Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Louis Theroux: Inside The Manosphere’ On Netflix, Revealing How Toxic Masculinity Spreads Online
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Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere
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Louis Theroux has been probing subcultures for British audiences for the past quarter-century, but American viewers might not know much about Theroux outside of clips circulating on social media from his recent exploration of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, from his own appearance on “Chicken Shop Date” where his rap about how “my money don’t jiggle jiggle” went viral a few years ago. And then there’s the recent clip of a guy confronting Theroux over his response to the Israeli’s handling of Gaza ,which came out of this film, were the documentarian flew to the south of Spain, Miami, and New York City to meet up with guys who go by online nicknames like HSTikkyTokky and Sneako, all in an attempt to learn why they hold and disseminate seemingly barbaric attitudes about gender roles.
The Gist: We open with foreshadowing, a montage of young male influencers asking if they’d made the wrong decision allowing Theroux to tag along with and interview them, each of them worrying the end result will be a “hit piece.” (That none of these guys bothered to even google Theroux before letting him into their manospheres may be damning enough!)
Theroux’s documented journey begins in Marbella, Spain, where he says Harrison Sullivan (aka HSTikkyTokky) has been avoiding UK authorities for his involvement in a car crash. HSTikkyTokky’s entourage at this time included a guy there just for protective muscle, another guy who won a giveaway on YouTube, and a young woman who cleans up after him, serves as window dressing , and has her own OnlyFans.
“What would you say is the message?” Theroux asks Sullivan. His reply: “I teach guys to be proper guys, not these little soy boys, little gimps that walk around in the modern day.”
Sullivan/HS wants to talk directly into the camera, but Theroux asks him to direct his responses to him instead. “This is a real documentary.”
Theroux claims that Sullivan/HS’s YouTube and TikTok accounts are merely a gateway to his Telegram account, where he appeals to his followers to subscribe to various OnlyFans accounts and financial services. “In both cases, HS takes a cut of the money.” To which HS declares: “I’m a businessman, I’m not doing it for f—in’ fun.” He claims he would never espouse racism, sexism or homophobia in front of his mother (foreshadowing), but “we live in an attention economy,” so he says whatever gets more attention his way. Even if that includes filming a woman giving him a blowjob in a nightclub’s toilet, and showing it to Theroux. Then again, after posting a video about his first day letting Theroux follow him around, the comment section ripped Theroux apart. He wonders how the rest of the mission will go. Enter Londoner Ed Matthews, whom Theroux calls “Robin to HS’s Batman.” For them, their m.o. is fitness, conspiracy theories, and flirting, but sometimes also trying to trap predators? They mostly run into adoring young men and teenaged boys who are big fans, but when one supposed predator trap leads to an assault, the influencers bail.
Meanwhile, Theroux opens an account with one of the financial services HS plugs, and invests 500 British pounds. (We’ll find out later his investment has tanked)
In Miami, he meets up with Justin Waller, who moved there from Baton Rouge after gaining a million Instagram followers. Waller has a wife and two daughters, but gets defensive if you ask about them. He’d rather be a “success coach” selling his own “university” over his Telegram account, and touting his connections to the infamous Tate brothers. Waller, and another influencer going by Myron Gaines, both flout their non-monogamy. While Waller made his initial money in construction, and now boasts about dining at Mar-A-Lago with Barron and President Trump. These influencers talk a lot about red-pilling to break out of “the matrix” of a 9-to-5 job and being locked into ideas such as depression or allowing women to work or have equal rights, it seems. As Waller puts it, masculinity “got called toxic. And you mix that with feminism, and we’ve asked women to become men.”
Theroux agrees to appear on Myron’s “Fresh & Fit Podcast”to witness the host put down his female guests, then get shut down himself when he attempts to speak with any of the women who work for Myron.
He ventures back to Spain for another visit with HS, this time inspecting his “House of Heat,” a project where the influencer houses a group of OnlyFans models and gets a cut of their money.
Theroux notes how many of these influencers were raised without fathers, and suggests they’re projecting their own childhood trauma onto the entire world.
He goes back to meet Waller, this time in Louisiana, where he does get to meet Waller’s wife and kids, and Waller’s wife doesn’t miss her job at the hospital, and is fine so long as she and her husband stay in their lanes. She’d rather know he’s cheating than have him lie to her. He’d just as rather turn a first date into a threesome with his wife.
In NYC, we meet Sneako, another friend of the Tates, who has become more political and attended Trump’s second inaugural balls. Sneako had been banned from the major social media platforms, but still managed to post daily short videos elsewhere, and eventually landed back on Elon Musk’s X.
Theroux goes back across the pond for one more visit with HS, and this time, his mother is there. It gets awkward real quick. And HS has his own camera crew livestreaming and clipping up their encounter for an entirely different audience from the one Theroux is speaking to.
Photo: Netflix
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Theroux’s first big foray into documentary/reality TV came via hosting segments for Michael Moore’s TV Nation, but an even more modern-day comparison here in the States would be the specials Comedy Central’s Jordan Klepper is doing out in the field speaking with Americans about politics and culture.
Performance Worth Watching: Theroux’s crew lingers longer on the women who live or exist in the orbits of these manfluencers, letting us see their reactions and filtered responses and wondering how they really fell about being a part of all of this.
Sex And Skin: Lots of talk about sex and indirectly the fellas show Theroux pornographic clips on their phones.
Our Take: “Be careful of this fella, mate,” Matthews tells his followers about Theroux. “He looks nice. He looks like he’s a friend. The evil smile.” But that’s not his secret to getting footage like this so often or getting his subjects to reveal so much about themselves and their movites.
Rather, it’s how Theroux knows when to step in with a follow-up question, and when to lean back and allow the power of the pause. His subjects may focus on his facial expression, but it’s his silence that gnaws at them, and they feel compelled to fill that audio void with their own words and thoughts. It helps even more, in this scenario, that the man-boys Theroux investigates are addicted to attention, and have succumbed to the algorithmic pull of shock and conflict as the only reliable source of constant attention.
The juxtaposition of watching old videos of Ed and Sneako as relatively innocent tweens, sitting in front of their computer cameras in some of their earliest efforts, only heightens the disparity between where they started and where they were in 2025.
“It struck me that the matrix they rail against more accurately describes the algorithmic prison they’ve created for their followers. An illusion of endless wealth and power that actually only enriches a few at the top,” Theroux notes.
Of all of the machismo pushback he receives, Theroux may get caught off guard once or twice, but only really gets hit where it counts when HSTikkyTokky’s mother, Elaine, reminds Theroux that he’s making money off of her son, as well. After all, this documentary is fighting for attention even within the Netflix algorithm, too, and how well would it compete with the same levels of shock and conflict?
Our Call: In a current world where words such as “Clavicular,” “looksmaxxing” and “mogging” may clog up social media algorithms in 2026, it feels like trying to catch up with the state of influencers might just be a frustrating game of whack-a-mole. At least we can see who some of the biggest moles are, though. What I’d like to see, and perhaps cannot be captured by Theroux or any crew, is what these man-boys are like when they’re not on camera and relatively nobody is watching their every move. STREAM IT.
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.
