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In the early minutes of this grim documentary, Louis Theroux spends time with a young man called Harrison Sullivan, known online as HSTikkyTokky. Sullivan is 23 when Theroux interviews him, in Marbella, where he was then on the run after he crashed a car while speeding in the UK (he returned late last year and received a suspended sentence). Sullivan doesn’t seem to be familiar with Theroux and initially delivers his answers to the camera. “Who are you talking to?” Theroux asks, standing right next to him. The chasm of the generation gap is suddenly evident.

Sullivan is part of the “manosphere”, a loosely connected group of online content creators who adhere to “red pill” thinking, though thinking is perhaps pushing it. They post videos about fitness, flirting, and so-called “traditional” values. They post about financial opportunities and investment tips. Viewers will make up their own minds about the creators, based on the awful statements showcased here. Outrage is the manosphere’s most significant currency, and the pursuit of it trumps all.

Sullivan is shown here chanting an anti-Semitic slur — Theroux suggests in the film that in the world of certain types of content creation, outrage can become “an inflationary spiral of racism and bigotry”. Theroux does a good job of explaining the manosphere to viewers who may not see the content on a daily basis, and his analysis goes far deeper than the levels of thought that fuel the creation of the content itself. Briefly, but fascinatingly, he meets the women who circle this universe, which would make a documentary in its own right. He does not talk to Andrew Tate, the manosphere’s most notorious figure, who is referenced frequently, but those he does meet — Myron Gaines, Justin Waller and Sneako — all seem to perform for him, as they do online. However, they are also somewhat exposed by the unfamiliar context of television and by someone answering back.

At its worst, Netflix has a tendency to flatten its “content”, to render it simple, shiny and viewable as a passive activity. Anyone worried that, in his move to the streamer, Theroux might be pushed into that trap should be reassured that this is not the case. In many ways, this is classic Theroux. He holds unpleasant truths up to the light and looks at them from all angles, with that faux-naive curiosity. But, towards the end, when he encounters Sullivan’s mother, he, too, seems a little exposed. Why, she asks him, is he criticising her son for attention-seeking while giving him all this attention? It’s the documentarian’s age-old dilemma, but it feels particularly pertinent here, and is never quite resolved.

★★★★☆

On Netflix now