Louis Theroux is one hell of a filmmaker as he travels across the world bringing some of the most exposing documentaries you can think of for us to enjoy. This man has interviewed murderers and the worst of the worst yet a group of Tik Tok posers make him look the most uncomfortable I’ve ever seen him.
Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere focuses on a group of men who preach exaggerated masculinity, controversy and the belief of women as ‘tools’ to provide for them to their audience of wet wipes who lap up all of the information they’re spreading and pay a fee to access this information.
Now throughout the documentary where Louis meets some known names in this space (they aren’t even worth name dropping) there are actually some genuine things I agree with that they’re spouting.
Things such as men becoming self-sufficient, escaping the 9-5 job and pursuing passions and working hard to get the life you want are all positive attitudes that I can get onboard with. Being married and having optional women whilst your wife can’t cheat, using women as nothing more than cleaners and sex workers however are things I don’t agree with and degrading women on a live video cast for people to watch is beta behaviour at its finest.
As these beta men pose as alphas with nice cars and luxury cars they think they’re embodying masculinity. Assaulting people for clicks and likes, once again, they think they’re embodying masculinity when in reality they probably need to stop watching Wolf of Wall Street and step into the real world for a second.
Controversy for clicks is certainly a fast track to success but then preaching about a ‘sure fire’ way to make money and then charging the very impressionable young audience a fee to access that information instantly creates wealth for the preacher and disappointment for the buyer.
Praying on the impressionable is never a nice look and the film observes how they operate and Louis often doesn’t need to ask any deep questions (they wouldn’t understand them anyways) in order for them to trip over themselves.
What I will say is that this is one of Theroux’s weakest performances in terms of his journalistic insight and interview technique. The people he’s interviewing are already well versed in talking shit so he can’t really interview the human but more the persona of the person they’re pretending to be.
There’s no interrogation here, it’s a very surface level documentary that fails to uncover the more sinister nature of how these ‘men’ are causing more damage to their audience than good.
The irony of the entire documentary though however is that the real alpha in the entire show was… wait for it… a woman.
One of the stars mum put him in his place so quickly he turned into an absolute wet wipe referring to his mum as ‘mummy’ when she was shouting at him for being disrespectful.
Would I recommend it? No
Do I commend Louis for doing it? Yes
Did he look more out of place in this than any other documentary he’s ever done? Yes
Louis Theroux Inside the Manosphere is now available to stream on Netflix.
Our Rating
Summary
Certainly one of Louis’ weakest documentaries in terms of diving into the nitty gritty of things but it’s impossible to deep dive beyond such hollow weak-minded facades of these beta men posing as alphas. Whilst they live the life many dream of it’s only at the expensive of their weak-minded audience who continue to support them and throw money their way in the hope that one day they can drive that nice car, live in that nice house or treat their other halves like dirt on their shoe.
What a truly awful society we live in where clicks, attention and exploitation is currency. Crack on lads, but karma is timeless.
