Inside the Manosphere: The 'alpha' males under the thumb of algorithms

The contradiction at the heart of the red pill pushers is laid bare in Louis Theroux's Netflix documentary

As a subject for Louis Theroux to sink his teeth into, the manosphere was an obvious choice. After all the documentarian is at his best when challenging the brazen, the deluded and the contradictory. And he’s peerless when it comes to getting grifters to tell on themselves.

But in his latest film for Netflix, Theroux was up against subjects whose male supremacy hustle is so well drilled, it was almost impossible for him to land a clean blow.

From the get-go creators like Harrison Sullivan (known online as HSTikkyTokky), Ed Matthews, Justin Waller, Myron Gaines and Sneako had their guards up. And the film’s climax even sees Mr TikkyTokky turn the tables on Theroux and perform his own ‘expose’.

Theroux with HSTikkyTokky, who said in the documentary that he would disown his son if he was gay and described a female model as his “dishwasher”

The audience has to work a little harder that usual to see the self owns evident in each delicious moment of defensiveness and discomfort but Inside the Manosphere is still a remarkable piece of work.

For blessed viewers it would have been their first time meeting the men who made their names pedalling male supremacy online. The ones who, like Andrew Tate, ply their dark trade on Kick livestreams, Twitter/X and Telegram groups.

The type that Theroux got alongside urge their followers to take the “red pill” and see that the mainstream media has been captured by feminists and discriminates against men. They push the concept of one-sided monogamy and are obsessed with women’s body counts while they boast about threesomes and plans to have multiple wives.

They tell their, mainly teenage boy, followers that only suckers grind away at the 9-to-5. Alphas like them reject the “matrix” and free themselves from the “slave mindset”. Handily, Waller and co are on hand to supply the answer to thriving outside “the system” via their paid-for strategies and services. In the case of 23-year-old Mr TikkyTokky, he pushes get-rich-quick investment advice to 500k followers on his Telegram channel, taking a cut whether they gain or lose money.

Over 90 minutes Theroux robustly challenges the logic of their ideology, stress tests their beliefs and questions their business models. He digs into their childhoods and believes that what connects the men is a history of abandonment and daddy issues. He generously floats the idea that trauma is what has made these men misinformation machines.

This may well be true, but I came away with a shallower, less sympathetic conclusion - all they want is clout and cash. And in 2026 the platforms that amplify their messages give them both, and that’s why going viral matters more to them than the truth.

Within the first two minutes Mr TikkyTokky says as much. “We live in an attention economy,” he explains. “And with the attention I can get more fame, monetise.”

When Theroux asks him “why not try and be a good person”? The influencer says: “I would never have really blown up on social media in the first place because me livestreaming, chatting up birds whatever, some of those birds don’t want to be on the internet so if I was just thinking ‘right I don’t wanna upset anyone', I don’t wanna do anything that’s duh-duh-duh’, I wouldn’t be where I’m at right now.”

The question I wished Theroux had followed up with is this: If there was no financial reward, would you still push male supremacy online?

I think we all know the answer.

And that brings us to the contradiction at the heart of their grift. These men who claim they’ve escape the matrix, have instead found themselves in a new trap. In order to succeed they’re constantly trying to grow engagement, followers and converts to their schemes. They do that by becoming increasingly extreme and by creating moments that can become viral clips. For Mr TikkyTokky that means livestreaming for up to seven hours a day.

Myron Gaines thinks fat women are “useless in life” and wants to have multiple wives

Their desperation to game the algorithm is what brought them to the male supremacy beat. This wasn’t some higher calling. They know that platforms reward rage bait and edginess and so they pushed and pushed until they became misogynistic monsters.

This is clear when you see how humbly they started out in the content game. Mr TikkyTokky sold innocuous fitness plans. Ed Matthews is shown aged 10 recording the Chubby Bunny challenge for YouTube. Now aged 23 he hunts paedophiles for clicks.

It’s also apparent in how they see the manosphere as a stepping stone to greater power and even more cash. Waller admits he moved his wife and two children to Florida to get closer to Donald Trump’s inner circle. And Sneako was rewarded for his support of Trump by being invited to his inauguration.

Even Sneako thinks manosphere influencers are grifters. He told Theroux: “Everybody in the manosphere is just… they’re people online who are trying to make a buck, you know, selling ideologies.”

Far from being free of the “slave mindset”, these men have subjugated themselves to the platforms and their audiences. In their parlance rather than being Top G’s, they’re just the algorithm’s little bitches. When you look at them that way they’re a lot less scary.

What did you think of the documentary? Let me know in the comments.

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highly flammable is produced and written by me, Rachel Richardson

I’m a content creator, commentator and a consultant for hire at Beginning, Middle and End

Say hello at rr@bmend.com