Louis Theroux recently appeared on The Romesh Ranganathan Show, where he spoke about the misogynistic content that fuels the manosphere, describing it as calculated outrage designed to sell products. He suggested that what looks like anti-women rhetoric is often less about genuine belief and more about generating attention and ultimately driving sales.
During the conversation, Theroux explained how the culture around influencers like HSTikkyTokky and Andrew Tate has evolved into something he sees as deliberate performance rather than genuine belief.
“The misogyny is obviously the front burner issue,” he said. “It’s horrific, and it’s becoming more and more weird, almost like a oneupmanship. ‘I don’t think women should drive. I don’t think they should vote.’ It’s not almost too kind to say it’s outdated. It sort of feels like it’s become a sort of performative misogyny of creating outrage.”
Theroux told host Romesh Ranganathan that this outrage is not an end in itself. “That’s almost the window dressing for a sales pitch,” he said. “They go viral exploiting algorithms online that thrive on divisive content, and then it becomes an upsell for a rubbish subscription to an online university or some crypto scam or an FX trading platform.”
During filming, Theroux said the clearest illustration of this mindset came from an exchange with HSTikkyTokky himself. “He says he just wants to make money and he doesn’t really care how he does it. He’ll rip people off if people are simps and they want to sign up to OnlyF*ns. He says then he’s going to promote it and that’s on them.”
Ranganathan, himself a father of three boys, told Theroux that he found the attitudes young men were absorbing online genuinely alarming. Theroux agreed, describing the project as a convergence of everything he had examined across his career.
“This subject is like the final boss of subjects for me because it combines so many things I’ve seen in other worlds in other films, whether it’s homophobia, misogyny, racism, p*rn, because they’re selling adult content a lot of them.”
He acknowledged that not everything within the manosphere is without merit. Fitness advice, discipline, and self-improvement messaging all appear alongside the more troubling content.
But for Theroux, the context matters. Speaking about HSTikkyTokky specifically, he said: “He’s got charisma. He’s a talented broadcaster. I can acknowledge all of those things. But how meaningful is it to have a good work ethic if you’re just spending hours and hours spewing offensive pickup lines to girls on a beachfront in Marbella?”
Andrew Tate, the most prominent figure associated with the manosphere, declined to participate in the documentary unless paid. When Theroux refused, Tate sent him a Google search graph showing Tate’s significantly higher online profile.
“He goes, I’m blue, you’re red,” Theroux recalled. “I was barely registering.”
