During a conversation on On with Kara Swisher, documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux shared his perspective on how the manosphere attracts young men and why its messaging resonates so strongly in today’s social climate.
One of the central ideas he addressed was the claim often repeated in manosphere spaces: that men are born without inherent value and must earn their worth. According to Theroux, social media plays a significant role in shaping that perception.
“I think part of it I came to see as a symptom of them inhabiting an Instagram culture in which women do have more value,” he said. He explained that platforms built around visual appeal can create the impression that women hold a natural advantage, particularly in online spaces driven by attention and followers.
“If you’re very attractive and you can put up a bikini shot on your social media and you’ll get a million followers. Okay, that’s one realm in which maybe women have an advantage, but it’s a very limited data set,” he continued.
Theroux argued that the problem lies in how success is being measured. To illustrate the point, he referenced historical achievement rather than online popularity.
“Truthfully, afterwards I remember thinking, was Marie Curie able to become a Nobel Prize-winning scientist because she was so hot?” he said. “She was born with so much value. It’s the weirdness of the way in which they measure what success looks like. Everything is within the lens of a very circumscribed kind of Miami influencer culture.”
Beyond social media, Theroux connected the rise of manosphere messaging to long-term economic and cultural changes that have reshaped traditional male roles.
“We’re in a world now where, for various reasons, some of it you could argue is like a kind of valid backlash, a sense of correction of perceived excesses of wokedom,” he said. “Part of it’s just the structural world we inhabit in which factories are gone.”
He noted that this shift has been building for decades, referencing earlier work that explored the decline of traditional industrial jobs.
“Susan Faludi wrote about this in a book like 30 years ago called ‘Stiffed,’ which I remember reading and being influenced by,” he said. “The American male or the Western male doesn’t go and work building cars in factories or in steel plants the way they used to. We’re more likely to be working in call centers.”
According to Theroux, the loss of those roles disrupted what many men once saw as a clear social contract: work hard, provide, and secure a stable identity.
“That kind of breaking of the post-war economic compact,” he said. “That sense like, well, what do we do now? Where do we fit in? And women are going out to work and in many cases doing the jobs as well as or better than the guys.”
Importantly, Theroux emphasized that acknowledging these frustrations does not mean dismissing them. In fact, he argued that men’s struggles, particularly around social connection and emotional support, are real and deserve attention.
“I’m not a fan of the casual disparagement of men,” he said. “I think men do struggle.”
He pointed specifically to difficulties many men face in maintaining friendships and emotional networks.
“One has to be wary of generalizing about gender, but I think there’s real truth in the idea that men struggle with the social aspect of life, making social arrangements, going out and seeing friends, being connected, catching up with people,” he said.
Using a familiar stereotype, he described how men sometimes retreat into solitary activities rather than addressing emotional needs.
“There’s some truth in the cliché that we want to go into the garage and reorganize our collection of screws and bolts and not necessarily feed our souls in the way that we need to,” he said. “I’m all in favor of the caretaking of men. That absolutely should be a priority for the culture.”
However, while Theroux acknowledged the underlying problems, he argued that the manosphere often capitalizes on those vulnerabilities instead of solving them.
“At the same time, it’s no excuse for what they’re saying,” he said. “But they’re filling in a gap. They’re saying here’s the answer to that.”
In his view, the solutions offered are often superficial: focused more on lifestyle signals than genuine support or growth.
“They’re filling the void with cigars and cars and this and that,” he said.
Ultimately, Theroux expressed his greatest concern about the age group most exposed to this messaging. Rather than targeting grown men, he believes the manosphere is increasingly shaping the worldview of teenagers who are still forming their identities.
“These are very young,” he said. “They tend to be 15 or 16-year-old boys.”
He concluded by suggesting that the label itself may be misleading.
“We call it the manosphere,” he said, “but you could probably more accurately call it the boyosphere.”
