OPINION with Steo Wall: Inside the Manosphere
Have you heard of the Manosphere or Andrew Tate? No? Neither had I until a few months ago.
I had no idea who or what either of these two things were.
Then I watched a TV series on Netflix called Adolescence, where a thirteen-year-old boy is arrested for the brutal murder of a schoolgirl after she declined his sexual advances.
Creators Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne developed the drama to explore the themes of male rage, toxic masculinity and gender-based violence following multiple real-world instances.
It sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole exploring the manosphere and some of the themes there in.
From what I’ve learned researching this article, the manosphere is broken down into three different male groups – Alpha males, Beta males and incels.
An alpha male is generally defined as a dominant, assertive, and confident man who occupies a high-status position in social or professional groups.
Often characterised as natural leaders, they are perceived as successful, competitive and influential, though the term can sometimes imply toxic or controlling behaviour.
A beta male is a colloquial, often subjective term for a man perceived as co-operative, nurturing, gentle and non-confrontational, contrasting with the dominant “alpha” stereotype.
They prioritise teamwork, emotional intelligence and supporting others, often avoiding conflict.
Synonyms include passive, mild-mannered, supportive and sensitive, though the term can be used disparagingly to imply weakness.
Incel is a portmanteau of involuntary celibate and these males are members of an online community of young men who consider themselves unable to attract women sexually, typically associated with views that are hostile towards women and men who are sexually active.
I also learned that the “Alpha Male King” of this world is a bloke called Andrew Tate.
So, what is the Manosphere? Essentially, it’s a loose, decentralised network of online communities, blogs, forums, and social media influencers that promote a highly narrow, often aggressive and misogynistic, view on women.
It uses the red pill, blue pill metaphor from the film, The Matrix.
Men need to take the red pill to escape the matrix and wake up and become a modern man and claim back our masculinity.
And through platforms like YouTube and TikTok more young boys are being sucked into the manosphere every day.
It can start with an innocent question, as simple as, how do I speak to girls?
Or looking for gym advice, and before they know it they are getting spoon fed a lot of hateful, misogynistic content through their screens.
There seems to be an ever-growing group of young, fit looking men who these young boys online are looking up too as role models.
These influencers all follow the same ideology as their leader Andrew Tate, like him, a very small few of these guys at the top are extremely rich, they drive fast cars, they have big muscles, they spout right wing conspiracy theories and surprise surprise, they all love Trump!
Who is Andrew Tate? He is a British American social media influencer, he’s a former world champion kickboxer who has been chatting complete and utter shite online since around 2011.
In 2016 he was on Big Brother and was a nasty piece of work to all the women on the show.
He was kicked off the show after six days when a video surfaced online of him striking a woman with a belt.
After his expulsion from BB, Tate started focusing on building his online persona and quickly became popular within the manosphere and far right online circles.
From 2019 to 2021, he launched his online platforms, The War Room and Hustlers University, both designed to teach wealth creation and ‘modern masculinity’.
This chap is a grifter and he can dress it up anyway he likes but all he wants is your money, of which he makes nearly five million a month through these platforms selling snake oil to men.
His online presence went global in 2022, primarily through a strategy of reposting short-form clips on TikTok and YouTube.
This all led to him being the most searched person on Google that year.
As of early 2026 Tate is facing multiple investigations in Romania, the UK and the US, including charges of human trafficking and rape.
In 2025 Sky News reported that members of the Trump administration lobbied the Romanian Government to give Andrew Tate his passport back and ease his travel restrictions. Same recognise same I suppose. This is the person our young men are looking up to.
As the father of two young boys, I’d be lying if I said this didn’t worry me.
Will our sons can be easily dragged into the manosphere and led down the garden path by these lads?
From what I can see looking at all the content related to these men, every one of them are selling a lie based on a kernel of truth, and I think the truth they have built their empire of lies on is, that a lot of Gen Z males feel a bit lost at the minute.
And I think instead of blaming the manosphere and Andy Tate and the rest of them, maybe we should be asking the question, why do our young males feel lost today?
And how can we help them to navigate this online world and teach them what a positive role model looks like?
A few weeks back I had the idea of writing a piece for The Clare Champion around this subject, and I can tell you it’s been hard work listening to all these creeps in this world and the absolute kack that they spew out to the public online.
Then I see that Louis Theroux had a doc on Netflix that was coming soon, so I decided to put it on hold for a week and finish this article when I’d watched, Inside the Manosphere.
If you want to know about this world, Tate doesn’t appear on the doc but the lads he inspired and is in business with are, I urge you to watch it.
The documentary follows Theroux as he meets a few of these top manosphere influencers, we see that like Tate, they all follow the same business plan, they all have online platforms selling get rich quick schemes and how to be a modern man.
They all spout right wing conspiracies, and they all think that feminist movements and woman are to blame for their problems.
They all want to go back to a time where woman couldn’t vote, didn’t have jobs, stayed in the kitchen and do what they were told.
The hypocrisy is that they all want traditional values but have one-sided open relationships, where they can have as many women as they want but their partners can’t.
Most of them do live streams spouting all this crap, then they make short form, click bait clips and post them on socials media, all of it monetised to make them money and when they hook you in, then they can start selling you the lie.
During the documentary, Louis invests five hundred dollars in one of the lads get rich quick online investment scams and just watches as his $500 dwindles into nothing.
Also, throughout the documentary, Theroux was just asking each of them simple, critically thought-out questions and every single one of them crumbled under his reality and his chilled-out demeanour.
Like Theroux said in the documentary, all this stuff used to be on the fringes of society and now it’s in the mainstream.
What I came away thinking was, that most of these boys didn’t have positive male role models in their formative years, their dads weren’t around, or if they were, they beat the shit out of them and their mams.
Most of them had unresolved trauma that they were projecting onto women.
The saddest part of the doc for me as a man watching, was when Louis and one of the influencers are walking down the road in Miami, they meet two fans of this guy, and they get into how much he has influenced and helped them.
Then Theroux asked how he has helped and one fan says, “cause as men we are born without worth and this man right here has taught us how to find our worth”.
I’m not sure of the demographic that reads this paper but if there happens to be young Gen Z males reading, just know that you were born with intrinsic value and worth, that absolutely no other person can give it to you or take it from you.
You deserve it, just because you’re a human being. If there are any dads or grandads reading, maybe let’s start challenging the modern masculinity narrative and calling out misogyny where we find it.
I hope that young men learn to critically think for themselves and see through the bullshit online. That if you encounter anyone online that blames another section of society for their problems but then in the same breath turns around and tries to sell you something.
They are false prophets. I came across this poem recently and I think it tails this article perfectly, so I’d like to share it with you all. Take care of yourselves and each other.
If I ever Have BoysBy Darragh Fleming
If I ever have boys they’ll be dangerous menThey’ll smile at dogs and children and be a tonic to friendsThey’ll send flowers to their mother just because and they’ll be a shoulder for many when the world is too muchMy boys will know that vulnerability is strengthThey won’t bottle anger, they’ll learn how to expressThey won’t let pride be the reason they hide, wearing masks while they’re hurting insideMy boys will be dangerous menThey won’t stay silent even when it’s uncomfortable for themThey’ll learn that their actions are more effective than words but they’ll use their voices to amplify the unheardThey’ll know that love isn’t something to performThey’ll see beauty in all of its formsMy boys won’t grow learning to emotionally hideThey’ll reshape masculinity into something they like, make it softer to touchThey’ll know that who they are is more than enoughThey’ll know that being a man doesn’t mean carrying the burden aloneThey’ll learn that an emotional man is a man fully grownThey won’t settle everything with violent swingsThey’ll live in truth even when that truth stingsSo yeah, if I ever have boys they’ll be dangerous menbut the danger they’ll be won’t the one society meant
