For a little while there, it seemed as if Louis Theroux might be losing his magic. In the last few years, his celebrity interview podcast series prompted some of the shakiest reviews of his career and he looked dangerously out of touch in his 2022 documentary on Florida’s rap scene, Rap’s New Frontline. Dangerous because he poked, prodded and risked inflaming rap beefs as though unaware that this could have potentially fatal real-world consequences for his interviewees.
Then, thankfully, came last year’s unflinching The Settlers which brilliantly documented the rise of religious-nationalist Israeli settlers in the West Bank, suggesting that Theroux was back to his best. Now he’s returned with his first feature-length Netflix doc. Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere is easily one of his greatest yet, again exploring fringe ideologies that have seeped into the mainstream.
Inside the Manosphere is a meta masterpiece that tackles the algorithmic poison being served to young men, but also says so much about the battle between new and old media, as well as the toxic battleground of social platforms, contemporary conspiracy theories and the parasocial relationships that make some influencers rich. If he appears to be riding the coattails of Adolescence, Theroux seems keen to emphasise that the film has been in production since at least early 2025.
He meets Harrison Sullivan AKA HSTikkyTokky, who’s been accused of homophobia and sexism; Myron Gaines, who literally wrote the book on misogyny – it’s called Why Women Deserve Less; and Sneako, who believes we’re living through a biblical end of days because Sam Smith wore devil horns to the Grammys. Seriously. It says a lot that Miami’s Justin Waller, who explains that he’s in a “one-sided” monogamous relationship with a woman who “doesn’t talk to other men”, seems like the most palatable of the bunch.
Obviously, these guys are cranks. At one point, Gaines claims that women are deceptive because “you don’t know when they’re on their period”. What? Yet enormous audiences are drawn to their relentlessly combative content. Gaines invites young women on his podcast only to humiliate them, while Sullivan livestreams his underlings beating up a man on the street, then has the footage clipped up across social media and emblazoned with the logo for an online gambling company.
Ironically, all of these swaggering Andrew Tate wannabes seem terrified of Theroux and are clearly worried he’s trying to stitch them up. So why did they agree to take part in his programme? Perhaps they crave the respectability of ‘mainstream media’ while appearing to reject it. At one point, Sullivan starts talking to the camera as he would on TikTok before being reminded to pretend it’s not there, highlighting the illusion that documentaries operate on. Sullivan’s goons constantly livestream the making of Theroux’s film, indicating the queasy hall of mirrors that they inhabit.
Theroux explores the trauma that seems to drive the influencers and their acolytes, but only briefly touches on the wider political implications of their Make America Great Again-adjacent messaging: perhaps he could have dug more deeply into this. Then again, you can only do so much in 90 minutes and he’s certainly shown the lads up as scared, insecure little boys offering easy answers in a complex world that has left them feeling adrift. If the manosphere really does have to be a battleground, Louis Theroux just owned its loudest voices.
‘Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere’ is out now on Netflix