Manosphere Men Review – A Truly Terrifying Watch | television

CJust as you can accurately measure the quality of a documentary about pornography by the number of examples it covers of its subject no Show, you can also judge a show about “inner” culture/manosphere/toxic masculinity by the amount of time it doesn’t devote to the toxic leaders of the subculture. It often seems that porn documentary filmmakers use their commission to indulge their occult magic, or at least fill the screen with naked women as an easier means of attracting viewers than creating a decent program. Likewise, padding any program with footage of the boys’ diatribes, generally about Pussies (female, metaphorically, male metaphorically), power and men’s need to exercise one over the other are an exciting opportunity and an easy shortcut to get involved.

Belfast broadcaster James Blake admirably avoids this trap in his hour-long Men of the Manosphere. It contains excerpts from the loudest and baddest voices, doing their loudest and ugliest, telling disaffected and vulnerable young men what they want to hear: that the problems in their lives are the fault of women, feminism, woke society, beta men and anyone who isn’t full of ambition, an independent spirit, and ready to sign up for the latest influencer’s course on how to be a successful man. If you notice any inconsistencies here, you’re probably a blue pill person and not the target market, so please move on.

But Blake’s main focus is on the recipients of these proliferating messages, the recruiters rather than the recruiters – although, as we will see, the line between the two is almost blurred by design. Blake himself, who is only 32, drifted toward the brutal comforts of the atmosphere a few years ago after the breakup of a five-year relationship that he expected would end in marriage and a family. At some point in the programme, he scrolls back through the material he was looking at – and reposts it to his followers – at that time and is frightened by what he finds. “It’s almost like a different person,” he says. “I was hurting, and this content gave me a voice.” His journey into the atmosphere was relatively short, and then he came back to his senses. As for the young people he interviewed, the journey began early and extends further.

Sixteen-year-old Sam has been involved in the manosphere since he was thirteen. He’s a paid subscriber with one influencer in particular (“He changed my life… He taught me how to grow”), who he hopes to emulate his online success when he learns enough. His first TikTok video two years ago led to a significant amount of bullying at school. Since then he has turned to the Internet more. “I no longer have any friends in real life,” he says.

Like James, Shane, a 22-year-old criminology graduate, found comfort in “red pill” ideology after a breakup. “Red Pill” means rejecting societal norms – especially those around treating women with respect (“master manipulators” is a favorite phrase of red pill purveyors) – and focusing on yourself instead (especially your muscle mass and earning potential). “If you don’t invest too much [in women]”You can avoid all the heartbreak and stuff,” Shane says. Couldn’t this be wholly unsatisfactory, asks Blake, whose sex and proximity in age, class, and experience to his subjects, as well as his evident blood and sympathy, share strikingly naïve and comparatively detailed answers from each of them. Shane says he struggles with the fact that he has feelings for his new girlfriend that is hard to reconcile and recommends playing the field because “good guys get anywhere.”

Jack, 27, has been a follower of the red pill lifestyle since the pandemic. He says men need to stop feeling sorry for themselves: “No one is going to come to their rescue.” He dreams of becoming an online expert and pays £650 a month to learn how to do it. Meanwhile, he’s on a “sperm retention journey.” “If you can control your lust and your sex drive, you can control your mind. People don’t realize that, every time you masturbate, you release your male energy, your testosterone,” he explains. Blake plays an impressively straight bat with everything.

A mixture of confusion, ambivalence, and loneliness—when Sam finally meets some of his online friends, his joy is heartbreaking—hangs over every interaction James has with these young men. Obviously none of them are evil or anything close to it. But they are adrift in a world that is changing in ways that they easily believe are not for the better, and they are vulnerable to predators. They may not be groomed by more powerful men for sexual reasons, but there are plenty of other types of exploitation, many of which make them more of a potential threat to others’ happiness and safety than they are to others’ happiness and safety. “Men of the Manosphere” is a thoughtful, gentle and terrifying watch.