The Manosphere Is a Social Media Problem. We Need to Start Treating It Like One.

I watched Louis Theroux's Inside the Manosphere on Netflix this week. It's compelling viewing; Theroux at his quietly confrontational best, following a network of influencers across Miami, New York, and Marbella who are reshaping how a generation of young men think about women, success and the world.

But somewhere between watching Harrison Sullivan, a 24-year-old British influencer known as HSTikkyTokky, casually refer to his girlfriend as his "dishwasher", and hearing Myron Gaines, author of Why Women Deserve Less, invite women onto his podcast purely to humiliate them; I stopped watching it as a documentary. I started watching it as a social media case study.

Because what Theroux has documented isn't just a cultural crisis, it's a business model. And as someone who works in social media marketing every day, I think it's time our industry got more honest about the role we play in it.

The Algorithm Didn't Create the Manosphere. But It Supercharged It.

The ideology isn't new. Incels, pick-up artists, Men's Rights Activists, red and black-pill influencers have existed in various forms since the early internet. What changed is scale, and the tools that enabled it. TikTok's recommendation algorithm, YouTube's autoplay, Telegram's unmoderated group structure: these didn't create the manosphere, but they gave it a reach that no fringe forum ever could.

One of the most striking moments in the documentary is Sullivan openly admitting he's a "salesman" working in the "attention economy." The misogyny, the conspiracy theories, the provocations; they're not incidental to his content. They are the content, because extreme content performs and is actually highly profitable. Algorithms reward engagement, not accuracy. Outrage travels further than nuance. Anger converts better than kindness.

This is something I've written about before in the context of financial misinformation, that platforms and creators are financially rewarded for engagement regardless of the harm that content causes. The manosphere is that same logic operating at its most corrosive extreme. The mechanics are identical, only the damage is worse.

2 in 3 Young Men. Think About That.

According to the Movember Foundation, nearly two thirds of men aged 16 to 25 regularly engage with masculinity influencers online. That isn't a fringe statistic; that is a generation being shaped, in part, by content that was optimised for clicks, not character.

The young men Theroux meets who follow these figures aren't villains. One was previously homeless and just wants to provide for his family. Another is disillusioned with a career path that feels like a dead end. These are real frustrations; and there is now an entire industry purpose-built to monetise that frustration, dress it up as self-improvement, and radicalise it quietly along the way.

Research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue shows the pathway from mainstream fitness and dating content to extreme misogynistic ideology is well-worn and well-documented. You don't stumble into the deep end, you're guided there, one recommended video at a time. You don't stumble into the deep end, you're guided there… one recommended video at a time. What starts as fitness content, dating advice or financial tips can quietly become something far more extreme, often before the viewer has noticed the shift. Which is why the regulatory conversation now happening in the UK feels, to me, not just timely but necessary.

What the UK's Proposed Regulation Actually Means

In January 2026, the House of Lords voted to amend the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, pushing to block under-16s from social media platforms entirely. A government consultation, covering everything from outright access bans to overnight curfews, daily screen time limits, and algorithmic design restrictions, opened in March 2026, with findings expected by summer.

Some will push back, and some of those concerns are legitimate. Enforcement is genuinely hard. Australia's December 2025 ban, the first of its kind, saw 4.7 million accounts removed in its first month, but also prompted immediate legal challenges and a surge in VPN use. Blanket bans risk pushing children into less regulated, darker spaces rather than protecting them.

But the alternative, maintaining a status quo where a 13-year-old with a false birthday has a direct pipeline to radicalisation dressed as fitness content, is not a neutral position. It's a choice we've been making by default. And I think the conversation the UK is now having, properly, in public, with parents, educators, and policymakers, is overdue.

The Bit Our Industry Doesn't Like to Say Out Loud

Here's the uncomfortable part. We, marketers, strategists, content professionals, understand better than most exactly how these systems work. We know how algorithms are fed, we know how content is packaged to provoke emotion, drive shares, and extend time on platform. We brief for it, we report on it, we optimise for it.

That knowledge comes with a responsibility that our industry has been slow to take seriously. The manosphere didn't emerge from nowhere; it emerged from the same attention economy that every brand campaign, every content strategy and every social media brief operates within.

That doesn't make marketers culpable for radicalisation. But it does mean we have a clearer view of the machinery than most and a greater obligation to be honest about it, to push back on engagement-at-any-cost metrics, and to advocate for platform environments where credibility is rewarded alongside reach.

As I've argued before, the brands and professionals who will lead in this space are those who treat credibility as intentional; not something you protect reactively after the damage is done, but something you build proactively through transparency, consistency, and content that actually serves the people consuming it.

The documentary is worth watching. Not just as a parent, or a citizen, or someone alarmed by the direction of online culture. Marketers: watch it as a professional, because the system it exposes is the same one we all work inside. We should have something to say about that, and if we do, now would be a good time.