Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere is a documentary film which investigates one of the internet’s largest online communities: the ‘manosphere’. Released in March of 2026 on the world’s largest streaming platform, Netflix, the documentary explores this increasingly controversial yet shockingly influential community, and its various ‘manfluencers’ leaders; featuring prominent male digital creators, streamers and podcast hosts.
Throughout the documentary film, each featured influencer is seen to promote similar misogynistic and male-supremacist ideologies, not only to Theroux, but through their own social media displays; where online ‘manosphere’ audiences are being promised that status, wealth and even sexual success will solve their modern frustrations of a mainstream, ‘brainwashed’ or ‘matrixed’ society.
While the documentary does achieve the aim of exposing the contradictions, hypocrisy and absurdness behind many of the statements and beliefs within this ‘red pill’ ideology, it is similarly exposing a wider, and possibly more impressionable, audience to what might have been a previously niche frame of thinking. By creating a documentary involving these community members and their ideologies, Inside the Manosphere may have just provided yet another platform for these extreme views to be aired, further spreading the message of toxic masculinity and misogyny into audience segments that may have not previously been exposed to such content.
Throughout the documentary, Theroux, a well respected documentarian, works to utilise his own interviewing style to allow the influencers to reveal their own hollow or contradictory ideologies without being aggressive or overly confronting. Through interactions that feel filled with tension when speaking on such controversial subjects, Theroux doesn’t need to explicitly tell the audience that what is being said is hypocritical or overtly misogynistic— as the statements and actions made by these male influencers display this clearly enough to audiences. This can be seen through discussion related to ‘one-way monogamy’— whereby men may have sexual freedom whilst their female partners do not—, having multiple wives, as well as possessing severe anti-feminist ideologies.
Beneath each of these ideals, Theroux finds that it is actually the core belief that ‘men are born in life without value’ that fuels these world views; with various supporters of the ‘manosphere’ explaining that they feel society is ‘stacked against men’, and that as a male you must work toward earning your value through power and status.
Although Theroux does work to question these ideals through his style of interview, allowing audiences to critically assess these influencers for themselves; various other factors of the documentary may rather risk giving a positive light to this community/worldview— by presenting these influencers and their lifestyles through a lens of aesthetic appeal. Throughout the documentary, it’s almost seen that these personalities are able to display their successes in an ostentatious nature; flaunting their luxury homes, cars, expensive accessories, attractive women and lush lifestyles through glamorous and appealing cinematography. It can be argued that through these visually appealing displays, the documentary may inadvertently be turning the manosphere into something to aspire to when seeing the level of luxury that these men are able to possess.
When watching this documentary, it is almost impossible to ignore the thought of “why give them a platform such as this?”, when being exposed to the appalling misinformation and horrid ideologies that these men promote on their own platforms. Before appearing in this documentary, many of these personalities operated within their own niche online pockets; which although is being observed from the outside, has now been given much greater exposure to the average viewer on mainstream media. Whether a viewer believes in these ideals or not, they have now been introduced to a world that may have previously gone unknown, and may be just curious enough to research further into ‘Manosphere’— something that is increasingly concerning, as there is a growing public conversation surrounding rising rates of misogyny within GenZ; with the ABC recently reporting that young men today being more likely to hold hostile attitudes toward women than their grandfather’s generation.
Ultimately, the production of a documentary such as this only begs the question; Can harmful ideologies be exposed without also helping them grow? And has this done more harm than good?
Maybe that can be left for the multiple wives to decide.
Tilly Bunnage 
Josh 
Idea Phochaiya