From ‘market value’ to levelling up, the manosphere is shaped by a financial mindset
Louis Theroux’s recent Netflix documentary Inside the Manosphere shines a spotlight on masculinity influencers and the dangers of online misogyny, conspiracy theories and anti-feminist ideologies. Responses to the documentary have ranged from outrage to disbelief, criticising how the manfluencers treat the women in their lives and discussing the importance of role models in countering manosphere influences.
But what has been less talked about is how it reveals the relentless pursuit of financial gain driving these “manfluencers” and the language they use to normalise their views.
Amid a cost of living crisis and a declining job market, Theroux shows why “manfluencers” resonate so strongly with their target audience of boys and young men. Theroux meets four key figures in the manosphere, all of whom sell a carefully curated lifestyle based on conspicuous consumption, hypersexuality and an “alpha masculinity” mindset to their millions of followers.
Although this may seem like a tempting lifestyle to some, the main effect is to reinforce a sense of inadequacy and failure among their audiences. Do this enough times, then you can sell the solution to become a “real man”.
Read more: How boys get sucked into the manosphere
In Theroux’s documentary, two fans of a manosphere influencer suggest that “life as a man, you’re born without value. We have to build that value. You have to work for every penny”.
The language used in the manosphere is the language of financial markets, with discussion of optimisation, levelling up and marginal gains. Phrases like “sexual market value”, “high/low value man” and “maxxing” convert intimacy into a market and the body into an asset class. Manosphere guidance encourages young men to inspect themselves from the outside, as if conducting a performance review. Men’s bodies are seen as measurable assets and an index of “masculinity”.
Glow-ups, routines, hacks, looksmaxxing, courses, tips and videos on “ways to increase your value” are deployed as strategies to help fans unlock the secret of being a “real man”. In these spaces, the broader system that turns masculinity and relationships into metrics is never the problem. Instead, men are told that failure lies in their inability to increase their own “market value”. These discourses of “self-improvement” are, in reality, damaging forms of self-surveillance.
Manosphere adherents end up caught in a loop of aspiration and self-loathing: improve, compare, fail, repeat. In this context, the language of “levelling up” becomes especially insidious. Although it sounds playful and empowering, this mindset traps fans in a permanently unwinnable game. There is always another goal to strive for, another skill to master, another level to unlock.
The dating market
The consequences of this mindset for both men and women is most evident in the language around dating and the idea of the “sexual market”. Attraction is viewed as quantifiable (“high/low value”), competitive (“winners/losers”) and impersonal (“it’s just sex”). Women and men are both consumers and products competing for scarce demand. Rejection is “market feedback”.
These metaphors reduce a deeply social and emotional sphere of life down to a superficial economic reality. By treating people and relationships as metrics, it becomes easier to view them only in instrumental terms. Framing relationships as one-dimensional, transactional and based on hierarchy has negative effects for both men and women.
In Inside the Manosphere, one influencer reveals that he filmed a woman performing a sex act on him for “clout”. Theroux shows a clip from one influencer’s social media arguing that women are “subordinate” to men and should always make themselves sexually available. In one of the most discussed scenes from the documentary, one man advocates for “one-sided monogamy”, where he sleeps with other women while his wife stays at home as the main caregiver.
This man reduces women to an “attractiveness score”, saying that if a man isn’t tall but is physically fit, muscular and makes money, “Maybe [he doesn’t] come to Miami and pull Miami 10s, but I’ll be damned if [he] can’t pull a couple of 8s or 9s in a small town in America”.
Some of this corporate language is used to make misogynistic ideas sound neutral, data-driven and common sense. While recording a podcast, one man uses his “female delusion calculator” to draw attention to the unrealistic expectations a female guest has of a prospective partner. Although presented as a mathematical model based on demographic data, its primary function is to highlight what he claims is the “irrational” nature of women in the contemporary dating scene, and conclude that women “overinflate [their] own sense of self-worth”.
By framing this commentary as a form of objective analysis, it makes hierarchy seem an everyday and commonplace part of life and hides its misogynistic underpinnings.
Influencers in the manosphere often pronounce that they are seeking to elevate the position of men through the language of empowerment. The self-improvement narratives are compelling, but they don’t stand up against the evidence that these men are very much in it for themselves.
The documentary highlights how the manfluencers’ central goal is ultimately self-enrichment, often at the expense of their followers. Theroux “invests” £500 into an interviewee’s trading platform, only to see it whittled away over the course of a few weeks, with the influencer taking his cut. Fans of one influencer pay to have their comments read out live on air. Another influencer courts conspiracy theories to create viral content, describing those in the manosphere as “trying to make a buck” by selling ideologies.
There is a sense that compromising the social contract doesn’t matter, so long as you have a Rolex on your wrist, a Lamborghini to drive and a fancy apartment to hide away in. The ideologies promoted by the manfluencers in the documentary are rooted in misogyny, sexism, violence and exploitation – and there is clearly a market ready and willing to buy them.
Robert Lawson is a Research Fellow in the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism.