Louis Theroux on the Manosphere: ‘It’s Highly Profitable to Be a Dick on the Internet’
It’s been more than 30 years since Louis Theroux first had the opportunity to make documentaries as a reporter on Michael Moore’s film. TV Nation.
Since then, Theroux has become the preeminent documentarian of the strange, the extreme and the dangerous, filming everyone from Westboro Baptist church members to West Bank ultra-Zionists.
But in Inside the manosphere, In his first film with Netflix, released March 11, Theroux tackles what he jokingly describes to WIRED as “the final boss battle in Louis Theroux’s gamified career.”
“I’ve been kicking around this topic” for years, Theroux told WIRED from the Squid Game meeting room at Netflix’s London headquarters. “It combines cult groups, misogyny, adult content, the creation of pornographic content and obviously racism. All these taboo areas of life that I have spent my television work documenting in different forms come together in the manosphere.”
Theroux says he was drawn to the subject not only because of its ubiquity and influence, but also the challenge of filming subjects who in turn film you and turn your presence into content that boosts their channels.
The manosphere is a broad description of a category of online personalities that encompasses everyone from super-podcaster Joe Rogan to health and fitness content creators and crypto bros. For his documentary, Theroux focused on the extremes of the manosphere that push racist and misogynistic content to attract young viewers.
“The goal is not just to promote toxic content,” says Theroux. “It’s, in a sense, the gateway, the gateway through which they get people’s attention. But the goal is to engage young boys, in particular, and get them to buy their products, their crappy currency trading products or their so-called online universities. It’s a pretty cynical scam.”
In the past, he has touched the world of the manosphere, filming with January 6 insurrectionist Anthime Gionet (aka Baked Alaska) and white supremacist Nick Fuentes.
“We took this opportunity to explore an increasingly influential world,” says Theroux. “This has a scale and scope beyond anything I’ve observed of comparable extremes… Tens of millions of people are watching this content. It’s an important topic.”
To make his point, Theroux spent time with HSTikkyTokky, a British influencer whose real name is Harrison Sullivan, and American manosphere superstar Sneako (real name Nicolas Kenn De Balinthazy), who attended President Donald Trump’s last inauguration. He also spends time with Myron Gaines (real name Amrou Fudl), a prominent host of the show Fresh and fit podcast and Justin Waller, a Miami-based influencer.
But there was one figure in the manosphere that Theroux couldn’t convince to participate: Andrew Tate, a former kickboxer accused of rape in several countries. (He has also been accused of human trafficking in the UK; he has denied all allegations.)
Tate, along with his brother Tristan, became one of the most recognizable faces of the manosphere movement, earning huge sums of money from tens of millions of supporters.
When Theroux messaged Tate about spending time with him, he said Tate responded, “I’m the most important man on the planet. And who are you? Were you relevant years ago?”
Tate then followed up with a screenshot from Google Trends that showed a blue line at the top of the graph showing search interest in Tate over time and a red line at the bottom of the graph showing interest in Theroux over the same time period, according to Theroux.
