Decoding The Manosphere

Boys Don’t Need More Scripts, Saviors, or Supplements

Since the November election, there has been an abundance of discussion about the so-called manosphere; a nebulous and informal confederation of male influencers who have amassed large audiences via the use of alternative media. These men, dubbed manfluencers, come from a variety of backgrounds: professors, reality stars, scientists, athletes, comedians, and more. Although they don’t always cater exclusively to men, their fanbase is overwhelmingly male. Prominent members include Jordan Peterson, Andrew Huberman, Theo Von, Jocko Willink, Lex Fridman, Chris Williamson, and most famously — Joe Rogan.

Rogan is the digital “Kevin Bacon” to which all others manfluencers are only a few degrees removed from each other

Rogan, arguably the most popular podcaster of all time, was exalted to new levels of notoriety after hosting Trump on his show, the Joe Rogan Experience. The 3 hour long dialogue has over 53 million views on Youtube and concluded with Rogan endorsing Trump publicly before voting day. When Trump’s popularity among young men was laid bare, Democrats were eager to blame Rogan’s ostensibly malevolent influence.

While there is much to say about the undeniable “red-pilling” of young men (both in the U.S. and abroad), I want to slant away from the political beat and double-click on the overall state of young men. Seeing as how I am one (28), I would like to offer some considerations regarding mine and my peers’ peculiar love affair with these online figures, as well highlight some of the various ways in which they leave us so severely underserved.

The Situation

For starters, researchers have been warning that men are in a sorry state.

Richard V Reeves

at

Of Boys and Men

is the most public and prolific champion of male issues, meticulously documenting the concerning signs of sickness among those of the XY persuasion. Here are a few data points from his book and other sources:

+ Drug related deaths among never-married men have more than doubled in the decade from 2010.

+ Suicide is now the biggest killer of British men under the age of 45 and has risen the fastest for middle-aged men in the United States.

+ The gender gap in college degrees awarded today is wider today than it was in the early 1970’s but in the opposite direction… In the U.S., 57% of bachelor’s degrees are now awarded to women.

+ In 1979, the weekly earnings of the typical American man who completed his education with a high school diploma was, in today’s dollars, $1,017. Today it is 14% lower, at $881.

+ There is a classified “friendship recession” among men, with 15% of men saying they have zero close friends. In 1990, that number was only 3%.

+ Men die by suicide at a rate four times higher than women.

+ Men are two to three times more likely to misuse drugs than women and young men today are three times more likely to overdose than their female peers.

Getting people to acknowledge these concerns is surprisingly challenging. As the saying goes: a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic. Yet, even when these stats are assented to, the notion that young men deserve compassion remains risible to many and offensive to most. Women and minorities have endured atrocious treatment for millenia with little or no reprieve, so who cares if men are having trouble in this newer, more equal world? It’s a worthwhile conversation — and it's definitely worth being mad about.

However, this response fails to face the facts directly and it’s dangerous to neglect the present in order to litigate an eternal debate. If left unaddressed, this male crisis will quickly become an everybody crisis. Women’s rights still face immense resistance, but this does not negate our ability to simultaneously support the men who are falling behind. Women may have lost in this election — but I see no reason why the sexes must lose the peace.

Solidarity

Indeed — whether real or imagined, many young men sense a lack of compassion, sympathy, and gentle attention from their neighbors. In the absence of a truly empathetic witness, it is only natural that they will cling to the most compelling facsimile of solidarity that they can find.

This solidarity need not take the form of bro-isms, chest-thumping, or Fincher-style fight clubs; by merely doing what others won’t — celebrating my interests, helping me achieve my dreams, and providing a place to waste time without judgment — the manosphere becomes organically appealing. In the midst of a culture indifferent to male success, the manosphere is a comparative homecoming. Where critics see an echo chamber, I see a safe space. These are, after all, two sides to the same coin.

Add this to the fact that podcasting is an inherently intimate mode of communication and you get a potent tonic for bonding. To use a Mcluhanism, podcasts are a hot medium that heightens one sense perception to an extreme and immerses the listener entirely. Streaming creates a similar effect, but also erases the distance felt in traditional broadcasting. The fact that we tune in to these mediums while going through the motions of daily life does nothing to steal from the feeling of closeness — it confirms it. We can miss minutes of content while washing dishes, working on the computer, or mowing the lawn, but never notice the gap in continuity. Like quality time with a best friend, the content is secondary to the company. This means that in the manosphere, a young man need never be alone, even in his loneliness.

Self-Help Saviors

But, don’t get confused. While some corners of the manosphere are rife with wound-licking, the vast majority is not a pity party. In fact, the dirty secret of the internet is that most manfluencer content is pretty entertaining. Even worse, some of it is useful.

This is evidenced by the fact that the manosphere exists almost entirely under the hospices of personal development, supplemented with ample doses of distraction and amusement. Youtube, the primary domain of modern manfluencers, is the second most used search engine in the world, skews heavily male, and boasts more viewership than Netflix. If you hold even tangentially male-typical interests, the manosphere is a highway with many, many on-ramps.

A small sampling of the Youtube/Manosphere Menu

Although such a wide array of topics seems like it would be hard to combine, this is actually one of the manosphere’s greatest strengths. The best buffet is always “pick-your-own-plate.”

Plus, the absence of a definable ethos or enshrined dogma works as a defense system for the group, as critics have a hard time articulating exactly what they don’t like about the all-male network. Even when a specific individual is called out (such as the self-proclaimed white supremacist) or a particular instance of malfeasance is highlighted (like when another is arrested for sex trafficking), defenders of the manosphere can just point elsewhere for proof of innocuity. It would, after all, be intellectually dishonest to paint them all with the same brush. However, some individuals insist on the utility of the more notorious members, protecting them with sentiments like “at least those guys are doing something for young men” or “their message is still less harmful than the progressive message.”

I am not convinced.

My father taught me that even a small amount of dogs**t in the batter ruins the whole cake — and I feel the same when it comes to ideology. When boys wander too far into the rabbit hole, they are not helped by what they find; they are just given a new set of dissatisfactions to cover up the old ones. Like a sick patient who unwittingly visits a sick physician, these men arrive with measles but leave with mumps. To be wholeheartedly convinced of a false masculinity is worse than the strongest anxiety about masculinity, since false masculinity prevents men from finding a better way. By permitting these con artists to lay more obstacles in the path of searching young men, we are in danger of becoming accomplices to their chicanery. As much as it is up to us — and it is, I believe, up to us — we should help young men resist such vitriol. This begins by calling it what it is: bigotry, misogyny, and narcissism.

Doubtless, some readers will be surprised by my addition (or omission) of certain individuals from this list, and the last thing I want is to create an unfair association between the truly unprincipled members and the more agreeable ones. Nonetheless, the male-industrial complex is a spectrum on which they all exist together — and in order to explore the pros and cons of the network, I am required to ask questions about the seedy and un-seedy parts alike. This need is only amplified when you consider that the manosphere’s questionable effects are not isolated to the straightforwardly opprobrious characters (although those are undoubtedly the most condemnable). Rather, as David French put it in his New York Times article: the atmosphere of the manosphere is toxic.

Let’s examine, for instance, the health and wellness circuit.

Supplements

The health corner is massive in the manosphere, and its potential for assisting young men is undoubtedly tremendous. Populated by practitioners like Joe Rogan, Andrew Huberman, David Goggins, Peter Attia, and Tim Ferris, the manosphere provides a free education in the art of wellness. Each has hours of content delineating the benefits of every possible consideration: resistance training, morning routines, ice baths, saunas, cryo chambers, intermittent fasting, elk meat, athletic greens, VO₂ max, BPC-157, NAD, blood biomarkers, carnivore diets, or the psoas muscle. This education, if applied, helps boys get fit, regulate their emotions, improve their mood, and increase motivation. It also has the completely incidental effect of making them more confident with women (I joke).

Yet, I suggest that there is something deceptively solipsistic about the way manfluencers focus on their own personal preservation. Entrenched in the mindset of technique, manfluencers often delve into niche, expensive, or dubious methods of extracting even the most marginal benefits from their lifestyle. Many of them could not treat their bodies more obsessively, even if they were to be shipwrecked on a deserted island… although you'd be forgiven if you thought they were already living on deserted islands. Their numerous morning routines and day in the life videos tend to exhibit a curious lack of interruptions, messes, obligations, and just other people. One can argue that this is an editorial artifact, part and parcel of the specious nature of social media, but I am persuaded otherwise.

The reality is, these manfluencers do not educate men on the importance of nurturing, caring, and attending to a human body as much as they teach the maintenance, calibration, and optimization of a human-like machine. Sure, their recommendations refer to the common denominators of material existence — biology, routine, survival — but neglect the components that are uniquely and wondrously human; not to mention uniquely and wondrously male. Discipline is more than automation, just like identity is more than what can be gleaned from one’s daily calendar and how masculinity is more than the ability to spread the most amount of seed in the shortest time available. Rhythms and protocols do have some value, especially when they help bestow a sense of order to the world — but like handing out umbrellas in a hurricane, they are ultimately insufficient for the crisis at hand. As Maritain once wrote:

“Education is not animal training. The education of man is a human awakening.”

We need to ask ourselves: Are workout routines and supplements really the best we have to offer our young men? Does the gospel of biological maximization truly encapsulate the grandeur of life’s potential and the limitlessness of spirit? Or does it further entrench men in the undignifying suggestion that their value is in their physical strength, as opposed to something more noble?

What is the point of having a thousand ways to extend life, if not given a single thing to live for? This type of superficiality is rampant in the manosphere.

Scripts

This leads me to a concept from Richard Reeve’s book which I have also heard echoed by pro-male advocates like

Scott Galloway

(who has a book coming out this year on the topic of men). Reeves has suggested on multiple occasions that society:

“needs a positive script for masculinity… one that is compatible with gender equality.”

His thinking, as I understand it, is that the predominant narrative for masculinity has dissolved in the modern era and its absence has left an existential and psychological hole in men’s lives. Reeves is level headed about the insufficiencies of that old narrative and is far from nostalgic for it. However, he insists that men need new guardrails to replace the old ones.

Reeves proffers this term in good faith and articulates himself with much of the nuance I will try to bring as well — but overall, I am not keen on the concept of scripts.

I agree that young men need the freedom to try out expressions of self without the expectation of perfection. In fact, we need to expect that they will almost certainly get it wrong. But, in my mind, scripts carry connotations of theatre, persona, and performance, as well as a latent pressure to adopt a corresponding set of costumes, attitudes, behaviors, and values. Historically speaking, I believe men to be underserved by these types of constructs — often internalizing them and adhering to them even when ill-fitting or inflexible. Being of Hispanic origin, I immediately recall the unbridled machismo that has wreaked havoc on the marriages, families, and communities of Latin people.

Furthermore, when society lays out scripts, men have often claimed the “positive” attributes for themselves, leaving nothing for women except the unwanted others to their chosen treasures.

Can this can be why one of the most popular insults leveled at manfluencers is that they are “cosplayers” of masculinity? Because they themselves are not convinced of their own dialogue with the world and are simply rehearsing lines for their captive audience? If anything, the manosphere’s pollution is reason to look for solutions beyond the convenience of widely applicable scripts.

I offer that masculinity is not meant to be defined by an abstract and impersonal society; let alone by a small group of all-white, all-male, neo-disc jockeys. Perhaps, masculinity is much more dynamic and bespoke — a negotiation between an individual male, his context, and those close enough to reap the consequences of his formation.

Support

I, for one, did not discover the things which make me feel masculine (some traditional, some not traditional) in a vacuum, but in participation with reality: in the blunt feedback of male and female mentors; in the careful observation of my older brothers; in the mistakes made with romantic partners; in the gentle advice of local pastors; in the sometimes disappointed eyes of parental figures; in the admiring eyes of a formidable wife; in the injustices that I stood against proudly, as well as the compromises that made me feel weak. I know plenty of men who feel the same… and probably a few women too.

This is yet another reason that the manosphere can never produce a fully credible male — because the byproduct of unearned and untested knowledge is always puffery, entitlement, and a fragile ego. Development is not something that happens in the theoretical, nor in the digital halls of the internet. It is almost always a group effort, alloyed with more than a bit of personal effort as well. Moreover, masculinity has never been a static destination, but an aspect of identity that grows, sheds, and alters throughout the lifecycle. The “masculine” aspirations that served me as a teenager and in my early twenties have been mostly replaced, each one brought forth and ground away by people irrationally committed to my wellbeing. Together, we pieced together the aptitudes, interests, desires, and responsibilities of my person into something resembling a man (although, they probably never realized they were doing so.)

And as much as I’d like to believe that their benevolence is inspired by my own singularity, the truth is that it is almost certainly the result of their goodwill and my good fortune. They are not faultless guides, of course; in the same way that I am far from the ideal male. But the “IRL” nature of these relationships affords me the opportunity to know the whole of them: regrets, biases, and dysfunctions included. This sort of transparency is unfathomable to the proxy relationships that form between manfluencers and their well-paying fanbase. Yet, some of the most important lessons I’ve learned in friendship, family, finances, and fraternity were gleaned in the muck of other people’s ugly sides as opposed to idealized versions of their archetypes.

Summary

In sum, I want to put forth the possibility that the masculinity we are looking for is neither a solo construct nor a scalable mold for men. Rather, it is a relational project with diffuse design; where individuals of both sexes volunteer themselves as midwives for the masculine identities of young, burgeoning men. The manosphere is strange, toxic, and sometimes dangerous — but so is the world. My sense is that young men can not be argued out of its grasp; but that a young man who is given unmerited encouragement and ample amounts of kind attention will, perhaps, become immune to the worst of its offerings.

Our society, like a parent who backs away from a child when teaching him to swim, has removed the arms that our sons and brothers once relied on. Floundering has been the result — and it is our decision on how, or if, to aid them. If you choose inaction, vengeance, or extreme “meritocracy,” that is your prerogative. However, your choice determines precisely how much right you have to complain about those who do rush in; even if they do so in a way that is self-serving, bullish, and grossly insufficient.

I hope you all enjoyed today’s newsletter — please leave some comments, thoughts, or considerations on this very nuanced topic down below. As always, thanks for reading and don’t forget to send to a friend!