If you watch Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere long enough, you start to realise something slightly embarrassing: the most unbelievable part of it is not the men on screen, it’s how familiar they sound. Not because you’ve met a Myron Gaines in real life (and if you have, I’m so sorry) but because you’ve already seen fragments of him everywhere. In reels, in comment sections where men ruminate “women ☕”, in those clips where a man with a mic confidently explains women to women like it’s a group project they somehow missed. And the instinct is to laugh. You have to laugh. Because if you don’t, you have to accept that someone, somewhere, is taking this seriously. And the problem is, they are.
When you step outside the documentary and actually talk to the people who watch this content, it stops feeling like a bizarre internet sideshow and starts feeling like something much more ordinary. Less “extreme ideology”, more “this kind of makes sense in a weird way”, which is far more unsettling. Take Jose Paul, a 29-year-old Bengaluru-based businessman who had once been deep into red-pill content. His entry point into this world was not some grand awakening about gender dynamics. It was a breakup. A very normal, very human, “what do I do with this feeling?” moment that most of us deal with badly at least once. Paul chanced upon content from people like Myron Gaines and Justin Waller. And it worked perfectly for him because those two- to three-minute-long clips all over platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram offered something he felt was missing elsewhere: direction.
“When a woman is going through something, you probably want to let her vent…tell her she deserves better,” he told me. “But for a man, at least for me, it didn’t work. What worked was ‘Bro, what the hell? This girl played you. You can’t let that happen’. That kind of belittling, intimidating talk…that’s what made me feel good.” I know, it’s easy to roll your eyes at that, but it’s also very easy to see why it works. Because the manosphere doesn’t ask you to sit with your feelings; it hands you a to-do list. It turns heartbreak into a project. Paul puts it perfectly: “He’s talking shit about women…and at the same time he’s telling me I should do better. It’s a crazy combo that I fell into.” A crazy combo, yes. Also, a very efficient one. You get a villain and a glow-up plan in the same sentence.
In a world where men are not exactly encouraged to unpack their emotions, unless it comes with a productivity outcome, this kind of clarity can feel like relief. “I started making more money than I ever did. I started driving cars that I never had… Totally different,” he said.
But here’s the part that kept nagging at me while we spoke: at no point does anyone in the manosphere ecosystem ask why men are supposed to be so uncomfortable with vulnerability? Why success is the only acceptable coping mechanism? Why your worth is something you have to constantly earn, preferably in cash. It runs on a simple assumption: the system is fine. You are the problem. And once you accept that, everything else falls into place a little too neatly.
That same certainty shows up in a different form with Anish*, a 24-year-old engineer. He begins our conversation with the same suspicion that Theroux is dealt in his documentary. “I don’t want to say my name because I know how this goes; you’re just going to twist it,” he tells me, before laying out what he considers to be a straightforward observation. “Men who have money, who are flashy, get more women. That’s just how it works.”
When I push back, he only sharpens his argument. “Yeah, but the pretty women want to be courted,” he tells me, and then, almost in the same breath, the frustration underneath it starts to show. “Tell me how many times you’ve seen a girl’s FYP where it’s like ‘red flag if he doesn’t bring you flowers… if he doesn’t pay… if he’s not taking you out’. What is he called then? A loser.” He pauses, then adds, “Everyone wants chivalry on the first date. But what happens when one date doesn’t work out, and I have to go on another, and then another? I’m putting all this time, money, and effort into this… Where is that supposed to come from?”
And once he says it, you realise it doesn’t even feel like a stretch. In the documentary itself, an OnlyFans model hanging out with Harrison Sullivan is asked why she likes him, and her answer is disarmingly simple: his money. It is exactly the kind of moment that, once clipped and circulated, makes it very difficult for someone like Anish to believe that this isn’t the rule.
It’s messed up, but it’s also revealing, because what he’s describing isn’t just women but expectation, the constant feeling of performing a version of yourself you’re not entirely sure you can sustain. Sitting across from him, it didn’t feel like he was forming an opinion so much as repeating something he had seen often enough for it to become a statute. The pattern is hard to ignore. Not in a dramatic, algorithm-is-controlling-us way, but in the quiet, repetitive way the internet works now (and society has worked forever), where you scroll past a “day in the life of a high-value man” video with bits about gym, trading app, discipline as personality, and then land on “I’m looking for a man in finance”, which is a joke until it isn’t, because it only works if everyone already agrees on the premise.
And that’s the uncomfortable part. The manosphere is motivating men like Paul and Anish to earn more, do more, become more. But at the same time, it is also quietly reinforcing the idea that who they are right now is not enough. That they are always one salary bracket, one body type, one version of “success” away from being taken seriously. And when that gap starts to feel too large, too exhausting, too constant, the frustration doesn’t turn towards the system that created it. It turns towards women.
You would argue why women are not standing outside this ecosystem throwing tomatoes at it? Infact, why are they’re in it? When I spoke to Rashika Bihani, a 26-year-old Interior Design student, her reaction wasn’t outrage. She found it, frankly, relatable. “Why wouldn’t I want to be comfortable? Why wouldn’t I want to stay at home...not grind like this every day?” she says. And you could dismiss that as regressive, except you can’t, because it sounds exactly like what half your friends say after a particularly bad work week. “I’m working all the time… I honestly find it very hard to compete,” she shares. And the thing is, Bihani’s not imagining that life either. In the documentary, Justin Waller’s wife is presented as someone who stepped away from her career, moved cities, and now focuses on raising their children, a life framed not as sacrifice but as comfort.
Suddenly, the tradwife pipeline makes a lot more sense. The “soft life” reels, the perfectly curated kitchens, the sourdough starter that somehow looks like a personality trait. Influencers like Nara Smith or accounts like Ballerina Farm are selling a version of domesticity that feels like an aesthetic upgrade instead of labour. Everything is calm, everything is controlled, and most importantly, nobody seems stressed. It’s aspirational in the same way the finance bro is. Just with softer lighting. And in a capitalistic world where everyone is exhausted, that kind of life does look appealing.
And that’s the part that’s uncomfortable to admit. Because for all the eye-rolling, the memes, the “this is ridiculous” conversations we have about the manosphere, real people are relating to it. Maybe not loudly, or even proudly, but enough for it to keep growing. Paul finds direction in it. Anish finds an explanation in it. Bihani finds relief in it. These are responses to very real pressures, shaped by a capitalistic system that ties worth to output, by social media that turns aspiration into expectation, and by a patriarchal framework that still defines masculinity through provision and control. All of this is unfolding against a backdrop of rising costs, constant talk of global instability, even the doom of a potential World War III, while you’re still expected to keep your life looking crisp, aesthetic, and fully put together online. The problem is that the manosphere steps in and offers ‘solutions’: easy answers, clean conclusions, a script you can follow. It tells you how to behave, what to aim for, who to blame. What it doesn’t do is pause and ask why any of this is necessary in the first place.
And interestingly, the documentary doesn’t quite push there either. It shows you the spectacle, lets the men speak, and in many ways, lets them reveal themselves, but it stops just short of asking the question that actually matters: why is any of this landing so easily? Instead, the focus stays on what is being said, not what is producing it. And in that gap, the same pattern continues. The answers feel convincing, the scripts feel usable, and the blame keeps landing in the same place. It’s neat, it’s efficient, and it completely misses the point.
*Some names have been changed upon request
