“Everyone in the manosphere is online just trying to make a buck selling ideologies.” – Louis Theroux’s, Into the Manosphere (Netflix).
In Louis Theroux’s latest documentary, Into the Manosphere, the British documentarian speaks directly with manosphere influencers. The manosphere is a loose network of communities that claim to address the societal struggles of men while promoting idealised versions of masculinity, as well as anti-feminist and misogynistic views. Groups within the manosphere are often united by an opposition to feminism and the presentation of men as the victims of a cultural and political shift that has favoured women.
Over the course of 90 minutes, Theroux interviews a number of high-profile influencers within the manosphere, along with several of their followers (deliberately unnamed in this Insight to limit notoriety). The interviews shed light on the ideological pillars of the manosphere (dominated by a highly traditional view of gender roles), the lifestyles of its influencers and its increasing popularity with young men.
While much has been said about the documentary, including its limited engagement with how these ecosystems harm women, Theroux’s interviews nonetheless present a confronting reality. Numerous interviews are conducted while the influencers are simultaneously streaming or otherwise creating monetisable content, highlighting the algorithmic promotion essential to the manosphere’s proliferation. In an effort to optimise platform algorithms, influencers may say the most shocking, rage-inducing or extreme things to maximise viewer engagement.
The documentary makes clear that, at times, engagement and platform financial incentives seem to dictate the direction of the manosphere movement, rather than a strict adherence to a central ideology.
This Insight explores how the financial incentives of social media platforms inadvertently shape and radicalise the manosphere. To interrogate this premise, it examines three areas. First, it analyses the breadth of content within the manosphere. Second, it unpacks how financial and algorithmic incentives on social media encourage the production of extreme content to maximise reach and engagement. Finally, it examines the harm caused by extreme manosphere content, regardless of influencer motivations, and how social media companies must adapt to disincentivise radical content.
Understanding Manosphere Content
Today, the manosphere includes a very wide spectrum of content, ranging from the benign to the extreme. Some influencers share workout and diet tips to improve physical health. Other influencers share financial advice and stock market tips under the pretence of providing a pathway towards financial freedom for their followers. Others share content depicting rich lifestyles with luxury cars and model girlfriends.
It is often through this seemingly benign content that young men first interact with the manosphere. One study from Dublin City University’s Anti-Bullying Centre found that male accounts on TikTok were fed masculinist, anti-feminist and other extremist content within the first 23 minutes of their experiment, regardless of whether they initially engaged with general or male-supremist content. The study shows that young men may first encounter the manosphere inadvertently while searching for other content, rather than by directly seeking it out.
Even if young men do not intentionally go searching for the manosphere, much of its most benign content includes thematic ties to misogyny and antifeminism. In an interview between Theroux and a follower of the manosphere, the individual explained that the manosphere helped him get out of a tough situation. However, even this was framed in opposition to women, as he explained, “life as a man, you’re born without value, we [men] have to build that value.” This is in contrast to women, whom they claim are born with value because of their beauty.
This ideology, along with more innocuous content, can serve as an entry point to more extreme views and groups. As misogynistic views become normalised, so do increasingly radical views that offer a sense of meaning to those who may be vulnerable. One study argued that gendered narratives specifically play a key role in influencing motivations for joining and participating in extremist groups. The clearest example is within the incel community, where some members have adopted a worldview that legitimises and at times glorifies violent action.
How Platform Algorithms Help Drive the Manosphere
It is tempting to view the manosphere as a self-contained radicalisation pipeline. Driven by an underlying misogynistic ideology, influencers and followers can move from self-improvement content promoting traditional gender roles to violent extremism advocating violence against women. The evolution of views follows the traditional model of radicalisation, whereby individuals transition from relatively moderate beliefs to increasingly extreme and ultimately violent ideological positions.
However, traditional models of radicalisation fail to capture how platform incentives themselves shape and manipulate the manosphere. Rather than a story of pure ideological radicalisation, the evolution of the manosphere can be better understood as a product of the algorithmic and financial incentives of social media platforms.
One of the influencers in Theorux’s documentary openly expressed that their primary motivation for publishing manosphere content was profit generation. They described themselves as both a “salesman” and a “businessman,” having joined social media in university to make money. Proudly, they expressed, “I openly say I don’t give a f*ck, I’m just doing it for the money.”
In today’s online world, social media can offer a lucrative career to a select few. YouTube includes a partner program that enables influencers to monetise their content through ad placements. The Instagram Creator Fund monetarily rewards creators for high-performing content. Influencers can also leverage brand deals, affiliate links and sponsorships within their content to promote products and services. Influencers typically get a cut of any sales made.
However, profit generation on social media is influenced by the number of people who see an influencer’s content. A larger audience creates more opportunities for monetisation, whether through advertising, brand partnerships or audience engagement. Influencers thus become dependent on the algorithms that promote their content to viewers. While these algorithms are typically opaque, it is widely accepted that the more ‘engagement’ a piece of content receives, the more likely it is to be promoted to others on the platform.
Yet algorithms are typically designed to promote content that maximises engagement regardless of whether that engagement is positive or negative. A 2021 study from members of the University of Oxford found that negativity spreads more than positivity on X (then Twitter). Similarly, a 2024 study from Stanford found that negative, highly arousing stories get the most traffic on social media. Influencers are subsequently incentivised to push out increasingly shocking content to ‘farm’ engagement, regardless of whether they believe what they are espousing.
But what does this mean for the manosphere? For some influencers, it may be financial incentives rather than an underlying ideology that pushes them to produce increasingly radical content. As one of the influencers explained to Theroux, “Have I said in a video f**k the jews? Yes. Does that mean I’m antisemitic? No. I’m clip farming.” Clip farming refers to the act of saying something outrageous solely to be clipped and shared on social media to achieve virality.
In the case of some manosphere actors, what we see is not a steadfast adherence to an ideology, but to profit generation. Nonetheless, misogynistic and antisemitic rhetoric, a frequent feature of manosphere discourse, continues to circulate widely and contribute to the normalisation of extremist narratives, in contrast to Meta, TikTok and YouTube’s expressed policies.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Even if some actors in the manosphere do not believe some of the radical content they post online, harm is still inflicted. Theroux’s documentary captures a number of instances in which young men approach the influencers on camera and parrot back the most extreme quotes from their content. Common lines include, “f**k the women” and “all gays should die.” A preprint study from the University of Iowa suggests that even minimal interaction with the manosphere (such as making a comment or post within a community on Reddit) significantly increases the prominence of warning signs linked to radicalisation and extremism.
Shocking content within the manosphere desensitises its audience to specific language and behaviour. Such content often normalises violence against specific groups, including Jews, the LGBTQ community and women. Desensitisation can lead to moral acceptance and justification. In rare cases, this can form a part of a pathway towards real-world violence. Indeed, a 2022 study advances that both theoretical proposals and empirical work indicate that attitudes and an acceptance of violence can influence real-world practice. These steps can occur regardless of whether manosphere influencers truly mean what they espouse.
So how can social media respond to a movement that has emerged not just as a function of ideology but as a function of platform incentives?
While basic content moderation and banning violative influencers are a first step, they are, unfortunately, insufficient to address the broader issue. Theroux’s documentary highlights how, even when an influencer is banned from a platform, their clips can continue to circulate online. The most famous example is Andrew Tate; although his channel was banned from YouTube, clips from old content and new videos featuring Tate as a guest continue to circulate online.
As explored in a previous GNET Insight, effective action must target the financial incentives and accompanying algorithms that reward shocking, toxic, and extreme content on social media platforms. This could involve modifying social media algorithms to promote content that facilitates pro-social engagement and demote content that facilitates the opposite. Indeed, a 2026 preprint study suggests that deprioritising certain negative content alongside promoting constructive content can have a depolarising effect.
Platforms could also adjust their payout structures to provide stronger financial incentives for content that promotes pro-social behaviour. However, further research is needed in this area to understand the feasibility and the impact on content creator motivations.
The manosphere may not have emerged solely from strict and misogynistic ideologies but also from the algorithmic and financial incentives of social media platforms. As long as algorithms prioritise engagement at all costs to maximise financial payouts, influencers will be incentivised to publish increasingly radical content. Meaningful modifications to platform algorithms and accompanying incentives may be a first step toward shifting this. Such a shift is necessary in a world where algorithms play an increasing role in what we see and how we think.
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Georgia Lala is a Research Fellow at the New Zealand policy think tank Koi Tū: Centre for Informed Futures. Her professional interests lie at the intersection of societal resilience, digital information systems, epistemic security and violent extremism (notably incel and white identity movements). She holds a BA from Duke University, where she attended as a Robertson Scholar, and a Master’s degree in Diplomatic Studies from the University of Oxford, where she attended as a Chevening Scholar.
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