I’ve always had a soft spot for Louis Theroux. I wouldn’t call him a friend, exactly, but I’ve known him for about 40 years. We started our journalistic careers at the same time and would frequently bump into each other at parties. He’s intelligent and funny and, in person, doesn’t answer every question with a question or pretend to be puzzled when he’s evidently long made up his mind. The passive–aggressive ‘just asking questions’ routine is, thankfully, confined to his TV appearances. By this I mean he has no hesitation in telling me I’m being ‘unbelievably stupid’ – which, because we disagree about politics, is quite often. But he’s a QPR fan so I can forgive these outbursts.
His latest documentary, Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere, is an entertaining and at times disturbing watch. His diffident approach to drawing out these male social-media stars seems to throw them off balance. They sense he’s out to ‘rip’ them, not least because his reputation precedes him, but can’t work out how. They’re used to direct confrontation, expecting him to ‘come at them’, rather than to ask apparently innocent questions about their relationship with their mothers. They don’t realise he’s giving them an opportunity to condemn themselves out of their own mouths – so of course they happily oblige.
Turns out, they’re a pretty unsavoury lot. They brag about how much money they’ve made from unsuspecting fanboys who think that signing up to one of their online courses will lead to earning thousands and having multiple sexual partners. In reality, Louis discovers these fans are being fleeced. When he gently questions the ‘influencers’ about this, not to mention the young women they ‘manage’ on OnlyFans, they become defensive, claiming it’s a dog-eat-dog world where you’re either an ‘apex predator’ or a ‘loser’. This is the excuse for corruption down the ages: the game is rigged, so don’t blame us for breaking the rules.
When we first meet these self-described ‘alphas’, they appear more sad than sinister, desperately trying to create the illusion that they have billionaire lifestyles when the reality is more sofa beds and takeaways. If they’re making money, they don’t have time to spend it because they’re too busy recording every aspect of their lives on their phones in the hope of posting something that goes viral. They claim to have docile girlfriends who embrace ‘one-sided monogamy’, but their efforts to ‘drop game’ on female tourists in Marbella seem comically hopeless. Louis says in a voice-over that they’re trying to compensate for shortcomings in other areas of their lives, and they certainly give off small-dick energy.
Just when you think you’ve got a handle on these lowlifes, Louis peels away another layer and reveals their nasty core. In one scene, a ‘content creator’ and his hangers-on disappear to confront a suspected paedophile. We’re not told what evidence they’ve assembled, if any. They then set about him like wild dogs, although we don’t get to see this, just Louis’s appalled reaction as he watches it on his phone. It’s shocking to see how far they’ll go to create viral content, like something in a dystopian sci-fi movie.
When we first meet these self-described ‘alphas’ they appear more sad than sinister
As Louis probes his subjects about their worldview, they also turn out to be raging anti-Semites. One tells him the world is run by a cabal of Satanists with the Rothschilds at its heart. Louis got into trouble recently for a podcast in which he failed to criticise Bob Vylan about his ‘Death to the IDF’ chant. But here he drops his guileless façade and tells these basement-dwellers they’re talking bollocks.
Inside the Manosphere isn’t without its faults. Louis shows selfies these braggarts have taken with Donald Trump and laps up their stories of how close they are to the US President’s inner sanctum. For once, the credulousness isn’t an act. He wants to believe it – wants to depict Trump as a product of this toxic universe – so his critical faculties desert him. Louis can be un-believably stupid about politics too.
The film would also have benefited from a bit more self-reflection. Yes, these ‘influencers’ are exhibit A in the case for banning under-16s from social media. But they’re filling a vacuum created by the unwillingness of grown-up, well-adjusted men with big media platforms – men like Louis – to make a positive case for masculinity. Successive generations of influential men have allowed the feminist demonisation of half the human race to go unchallenged, so is it any wonder aggrieved adolescent boys are turning to the manosphere? If you want them to reject these false prophets, it’s not enough to expose them – and Louis does a superb job of that. You have to offer something better.
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