Everything Louis Theroux got wrong about the manosphere | James Bloodworth interview

James Ludworth, welcome to the Politics Show podcast. How are you?

Yeah, I'm good. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

We are here to talk about Luther's documentary on the Manusphere, which is causing quite

a lot of conversation online. You're sort of an expert in the subject, but I'll let

you introduce your expertise on this.

So I wrote a book called Lost Boys that came out last year, the paper backs out in May of

this year. I spent more or less five years immersed in the subculture of the Manusphere,

which is an online world of anti-feminist subcultures. I spent time immersed in some of

the boot camps, programs in the US and over here in the UK. So yeah, I feel like I have

a pretty good grasp of the topic to the point where I'm sort of sick of the topic now.

And you're in Parliament speaking in front of a select committee about it as well. Tells

about that.

Yeah, so last week I was in front of the Women's and Equality's committee, select committee

who were looking at kind of misogyny the effect it has on women and girls and also looking

at some of these new kind of misogynistic anti-feminist subcultures of which the Manusphere

is one. So I was there talking about that, talking about sort of the, in some of the

insensitive structures behind the Manusphere, like why has this become such a big thing now,

the real world impact, et cetera, and what it all means essentially.

You described Blue Through's documentary as Underwhelming on Twitter. Why did you feel

that way?

I think partly because I spent such a long time immersed in it. I mean, not that I'm

the only one who's done that. There are others like the journalist Matt Shea did a documentary

on it. James Blake is another one who did something for the BBC. It felt like it was

quite superficial. I thought the documentary, it didn't really look at some of the, again,

some of the insensitive structures of why people are drawn into the Manusphere. It was a bit

more of a, like, parading a free show of the biggest influences in the Manusphere, like

look at these weird guys, what are they doing rather than, you know, why has the Manusphere

gained traction in recent years? And it didn't mention some of the people like Jordan Peterson,

who I do consider part of the Manusphere more so than just some male podcasters. So the

Manusphere to me is still, people like Joe Rogan and whatever are bracketed into the

Manusphere. And I think they're Manusphere adjacent. But to me, the Manusphere still

is very much this specific anti-feminist subculture, typically selling influences, selling

courses to young men and making lots of money off of that. And I felt that the documentary

didn't really go beneath the surface in that respect.

It did seem like it was quite top-down, and maybe we'll get into some of the voices

that were perhaps left out of the documentary or areas that were under-explored. But I

kind of want to touch on that sort of business model that's incentivising that. Because to

me, when I was watching it, I felt like these influences, like, hate-testiggy-tocky,

or whoever, I felt like they didn't really believe what they were saying. They were selling

something. But to me, it didn't really feel like they actually believed in it. And if

anything, the whole Manusphere to me feels like some sort of MLM or parinid scheme that

I think for a long time, women have been the main participants in whether that's, you

know, selling makeup or whatever. And women's MLMs have their own language to them as

well, like online or for instance, it's hand culture because it's sort of a way that

they speak to each other. And the Manusphere in many ways is kind of like that. It has

its own language. It has its own sort of business model in the way it works. I think

I kind of first became familiar with Andrew Tates' hustle university, where, you know, he

got all these people that followed him to essentially make the clip farms. And that's

how they would generate money. But can you talk a bit more about that sort of business

incentive model that there is? I think it's good to see the Manusphere as their

masculine entrepreneurs. I think framing them as just content creators, you kind of in

some ways, it kind of leaves the most important point out. So you touched on it there a bit

in that, you know, for a long time, women had to live within this exist within this kind

of insecurity, industrial complex for one of a better term where women's insecurity

is monetized. So you have, it's not just, you know, women who have vulnerabilities pre-existing,

it's also this whole industry makes women feel insecure at the cosmetic industry as an

example, and then sells them the purported solution, like you need to buy this product

or you're not going to feel like happy or you're not going to feel good enough. And the

Manusphere, I think, is in some way it's kind of an extension of that market to men.

I mean, I'm not saying it's the, I wouldn't say it's, you know, as bad because I think

that women have had to deal with this for a lot longer. But if you look at it in those terms,

I think it starts to make a bit more sense. So you have, you know, we talk about very often

wider people get into the Manusphere. And sometimes that can be because of some pre-existing

insecurity. They're vulnerable. They've grown up unsure of their identity. But also we shouldn't

underestimate the the extent to which the Manusphere itself creates that insecurity. So you have

these influences who are on masculinity entrepreneurs who will make men feel insecure, will spread

conspiracy theories like the 80s, 20 rule will spread conspiracy theories about paternity fraud,

false rape accusations, and make men, young men feel especially that they live in a world where

being as they are, they're not enough as they are. So they have to take these radical self-improvement

steps to change who they are. Otherwise, men aren't going to respect them. They're never going to

get a girlfriend, never going to get married. And then they present themselves as saviors and

guides. So, you know, if you buy my course, then you'll escape the fate of the surplus men or the

in cells or whatever. And they constantly hammer away at this message whilst presenting this very

ostentatious, flashy lifestyle through platforms like Instagram. And then they present themselves as

the cure for this, this melody that they've created themselves, if you like. And that's how they make

so much money selling these courses and boot camps and whatever. Do you think the influencers

themselves buy into any of the beliefs that they're espicing or do you think they're just pure

grifters? Because I mean, I think there were times in the early through documentary where you kind

of saw that maybe the life they were living behind closed doors with their wives and children

wasn't the sort of life that they were putting on social media. I definitely think they play

a character online a lot of the time. So, I think Andrew Tate is a is a good example of that.

He plays, he puts on this incredibly bombastic persona. He's quite charismatic as a lot of the

mar. They are marketers rather than gurus that figures that they are marketers essentially.

It's hard to tell, you know, whether they really believe this stuff or not because I think

sometimes with radicalization, what happens is somebody can be playing a character and they

radicalise themselves in the process. So, the mass comes to fit the face essentially and it's so

it's sometimes hard to unpick if they're so far down that road. How much they really believe it or not.

I think what the documentary didn't touch on which is more interesting in some ways is

is how some young ordinary young men may come to start believing in that. When there isn't that

fun that they aren't making money from it, but they've come to believe this set of ideas which are

fundamentally at odds with the facts, but they still come to believe it and feel bad in the process

and spend lots of money trying to kind of reenact the sort of things they're seeing online.

It's interesting because the sort of way that you're describing the business of these influencers

as working is really no different to the way that the admin of the 1950s would manufacture,

desire, and people that read print adverts. But I think the point of that you just raised

there about consumers and who is actually buying into this? Because I think it's so easy for people who

maybe were unfamiliar with the atmosphere to watch that lead through documentary and just

and just think like who is buying into this? It seems so ridiculous. And I think the documentary

touches on it briefly because it speaks to two people that have kind of bought into it or

follow it and now they kind of make some content of their own and they actually describe kind of

getting into it, one of them at the time of his brother's suicide. So I was wondering could you

explain a bit who the sort of people are that are consuming this content?

I think one of the things that's changed just to kind of touch on your point, your earlier point

was one of the things that's changed compared to say when I was growing up in the 90s,

early 2000s even, was that a lot of these kind of get rich quick schemes, these kind of

masculinity entrepreneurs, the schemes they push. In the past those figures would be in the back page

of like a newspaper or a man's magazine or something with their little ad and their get rich

quick scheme, selling their magic beans and buy this by my ebook or something. And what's

different now is you have like social media has like platforms like Instagram and video based social

media. It has created this universalization of not feeling like you're good enough, this

universalization of a feeling of corporization in a way where everyone seems to be having more

fun than you, everyone's having a nicer lifestyle, having more sex and you eating nicer food,

traveling to nicer places. So we're already I think sort of more vulnerable to this sales pitch

that we were perhaps in the past. And I think sometimes so I did interview one man, one young guy

from my book who was, he got into the man as far I think when he was like 13 or something,

he'd lived growing up with a stepfather who used to essentially bully him, like belittle him for

not being manly enough and take the meek out of him for that. And then when he got older he felt

like he needed to overcompensate. So he went looking for kind of combat sports on YouTube,

fine and rotate. And there's no there was no kind of disclaimer, you know, this guy is actually

a salesman. There was he started watching our rotate videos, find him quite charismatic,

thought he was knowledgeable about kickboxing, which is probably true. But then over time,

take segue into, you know, I can give you advice on women. Here's a course for men to respect you

and stuff. So it's in his case it was someone who already had that pre-existing kind of vulnerability

and felt like he needed to perform masculinity in this way because he wasn't good enough otherwise.

Other men, it's kind of they get into it for like dates, they just want some days of advice,

like some a few pointers in terms of conversation starters or something. And then they find these

guru figures on the internet who report to have all of the answers. And then they discredit the

mainstream and tell you you've been lied to your whole life. There's very much this cult mentality

to it. And the longer you stay in the subculture, the more you're kind of chasing this kind of dream

or something you don't have. So you take one of their courses and it doesn't work for you. And then

they say, well, actually that's because you need this other course and you end up spending lots

and lots of money going to these seminars, meeting lots of other people who are in that world as

well, who reinforce that kind of message to you. And it's quite a cult mentality to it as well.

So they tell you, you know, that don't listen to your family and friends if they will cut off your

family and friends if they tell you that this is the wrong path you're going down. They try and

create this like isolated bubble you're in. And it's much easier to do that online as well,

I think, than in the past where once you start, once I started researching this book,

I mean, the algorithms just like colonizing my timeline with stuff by like from Jordan Peterson

to Andrew Tate to that J Waller guy who's in the Louis through documentary. And so it's,

it becomes much harder to escape than in the past because in the past you could, you know,

shut down the internet, you know, and shut down the web forum or whatever. But now you're just

keep getting to live this stuff on your phone. I remember a few years ago, I wrote a piece

of speaking to men who were trying to derad a class. Other men had entered the manosphere,

but now we're looking to get out. And I remember the kind of conclusion that I came away with

or that these men had also drawn was that actually what a lot of those people needed was mental

health support and that the men seeking to do radicalise them simply just didn't have the

expertise. They weren't therapists. They weren't mental health professionals. Is it too

reductive to say that the crisis of the manosphere is simply a crisis of mental health?

I think it's too reductive to say it's just that. And also mental health does tie in with

kind of material support for mental health support. So for example, we we've become much better

as a society about saying that we need that men need to open up more about their mental health.

We need to talk about our feelings more. But then if you actually go to the NHS or something and say,

I want a mental health support, you'll be waiting, you'll be waiting maybe six months to actually

talk to someone. So the money hasn't been there to back up the messaging. And what the manosphere does

it, it takes men the other way. So it tells men that actually is weak to talk, is weak to open

up is weak to show any emotion. You need to be stoic and you need to kind of it reinforces the

problematic stuff that that that I think as a society men are trying to work through at the moment.

So it makes it worse. And it is reductive to say that it's just about mental health because it

can be material things like someone who's say like a young man who's still living at home with

their parents in their 20s and 30s, even their 40s now. That's the deal with the housing crisis.

But it leaves them more susceptible to messaging from people in the mass fear who will say that

well actually the reason you don't have a partner is because the sexual revolution feminism or because

women are hoarding all the jobs and or you know we see minorities playing for this as well.

Once those material conditions I think are putting men in this position where they don't feel they

have a lot of status in say their economic lives, they can try and seek status by having power over

others. And in this case it's having power over women. Do you think that women's voices were

missing from Louis Theroux's documentary because one of the things that kind of struck me is

often that girls, especially girls in school and teachers actually who are who are downstream of

these influencers are the ones that have to deal with most of the consequences of them. And we did

see briefly and mothers, wives and also the girls that go on these manosphere podcasts. But I felt

there wasn't much time spent with them and there wasn't much time spent alone with them away from

this sort of overview of the influencers themselves. Yeah to some extent I think that's true.

Though I would say it is somewhat difficult to find women in that world because the ironic thing

about the manosphere is they purport to have all the answers in terms of getting the woman of

your dreams or in the case of the manosphere now it's like having a horror of women or something

is seen as the ideal. But then in that the more time you spend in that world the more time you

spend with other men there are there are very few women in that world probably for understandable

reasons. I do think though yeah they should have spent a bit more time speaking to say

that the women who are taken on these podcasts and then just kind of trolled in front of

a big audience for clicks and to put out rage bait for some of the men who watch these channels.

So yeah I do think that's a good point. I think the documentary focused too much on

yeah the kind of freak show of these grifters in the manosphere who probably like the fact that

so I tried to when I was writing my book I wanted to interview why I didn't want to necessarily

I thought I reached out to Jay Waller the Justin Waller who's in documentary and he replied to me

like how many followers do you have. So you know his idea of obviously didn't have enough but his

idea of you know is he going to do the interview or not is based on you know how many people are

going to see me that like that some of them probably love the fact that they're on Netflix and

will build an even bigger profile off the back of that which I do think is is a bit problematic.

Absolutely that's that's really interesting sort of element. Again that I felt was perhaps

slightly under explored was the kind of dynamics of even just literally being filmed by their

their camera crew and having two different camera crews on it all points was really interesting and

I think we saw at certain moments there being a sort of awkwardness that wasn't coming from

Louis but placed upon him which we don't usually see in a Louis through documentary because of that

but one of the sort of dynamics that I felt was slightly under explored was how obviously the

algorithm propels these guys to the levels of famous infamy that they've got to

and they know how to game it in a certain way but at the same time they're totally and us really

beholden to that algorithm and something that I found really interesting was the role of the people

who watched the streams because we saw during the confrontation between H. S. Tiki Toki and Louis

through that this sort of lines that H. S. Tiki Toki was giving out the line about is Israel

committing a genocide that was coming directly from the stream it wasn't H. S. Tiki Toki's

own words he's being told what to do by the people who are watching them and something that was

really interesting to me is are the people watching that stream fully brought into the

atmosphere or do they get a sense of power or some sort of sexual gratification from having the

power to tell one of these alpha males and what to do especially when that's H. S. Tiki Toki

out in public approaching girls but these men behind the screen are telling him what to do and

also there's the potential that this alpha male could be humiliated and I thought that was a

paradigmic that I was really interested in but that didn't seem to be explored whatsoever in the

documentary yeah and also the fact that they have to pay to ask the question so there's there is

that dynamic where this this kind of pseudo democratic aspect to it where it feels like where it

can be presented in a way in which oh look our fans are getting to ask questions but it's still

they're having to pay money to the to the masculinity entrepreneur to even get to ask a question

so that again they make they're making more money from that and I thought you know the fact that

so so Louis mentioned in the documentary there is this something like antisemitism is I mean

there's there's various bigotry's which are apparent in the manuscript which I encountered as

well but there wasn't really like why antisemitism specifically and what I noticed when I was

researching my book was they so the manuscript has these two competing ideologies well theories

of women there's one in the women are kind of emotional and hysterical and and essentially stupid

but then also women run the world so it's like hang on a minute those how'd you kind of square those

two things and for some people that became you know that that they they drew on an older conspiracy

theory to kind of square the circle so well someone must be controlling women behind the scenes

and then they would be like who is it and then they they'd be swinging in these waters where

they're also the far right present as well and they'd say well it's it's the Jews and so you see

antisemitism becoming a kind of trope in the manuscript as well and I would have liked to have

seen more exploration of that in the manuscript like where does where does this come from

why why is the manuscript essentially become indescribable from the far right in many ways

you know they have Nick Fuentes on their podcast myron gains from fresh and fit has said lots of kind

horrific like things about Jewish people about the Holocaust I believe and people like

Dambalzerian as well have been pushing this stuff and people like Joe Rogan have been

platforming it as well so I don't think the the economic structure of this stuff was touched on

enough it was just these are bad people who need therapy well I don't think it's that there's a

those people are kind of in operating within this economic structure which I feel that that

whole conversation was left out of the the documentary definitely and I have felt like a lot of the

sort of ideology especially the really anti-Semitic stuff it has its roots in sort of those

detrolling campaigns of places like Fortan do you think that Louis Thoreau was

prepared enough for some of the lines of attack that and the influence was like H. S. Tiki

through at him like and well like when he kept bringing up Jimmy Savile or the the points and

about Israel as well no and I think that's the difficulty with approaching this as this kind of

conversational documentary I don't think Louis Thoreau's style was necessarily conducive to

a documentary like that because a lot of this stuff is so heavy a lot of the manifest of his

so heavy with irony and trolling and unless you really go behind the scenes again like someone

like I think Matt Shay did in their documentary where you know you look at this stuff they're saying

you look at the incentives behind it you go you you actually go inside one of their courses

and look at people getting essentially ripped off in that way I don't think you can really understand

it so well because you have these people on who love being on camera who are still performing in

this documentary sit like trying to troll Louis Thoreau it's all about one upmanship it's all

about controlling the frame as they would put it and many of many of the followers of these

influences will probably have watched this and think are they you know they did a good job

on Louis Thoreau and they've probably each of them accumulated lots more followers on the back of it so

to me it feels like there might be something of adolescence about this where adolescence was for

a lot of MPs and a lot of people who aren't well chronically online like myself was the first time

they had heard the term in cell and I think for a lot of people this way through documentary might be

the first time that they're even hearing of the manosphere and and I'm going to include MPs in that

group of people and do you think that or what do you think should be the takeaway for MPs for

people are trying to tackle this issue and especially amongst school kids what do you think the

takeaway should be? I think the takeaway is something we haven't really seen in say the Louis

Thoreau documentary I thought adolescence was a great series I thought it was really compelling

television but I think it's wrong to come away from that and think that the manosphere is just

you know it always ends in some like apocalyptic murder that there is no clear demarcation between

the man there is no clear kind of yes demarcation between the manosphere and mainstream society in the

way that sometimes this stuff is presented so if you have a documentary where it presents the

manosphere as this freak show and it makes us all feel good because we're not like those guys

I think you know so many women experienced domestic violence from men who aren't in the man

aren't embedded in the manosphere just within you know their domestic arrangements within their

within their family life and I think there has to be more reflection I think on the similar like

where does like some of the ideas that are in the manosphere those ideas are in the mainstream as

well the manosphere just presents a very amplified cartoonish version of that so I think it's

it's a mistake if we present the manosphere as just this kind of freak show that were you know we

can watch and feel better about ourselves and you know oh look at these in cells and stuff and

then reinforce some patriarchal ideas about men who aren't you know these men you know and not

as kind of you know progressive as we are and look at these loser in cells and stuff when you know

most domestic violence happens for a man like ordinary normal men who who aren't kind of online

putting out these these saying these outrageous things so I think yeah if we see it as some

separate freak show then I think that's a problem we have like it's a back tackling misogyny

generally I would say teams like both thank you so much for joining us when does the paper back

of your work come out the paper back is I on the summer to May thank you so much thank you

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project. I can't stand this. There's too much politics going on at the moment. Why does she need to do it?