Louis Theroux’s new Netflix documentary, Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere, has brought renewed mainstream attention to a growing online ecosystem that promotes rigid, dominance-based ideas of masculinity and increasingly hostile attitudes toward women and equality.

With rare access, Theroux interviews a network of high-profile manosphere influencers and content creators, exploring how their content is shaping young men’s thinking about relationships, identity, status and power.

This blog isn’t a review of Theroux’s filmmaking. It’s a practical look at the deeper issue sitting underneath the documentary and the definition of the manosphere: toxic masculinity, the way it’s packaged and monetised online, and what the manosphere culture and toxic masculinity means for inclusion, safety and belonging in everyday life, including workplaces.

What is the “manosphere” and why are people worried?

The “manosphere” is commonly used as a catch-all term for a cluster of online communities and influencers that promote traditionalist or dominance-oriented gender roles, resentment-driven messaging about women, and a transactional view of relationships. In the documentary, Theroux meets influencers including Harrison Sullivan (also known as HS Tikky Tokky), Myron Gaines, Sneako, Justin Waller and Ed Matthews.

Some commentators have described the documentary as disturbing viewing, especially for parents, because of how normalised misogyny can appear when it’s wrapped in confidence coaching, lifestyle content, or “self-improvement.”

Toxic masculinity isn’t “men being masculine”

It’s important to say this clearly. Masculinity isn’t the problem. Toxic masculinity is a specific set of beliefs and behaviours that tend to show up as dominance and control framed as “strength”, emotional suppression framed as “discipline”, contempt for women framed as “truth”, entitlement to sex, attention, or obedience framed as “biology”, and homophobia and transphobia used as social glue.

It harms women and girls directly, but it also harms boys and men by restricting emotional range, encouraging shame, and offering aggression as the only acceptable response to insecurity.

The real issue is the pipeline

One of the most practical points raised in wider discussion is that the danger isn’t only the most extreme content. It’s the route into manosphere culture.

Algorithm-driven platforms can funnel boys and young men from general “confidence” or “success” content toward increasingly grievance-based messaging about gender, relationships and power. It often starts sounding like self-improvement and ends up normalising contempt, hostility, and domination.

“But it’s just online” is no longer true

What happens online shapes offline culture. You see it in language and “banter” that normalises misogyny, bullying and harassment in schools and colleges, relationship expectations shaped by coercive or transactional scripts, workplace behaviours such as sexist comments, hostility to equality work, and minimising harassment complaints, and polarisation where empathy is treated as weakness.

The documentary has also sparked debate about the ethics of exposure: whether attention risks giving influencers more reach, even while trying to critique them. That tension mirrors the real-world challenge employers, educators and parents face: how do you address harm without amplifying it?

Why this matters for workplaces

Whether you’re a small organisation or a large employer, this isn’t a “teen issue”. Manosphere culture has real workplace implications.

Harassment and hostile environments

When misogyny is reframed as “just having an opinion,” workplace standards can erode quickly. People stop reporting issues because they don’t trust they’ll be taken seriously or because they fear backlash.

Inclusion backlash dressed up as “common sense”

Workplace equality efforts can be framed as an attack on men rather than a commitment to fairness and safety. This increases conflict and reduces psychological safety for women, LGBTQ+ colleagues, and anyone challenging harmful behaviour.

Performance and culture impact

Hostility, disrespect and boundary-pushing aren’t just moral issues. They’re operational ones. They damage teamwork, retention, wellbeing, and outcomes.

The impact on different groups isn’t equal

A key takeaway we don’t want to lose is that the harms land differently.

Women and girls

Manosphere messaging often promotes entitlement, dehumanisation and dominance scripts, which increases the risk of harassment, coercion, and the normalisation of violence.

LGBTQ+ people

Homophobia and transphobia commonly appear as “proof of masculinity,” pushing LGBTQ+ people into greater risk of bullying, exclusion and hostility.

Disabled people

Rigid masculinity narratives often mock vulnerability and dependency, which can intensify stigma around disability, mental health, and reasonable adjustments.

Boys and young men

Boys aren’t the enemy here. Many are targets. Insecurity is exploited for profit, and emotional pain is redirected into grievance, contempt and isolation.

What helps: a response that is firm, not shaming

If we respond by mocking boys or treating men as the problem, we push people further into the very communities we’re worried about and amplify the manosphere culture. The most effective responses tend to be steady, practical, and values-led.

Build critical thinking, not panic

Help people recognise persuasive tactics: cherry-picked “stats”, rage bait, grievance framing, fake confidence, and “us versus them” narratives.

Teach a wider emotional vocabulary

Make it normal for boys and men to name loneliness, rejection, anxiety, shame, and uncertainty without being ridiculed for it.

Set standards consistently

In workplaces: clear behavioural expectations, consequences for harassment, and visible support for reporting. The basics done well.

Offer positive models of masculinity

Masculinity that includes empathy, accountability, respect, and emotional strength. Not performative domination.

A practical closing

The reason this documentary is landing so widely is because it shows something that many people have sensed for a while: a growing market for grievance-based masculinity, packaged as lifestyle content, and distributed at algorithm speed.

Our response doesn’t need to be sensational. It needs to be steady.

Because this isn’t only about what young men watch online. It’s about the culture we create offline: in our workplaces, schools, families and communities and whether dignity, equality and safety are treated as non-negotiable.