{"id":531769,"date":"2026-03-12T16:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T16:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/531769\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T16:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T16:34:10","slug":"in-his-new-inside-the-manosphere-netflix-doc-louis-theroux-wields-the-ultimate-weapon-pity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/531769\/","title":{"rendered":"In His New ‘Inside The Manosphere’ Netflix Doc, Louis Theroux Wields The Ultimate Weapon: Pity"},"content":{"rendered":"

The big reveal about the broadcaster Louis Theroux \u2013 at least if you\u2019re one of the subjects of his acclaimed documentaries \u2013 is that he\u2019s a wolf in sheep\u2019s clothing. Or, to use a more modern framing, and one that the subjects of his new feature-length documentary, Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere would more readily understand, an alpha male posing as a beta. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a ruse that has worked extremely well for Theroux since the early Nineties, pretending to be a good-natured British dimwit and luring the likes of Jimmy Savile, alt-right Americans and Scientologists into revealing more about themselves than might be in their interests; though given his interviewees are often controversial, even hateful figures (see Savile), their slip-ups are very much in ours. It\u2019s also a ruse with which the televiewing public, certainly in Britain, are now comfortably familiar. <\/p>\n

The proponents of the manosphere \u2013 that great swill of online men\u2019s interest content that has morphed at its fringes into a misogynistic, racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic free-for-all \u2013 are obvious Theroux targets. These are grown men who peddle odious ideas and dodgy investment schemes to teenage boys, selling them dreams of wealth and women: a land of milk and honeys. To \u201cright-thinking people\u201d, if such a thing can be said to exist anymore, they\u2019re fair game.<\/p>\n

\"group<\/p>\n

Netflix<\/p>\n

Straightaway in this new 90-minute Netflix film, we\u2019re in familiar Theroux territory. \u201cA few years ago, I noticed that parts of the internet were being taken over by a collection of male influencers,\u201d his familiar voiceover begins. Hmm. Surely Theroux\u2019s not only just getting hip to the manosphere phenomenon? He\u2019s more clued up than that, of course \u2013 but a faux-naivety that once gave \u201cinnocent ing\u00e9nue\u201d now gives \u201cover-the-hill boomer\u201d. Either way, we know it too well to buy it. <\/p>\n

Happily for Theroux \u2013 though perhaps a bit privately bruising \u2013 the demise of television is so advanced that some of the major manosphere players are young enough or disinterested enough not to know who he is, and therefore agree to be interviewed. Andrew Tate, however, the biggest fish, did seem to be aware of his work, and declined to take part. (Was he too busy to talk to Louis? Too scared? No doubt the answer would depend on which of them you asked.) <\/p>\n

\u201cApparently he\u2019s a respected documentarian,\u201d says American social media personality Nico Kenn De Balinthazy, better known as Sneako, in a livestream to his followers. \u201cI don\u2019t know what Louis\u2019s move is but everyone\u2019s telling me he goes out of his way to try and fuck people,\u201d says British content creator Harrison Sullivan, who goes by hstikktokky. But in the age of Google, the jig is quickly up. \u201cOh shit,\u201d says Sneako, scrolling through Theroux\u2019s online filmography. \u201cIs he going to do a hit piece on me?\u201d <\/p>\n

So what is Louis doing? To start with it\u2019s quite routine Theroux stuff. He\u2019s padding around after a few of them: hstikkytokky and Ed \u201cMatty\u201d Matthews in Marbella; internet personality Justin Waller and podcaster Amrou Fudl, who goes by Myron Gaines, in Miami. He\u2019s striving for affability, starting gently, as when Harrison says he\u2019d disown his son if he were gay (Theroux: \u201cThat\u2019s a big statement\u201d), getting gradually more challenging, and eventually even just flat-out arguing. \u201cYou\u2019ve just gone off the deep end,\u201d he tells Sneako, after he\u2019s spewed a the-world-is-run-by-a-satanist-cabal conspiracy theory.<\/p>\n

The problem though, is that Theroux is imagining a primacy of television that they, within their sphere, do not recognise. Or worse: that they pay no attention to at all. Louis and the manosphere men are playing different sports, with different rules. If he goes for a fencing lunge, they respond with a muay thai roundhouse. It\u2019s an ungainly tussle, and, in its own way, oddly macho. <\/p>\n

\"(l<\/p>\n

Netflix<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is TV, this is a real documentary,\u201d Theroux tells Sullivan, when the 23-year-old instinctively starts talking straight to camera and not to him. Sullivan is submissive at first (\u201cI\u2019m used to mere social media,\u201d he says meekly). But later, when Harrison and Theroux have a final testy showdown, Harrison livestreams the whole thing, trying to regain control of the narrative and get the upper hand. And in a sense, Harrison succeeds: he gives himself the final word, turning away from Theroux to talk to his own camera. \u201cNothing with me needs to be edited out,\u201d he says down the lens. \u201cPut what you want about me on the net. I don\u2019t give a toss.\u201d<\/p>\n

But don\u2019t write off the boomer just yet. Theroux has one trick left up his sleeve. What is the worst thing that you can say about a manosphere man? That he\u2019s evil, or brutish, or immoral? No. That would be more or less a compliment. The worst thing you can say is that he\u2019s weak. That he\u2019s silly. That he\u2019s frail. That he is, in fact, a product of an absence of agency, a victim of his own powerlessness. In other words, the direct opposite of what he so desperately wants to project. <\/p>\n

Theroux well knows this, and in the film\u2019s closing moments, under cover of sympathy, he goes in for the kill. \u201cIt\u2019s tempting to see the extreme male influencers as adversaries, spewing hate, and in some ways they are,\u201d he says, in his own closing monologue, delivered with another of his signature tones: a kind of lightly ironic reflectiveness. \u201cBut they are also products of a culture, growing up online in a world that\u2019s changing at dizzying speed, with narrowing opportunities, when the old entitlements of manhood have been challenged.\u201d <\/p>\n

The images playing beneath his voice are from self-filmed videos of Sneako and Ed Matthews as young boys, making their first forays into the content-creating world that will soon swallow them up. They look young, sweet, vulnerable. They are not to be feared, but to be pitied. They would hate it. Theroux, within the venerable medium of television, has triumphed over the manosphere men. But as victories go, it\u2019s also somewhat hollow. It seems unlikely that they, or at least the other little boys who revere them, will be watching.<\/p>\n

Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere is on Netflix now <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The big reveal about the broadcaster Louis Theroux \u2013 at least if you\u2019re one of the subjects of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,135800,208554,24271,75,783,208553,208552,205258],"class_list":["post-531769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-content-type-reviews","tag-contentid-c57c2bb4-f66a-4832-b400-62f773ed465c","tag-displaytype-long-form-article","tag-entertainment","tag-locale-gb","tag-louis-theroux-wields-the-ultimate-weapon-pity","tag-shorttitle-in-his-new-manosphere-doc","tag-subsection-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}