not care about how it's going to affect them. But I also suspect that a lot of these guys just don't care about anyone, women included. It's not necessarily specific to women. I suspect that they're exaggerating their hatred of women, that they actually treat women a little bit nicer behind closed doors and just sort of putting on this hateful facade because that's what makes the big bucks. Of course, it's like that. Women are half the population. They're bound to meet a woman that they care about. But admitting that is dangerous to their business model.
At the end of the day, though, like I didn't find the documentary to be that insightful, to be honest. I thought there was too much emphasis on these guys mistrust of Louis. He's a gotcha journalist. Of course, they're going to be suspicious of him. But at the end of the day, I imagine they accepted because having more eyes on them is more profitable. And like the main takeaway of this being that it's all for money to me wasn't groundbreaking. It's just like obvious. But I'm glad that like I guess people who didn't realize are now going to like watch this documentary and realize it. It just kind of feels like common sense to me. I would have liked an even deeper look at their families of origin and their romantic relationships, but that's just kind of me. I'm the type of person who like if I have one glass of wine, my questions start getting real psychoanalytic. Tell me about your family. Tell me about this relationship. I'm just nosy like that. I want to know about people's relationships and their psyche. It's probably not something that they would have been very forthcoming about on this documentary. And I also would have liked a deeper examination into some solutions. How can we stop incentivizing immoral behavior online? How can we give boys and young men better role models? Since I felt that was kind of lacking in the documentary, maybe we can start a conversation about that here in the comments. What do you think is the solution to the manosphere? Thank you for watching and take care. What you want? What you need? Tell me. Tell me. Tell me what you want. What you need? Tell me. Tell me what you want. What you need? What you told it?