It’s Drawing In Tons Of Young Men, But The Reality Doesn’t Match The Pitch

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

***

My wife and I don’t watch porn, and certainly not together, but it sure felt like we were when we sat down to watch “Inside the Manosphere,” a documentary on Netflix that currently sits in the top-10 on the platform.

Over the course of 90 minutes, award-winning documentarian Louis Theroux immerses himself in the “alpha-male subculture” that is attracting millions of young males to an abnormal way of life. But we’ve seen this act before, and I emphasize “act.”

 The manosphere is a derivative of pornography. It promotes unnatural and unattainable standards. It is a performance consumed through a screen, not lived. It destroys real intimacy and relationships. It creates no societal value — only profits for the participants. And it exploits both men and women. The manosphere isn’t masculinity just like porn isn’t sex. 

For example, in the documentary, influencer Myron Gaines asks women on his podcast to use a calculator to design their ideal man. The tool only allows for a few inputs: income, height, ethnicity, etc. This is akin to how one custom-tailors a sex scene on a website’s search bar. This is not how relationships work in real life. 

Like the stars of this show, the formula lacks any whiff of morality. The measures of success are money, clout, and fame. And these come at the expense of the consumers who pay to watch these men live their lives rather than go on living theirs. Nowhere is character or responsibility emphasized. In fact, responsibility gets kicked to the curb. The only man featured who is a father, Justin Waller, proudly points out he doesn’t do “baths and diapers.” These aren’t the ingredients of a fulfilled life; they’re markers of attention. 

While these men promote a life philosophy, their actual theory is a contradiction, and the contradictions run rampant. Harrison Sullivan, aka HSTikkyTokky, owns an OnlyFans management account but claims he would disown his hypothetical daughter if she were on the platform. (This came shortly after he introduced a scantily clad woman on his couch as his “dishwasher.”) Or take the many quotes about the uselessness of women, while their entire business model depends on women. But they know this. As Sullivan says, “I’m just a salesman.” They are monetizing the attention economy. 

These men perform for cameras during almost every waking minute of their lives. It is awkward when the Netflix cameras catch the random hanger-on hiding in the corner, recording every moment on a phone. There are even moments when the influencers aren’t sure whether they are supposed to address the cameras. And perhaps the saddest part of the film is when Sullivan goes to reunite with his father after years of estrangement. To no surprise, he livestreamed it to his audience. These men live in an algorithm prison.

But the act gets revealed many times throughout. In the midst of Gaines introducing his girlfriend to the camera, she emphasizes that “Myron is somebody in front of the cameras, but behind them is somebody else with me.” She is then pressed about his wishes to pursue one-way monogamy, which it is clear she doesn’t endorse. Gaines then backtracks, but Theroux quickly calls his bluff, at which point Gaines abruptly kicks his girlfriend out of the interview and barks at her to “clean up the room” in an attempt to regain his assertiveness.

Throughout the entire exchange, the same man who is shown saying “I’m a dictator” and that he will dictate when a woman has sex with him is visibly uncomfortable as he awkwardly laughs, fights with his dog, and touches his nose multiple times. Nonverbal cues sometimes say more than words; an article from Psychology Today claims “rubbing the nose is a behavior that may be observed in individuals who are deceptive” and can be a “subconscious attempt to relieve anxiety associated with dishonesty.” 

Only a few sentences apart, Waller tells Theroux that he has two daughters and that their mother participates in threesomes with him and his girlfriends, but she is not allowed to see other men. Throughout the exchange, he laughs uncomfortably, breaks eye contact, and gives defensive answers to questions he isn’t asked. The body language of these men reveals what the rhetoric hides. They don’t have identities; they have personas. 

Perhaps, though, the most unfortunate aspect of the story is not the actors but the audience they grift off. Like porn, these men are exploiting lonely boys. A Harvard study found that 24% of 18- to 29-year-olds are lonely. Furthermore, 73% of those surveyed said technology was to blame. This data provides the demand for the manosphere’s supply. These men are monetizing loneliness. 

 They boast of “escaping the matrix” of society: things like a 9-5 job or being held down by one woman and a family. But they aren’t helping men escape the matrix; they are building a worse one. 

While the manosphere is heavy on performance, it is light on meaning. It emphasizes the quantity of followers over the quality of relationships. But what is widely known from the famous Harvard Study on Adult Development, conducted over 85 years, is that the quality of relationships matters more than the number of your friends; individuals with strong social bonds live longer, have stronger immune systems, and have lower rates of anxiety and depression; and relationship satisfaction at age 50 is a better predictor of physical health at age 80 than cholesterol levels. 

The manosphere comparison to porn becomes impossible to ignore. In researching the pornography-loneliness partnership, the Institute for Family Studies states, “The further the person entrenches this experiential pathway, the more elusive real relationship fulfillment could become.” Psychology Today describes a self-perpetuating cycle, noting that “using explicit material as a temporary fix likely fails to address the root cause of loneliness … potentially making it a maladaptive method of coping and creating potential entrapment in a destructive cycle of pornography and loneliness.” 

This is the real matrix. 

The manosphere isn’t about a few bad actors. It’s about us. Harrison, Gaines, Waller, and others exist because young men are confusing attention with value and performance with purpose. We like, share, and subscribe. Where porn inhibits intimacy, the manosphere traps us in a life of loneliness. And both consume our souls in the process. 

At the end of the documentary, it is revealed that Harrison has been arrested and that Gaines’ girlfriend has broken up with him. It appears these men are also resigned to a life of loneliness.

***

Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast, We The People with Gates Garcia. Follow him on X and Instagram @GatesGarciaFL.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.