When Louis Theroux set out to make his Netflix documentary Inside the Manosphere, he had one name at the top of his list. Andrew Tate, widely considered the biggest figure in the manosphere, was an obvious and necessary target for the acclaimed filmmaker.
What followed was a prolonged back-and-forth exchange that ultimately ended with Tate deploying an unusual weapon to shut the conversation down: a Google Trends graph.
Appearing on The Romesh Ranganathan Show, Theroux revealed how negotiations with the Tate brothers played out over the course of the year-long production. “I was messaging Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate quite a lot back and forth,” he told host Romesh Ranganathan.
The first hurdle was money. “He was like, maybe I’m going to do it if you pay me and I said we’re not going to pay you.”
That refusal prompted Tate to shift tactics entirely. Rather than negotiating further, he sent Theroux a Google Trends graph comparing the two men’s search popularity over a four to five year period.
The message was blunt. “He said, ‘Well, why would I talk to you? You’re not relevant anymore,'” Theroux recounted.
The graph itself was hard to argue with, at least at first glance. “There was a blue line, it was up here quite high,” Theroux explained, “and then there was this tiny little flat red line at the bottom. He goes, ‘I’m blue, you’re red.'”
By Tate’s reading, Theroux was barely registering on the public’s radar while Tate towered above him.
Ranganathan was quick to offer an alternative interpretation. “But that might be because they already know who you are,” he suggested. Theroux acknowledged the point. “Maybe people are googling who the f*** you are, mate,” Ranganathan added.
But the story did not end there. Theroux revealed that somewhere toward the end of the data period, something unexpected happened. “At the very end, through some weird glitch, my line went above his.”
Seizing the moment, Theroux did exactly what any self-respecting documentary filmmaker would do. “I screenshot and circled that and I said, ‘I’m literally more relevant than you are.’ I felt pretty gangster.”
Without Tate’s participation, Theroux pressed ahead with Inside the Manosphere, which features figures including HSTikkyTokky, Ed Matthews, Justin Waller, and Myron Gaines. The documentary is now available on Netflix.
The exchange, as Theroux told it, is almost a perfect encapsulation of the manosphere’s playbook: assert dominance, control the narrative, and dismiss anyone who fails to play by your rules.
