Is The Manosphere Really That Dangerous? - Louis Theroux - #1070

Louis, you've got three sons, 20, 18, and 11. Why were you interested in doing this documentary? Uh well for for reasons c closely related to that. I mean Yeah, that's obviously part of it. Uh as a dad I saw my kids were consuming I mean consuming s s maybe sounds more active than it was. They were being exposed to influencer content, manosphere type content, specifically Andrew Tate back in the sort of post-COVID era.

when he first blew up and and I remember kids saying the you know, the b the boys saying, um, Oh, Andrew Tate said this or that and and thinking like, Well, who who is Andrew Tate? Like that's not ever wasn't someone I'd ever heard of. And then the content obviously turned out to be things like, Oh, women can't drive or shouldn't be allowed to drive or women shouldn't be allowed to vote.

Um and it was hard to you know, that they were sort of saying like, well he just says it as a joke, like everyone's freaking out about this and but w you know, we we know what it is. Like it's clearly uh clickbait or rage bait, but nevertheless Its level of virality was kind of I I I it would be too far to say at this stage it was concerning, but it was kinda weird. It was just weird to see someone blow up like that that quickly and to sort of commandeer swathes of the internet

so purposefully. Like he kinda hacked. He s he figured something out about the algorithm, about about uh Twitter and and and social media in general, TikTok really specifically, doing podcasts.

saying outrageous things, having an army of clippers repurpose those into short snippets and those being picked up by the algorithm so that everyone, literally millions were being worldwide were being exposed to his content. So fast forward a few years and he continued to become famous, other people in his stead or or in associated contact. were putting out similarly viral clickbait content and the whole culture felt like it was being inundated.

I say the Hulker. I'm you know, as a program maker of thirty years standing, uh I'm always looking for ideas. And I was with I was talking to Netflix about making a program and it seemed front and center of what I should be covering. As both someone I mean, I've been joking that it's like the final boss battle of the Louis Thereux subject. You know, like I as someone who's specialized over the years, I've done stuff about racists, cults, Se sex workers of different stripes.

um people involved in pro wrestling and gangster rap. The manos this aspect of the manosphere, like this subsec section of the manosphere, feels like all those things mixed together. You know what I mean? They look a bit like wrestlers, they speak a little bit like rappers.

And and the content is clearly highly dubious at best. You know, whether or not it's sincere is a is a different question. So I was like, well this is this is made to measure for whatever my skill set is in terms of making documentaries.

I think the wrestling analogy is apt because a lot of the stuff that we see online, even from, you know, Trump sometimes, is this weird K fabe. Where I don't know i is this is this a joke or is this real? And if What nobody wants is to be accused of having pointed the finger at someone for telling a joke.

saying that it was real and there's always the you know, the sort of the comedian get out of jail free card of Well, you know, like this is I'm not I'm I'm not being serious with that. But at some points the seriousness actually comes in to touch reality. Big time. You know, the wrestling metaphor is um as you say, is very apropos. We're in a culture now where everyone has access

to the media. Like we we all have our own mini you know, it used to be I'm I'm older than you are, but I grew up in an era of three or four TV channels. Like when cable arrived, that was a big deal. Like, oh wow, you got like forty channels. Like, what mind blowing. Now there's a s there's a real sense in which we kind of have millions of channels. Like everyone can have a YouTube account and broadcast what they like. So we can all curate a media persona and we all have um

we all have access to the airwaves of our choosing and part of that is employing personas and as you say, K fabe. Alongside that, you know, s someone who I mean, I'm a fan of in a sense self impersonation.

It's a it's not coincidental that I go into these worlds where people take off the peg identities like my name is Waldo and I'm a wrestler, you know, and actually no, your name's Louis Thoreau and you're a BBC documentary maker or Netflix documentary maker. Do you know what I mean? Or or the worlds of Adult film stars. You know, a lot of these worlds I've gone into are places where um you take a new name.

And the online world, which I was looking at, the same thing, one of the main guys I looked at is uh Harrison Sullivan's his name, but he goes by HS Tiki Toki online. There's also a guy called just um uh Nicholas Balanthazi and he he uses the handle Sneeko. So it's another another realm in which you're performing yourself and You can employ irony, uh you can employ hyperbole.

you can employ a sort of performative self parody, all of them obfuscating who you really are, but sneaking in the whole time. I mean I sometimes say puckishly, like there's no such thing as a joke. I mean, obviously there is such a thing as a joke, but there's a sense in which all jokes contain a masked truth. And so there's a s you can be racist as a joke

Uh up to a point, I guess, but there comes a time when actually you're just being racist. Yeah, what's that line about um Any organization that starts out uh pretending to be a cult or making a joke about being a cult eventually becomes a cult. Very true. And so there's this kind of double edged challenge that I had in making a program, um, of wanting

to take it seriously as a subject and not wanting to take it more seriously than it deserved. Right? I think there's elements there's elements in all these kinds of stories where you have to uh you can't fall into the trap of Seeing it as a c uh uh uh being a part of a moral panic. You know, there's a sense in which you have to keep things in proportion. I do think that kids youngsters are very often able to read

media in a way that is quite subtle, you know, and they they can see the parts of it that are performative. Like I'm an old school fan of rap. Like I I used to listen to Some of the lyrics, if you took them literally, are horrific. They're literally about, you know, going around killing people and um just committing violence and

Uh you know, I'm talking about old school NWA and and and and Ice Cube E Z E and and then l uh that whole era. And you know, Tupac to an extent, even to this day, like I still like a lot of grime and and drill music.

but um you sort of learn how to read it as not completely literal. So i with it's in the manosphere there's a similar there's a similar issue which is how how what parts of this um You know, you don't want to you gotta I I I try and employ enough of my own irony, enough of my own sort of sense of

recognizing the parts of it that are playful and irreverent and almost kind of enjoyably outrageous and then the parts of it that are uh just over the line, uh abusive, uh b bullying, um and factually wildly incorrect. Because th th the flip side of having a world which everyone has a media channel, it's not just oh, we all have an ability to become celebrities and perform ourselves in public, but nothing is curated and so suddenly we're in a world where

It's widely believed by many young people that the earth is flat. It's become n relatively normal to say that um the pyramids were built by space aliens. They doubt whether we've been to the moon. I mean, call me old fashioned, but it's like I have a li I have limited patience for that kind of nonsense. One of the things that makes me think of do you remember the period the sort of the golden era of American comedy movies? Stuff like Anchorman, Talladega Knights, Will Ferrell, Step Brothers

And what me and my friends at university used to do, we'd quote those movies. You know, you'd make those jokes I Love Lamp or, you know, like, Wow That Escalated Quickly or Rich Mahogany and stuff. Those would be the quotes that we would make. I get the sense that

a lot of what you're seeing here is kind of taking the place of that. It's people who are uh sufficiently engaging and viral and outrageous and uh signature in their style that uh creates this sort of meme culture below it where it's just thing it's it's it's catchphrases and and and ways of talking and and and little uh artifacts, little cultural artifacts that show that you watch this thing as well.

And um I get the sense that that Uh a lot of it is is that and the difference is nobody looked at Will Farrell and thought, well, that's how you should that's how a a news reporter is supposed to behave. Or that's what a news reporter is doing. But because the line between entertainment and real life has now been blurred so much, it it's live streaming, but it's also entertainment. So well is it live? Is this life or is it more kayfabe?

Uh uh I I'd agree. I think um you know w for me it was It was both. Alternative comedy of the eighties. Who who I I looked up to and then maybe when I was a little younger, you aspired to be that outlaw archetype, whether it was on something like the A team or the professionals or, you know, just a badass, a cowboy

a c a Maverick cop. Um and and then, you know, pop music for me later on, rappers, people who imp impersonated or or affected a kind of an outlaw squ swagger, uh of being unapologetically into f fast cars, having big muscles, flexing how much money you had. I of you know, the y to me the YouTub you you talk to kids nowadays, uh that aged eight, nine, ten, ask'em what they wanna do. They'll say, uh uh, I wanna either be a footballer or a YouTuber or I wanna be

uh either a you know astronaut or a YouTuber. But YouTuber is basically number one.

And you know, it's it's kind of in a way, you know, y every generation comes up and thinks, How am I different from my parents? Like what have I got that doesn't that belongs to me, that they don't really get, you know, and uh You know, and actually in d almost Darwinian terms, there's sort of sense of like you join the bachelor herd, you leave the f the family unit and you you you f you f you f you

you you you begin to birth an identity uh i with your peer group that's independent of the one that you've evolved in the family setting. And and alongside that go certain archetypes of role models and And and and so this YouTuber community is like their their version of of punk, uh alternative comedy and and rap all kind of rolled into one. But the tr th th the the danger is uh that the the stage is no longer just l a literal stage, like uh you know, on the set of top of the pops or whatever.

the stage is now the real world. And and and unlike in the old days where there were supervisors like in the BBC, you know, watching Like something on the B B C w T V show or whatever, or a c alternative comedy show, you had old men in suits saying, like, actually you can't make that joke and you know, this bit's gonna have to be cut off and you know, that's a this is going up before nine o'clock. You can't have people in

Scantily clad outfits. Like everything was invigilated and scrutinized for its appropriateness for a specific vulnerable audience, right?

But that's all gone out of the window. And so kids are on their phones watching endless scroll of c stream of content that's maximized for engagement. You know, it's the opposite of how it used to be. It's maximized for audience engagement so that if it Sc women who are half naked and uh guys with muscles and inappropriate jokes, that's pushed to the top of the algorithm.

Uh uh and it's I don't wanna s sound like an old fart, but maybe maybe that's okay. Like you know, it's just a weird maybe you know Yeah, I mean it's i and parts of that are exciting. You know, I d I I'm really th I there's parts of the kind of um the new media landscape that genuinely like as a fan of pranks, like there's some of the pranks are c are funny. As a fan of like documentary, like fact based interactions

I enjoy that. Like stuff that goes viral'cause it's a weird encounter or something's awkward or but um but there's no guardrails that I can see and the people who are rising to the top of the heap uh are people like

Andrew Tate, Sneeko, HS. And the last thing I'll say on that is And behind all of that and maybe this was the discovery going into the documentary, behind all of that is is an upsell, is is is a is an attempt to convert your eyeballs into sales for some crappy product like a d highly dubious online university, a questionable crypto

project, an FX trading platform, and because you these are your heroes, you know, these are the people you admire, then you uh you end up, you know, some portion of those viewers end up buying these crappy products. What do you think is driving this trend? Why around men's issues? Why not around something else?

Well, I think it exists among w women as well, but in a different form. I mean, I it's not something I've studied, but my instinct would be that there's a kind of Kim Kardashian maybe even Bonnie Blue sort of adjacent realm of induced insecurity about looks that involves the upselling of

um sponsored content and uh questionable beauty products. Like you know, I'm not a huge fan of the whole Instagram look. Like I I feel like that there's a whole new female archetype that's being hatched that is I I I don't it's like I I quite like people to look

th you know, natural, for want of a better term. Um but I get that I go I don't t get to set the um the beauty norms. I think for men, um well they say Instagram is a way for you to compare your insides with other people's outsides. So um if like a lot you know Like I joke that I was an incel before it was fashionable. Like I can relate You know, I can relate to the feeling of like, Wow, why am I why am I

The l only one with a dance card with no names on it, you know. I was saying to someone earlier today, like that Morrissey lyric, there's a club if you'd like to go, you could meet somebody who really loves you, so you go and you stand on your own and you leave on your own and you go home and you cry and you want to die.

From how soon is now? Like that's slightly in s that could be the incel anthem. Um so I understand w why men especially young men,'cause I think that's important. Like we it's not gu it's for the most part this isn't guys in their thirties and forties. This is teenagers um fourteen through eighteen and twenty. And I'd say that based on hanging out with, spending time filming with H S Tiki Toki.

Sneeko uh and others and and seeing like that this is like sometimes even nine years old, ten years old coming up and saying, like, oh mate, I love you. Uh you're the best. So th they're ki kids, uh some of them, uh and s certainly young men who are trying to figure out where they fit in in life. And in a world where many of the old entitlements and certainties have been eroded.

and um i in which they don't know uh you know, they they they're looking for some sort of parasocial relationship or sense of connection and um And they want big muscles and and a big fast car and lots of money and that's that sort of speaks for itself, right?

It's a good point around the age. I don't really think about it that much. The audience for my podcast, which is uh many of whom are men, is there's basically nobody below eighteen and s a big, big, big chunk of them are sort of twenty to forty.

So I don't really think about those young kids but I guess what's interesting is yeah, maybe if you to talk about the removal of previous role models the paths toward legitimacy that men would have been able to hold onto in the past that are no longer there, socioeconomic imbalance between women's performance and men's performance. I I don't know how I don't know how many of

kids that are eleven years old are thinking about that, are factoring that in. So I don't know that that explanatory mechanism does work if you're

twenty two, but I'm not convin and you've had time to kind of be rebuffed by a world that you felt you were promised but never got delivered to you. But I I'm not convinced that that's the same. So maybe it More entertainment, but there's less ability to discern whether this is something that's a turned up to eleven joke or it's exaggerated or caricatured for comic effect or is completely not meant seriously, or something else.

You know, it's a good point. I I suspect it's a it's a little bit all of the above. I do think that um in in one sense, if the if if TikTok had existed in the eighteenth century Or let's say nineteenth century at a time when there were there were j uh jobs in factories and kind of traditional gender norms and archetypes and

I I still think actually people would been enor kids, m young men would be enormously beguiled by it. Like there's a sense in which none of the messaging you know, you got Andrew Tate's messaging, it a lot of it seems to be derived from books like

uh iceberg slim's books where it's about the pimp culture of the fifties and sixties. Th th you know, it's this sort of sense of which uh I can the the idea is I can teach you how women think and actually you can't take women at their word, they've got a different it's they've got a whole different vocabulary. It's it's sort of like erroneous notions of like, oh, um breaking people's spirit and y you know, ugly dark stuff but

It's gone viral as a side effect of a of an algorithm. So I think partly You know, even without the collapse of manufacturing in in the West, you know, parts of the West and and even without the entry of women into the workplace and even without an attempt to be less prescriptive about what gender roles look like, it would still be enormously enticing.

Uh but then you add in some of those other things. Um and clearly it's even more the case. I mean I I don't know, like if you're twelve or thirteen, you may not be thinking about um entering the workplace, but you obviously are thinking about in some way aspiring to be more than you are. Yeah, in in in fairly basic ways. Trust really is everything when it comes to supplements. A lot of brands may say that they are top quality, but very few can actually prove it, which is why

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Well, I mean, I think you might be giving them a little too much credit. Like I think they're trying to remedy their pocketbooks to a great extent. You know what I mean? They're trying to achieve wealth, uh, for themselves. Um, and you could say that doesn't explain everything. Like, well they could do that by um You know, I don't know, going out prospecting or trying to find sunken ships.

but um but they clearly ha uh they clearly have found a way of connecting by by in a sense a appealing to the parts uh I I I would argue The less evolved, the less... meritorious, the more primitive parts of our identities, right? Th there's a sort of um what we're seeing living through is a is a is is a time which our our most primal urges, you know, our are kind of evolutionary strategies, our drives towards

um whether it's sexual or tribal, uh you know, those parts that are controlled by the amygdala, like deep inside the reptile brain, have been connected to the most high tech Uh forms of technology And and so, you know, we're and we're defenseless. You know, we I don't wanna sound super kind of neo Darwinian, but you know, the sense is which we are still living with our own kind of f s software

uh which was evolved on the savannas of Africa, right? And um and and it's adaptive to certain situations there, fight and flight and whatnot. And then uh and then so when someone When those are deployed and weaponized against us, on on social media, we are somewhat defenseless. Uh I would say what th I suppose you could say, well what do they say that they're attempting to remedy? They would say they're attempting to remedy an overly woke uh culture, a culture in which

men have lost touch with what it means to be a man, uh in which women I mean to quote Myron Gaines, one of the main people I speak to is is a guy called Myron Gaines. Are you familiar with him? Yes. So he's part of a double a double act called Fresh and Fit. They have a podcast in Miami Uh their content is ex is very extreme. And Myron Gaines wrote a book called Why Women Deserve Less.

And his idea his whole uh message is that women have been pampered and they are overentitled and as men we need to recognise that and give them less and everything will go more smoothly. And so his message would be um actually yeah m men can hack the game of life, you know, we c I can teach you the cheat codes of life. A lot of it based on old PUA pickup artistry uh supposed hacks, you know, negging women, um, recognizing that women are

in their in their words or in their view, state is obsessed. Uh and then you can build the life that you would like and would deserve by um employing his technique I I I mean, there's a lot more that could be said about that. I mean, I found it so inimical to the way I think about the w I mean, I was raised by a feminist mum i you know, and and and in in South London in a world where yeah, uh the

That th the idea that I you know, my mum was a working mum, I grew up in the seventies and southwards. So the idea s these ideas are so alien to me that uh I had to kinda get my head round'em. I think a lot of it seems to be based on his interactions with um cam girls and only fans models. Like in his world he's like all w he when he's talking about women, he only really seems to be talking about Instagram models and women who do a lot of social media.

Like that that gets you some way down to understanding like what his mindset is. Um, but with it so within his sample group he's in this world where there's this competition in which all women one of his big things is like women can't shouldn't go on social media and if you have a girlfriend you gotta keep her off social media. Um

Anyway, I'm going on a bit of a tangent, but their their message is is is an unrecon it's too kind to call it old school, I think. It's it's it's a sort of almost a pastiche of Uh maybe a K fabe of, but certainly a a parodic. um sort of hyperbolic version of some old school um masculinity in which men should be able to have a sex sex with as many women as they like and women should really only

be virgins until they marry and then um just sleep with their husbands. Maybe old school but Genghis Khan. Old school. Yeah, maybe you take it about the Genghis Khan would be probably Th that would be their ultimate alpha. I think it's interesting for me having this conversation because I'm accused of being a part of the manosphere very regularly. I got in trouble at the start of this year and a lot of the I got call for the first time ever I got called a lux maxer.

And um I realized when that happened, I realized that Lux Maxa had taken the place of this sort of catch-all term for some guy that we don't like and probably has icky beliefs. It would have previously been

r maybe s some sort of r right wing, maybe it would have been like like yeah, like pick up artist or or something else. And um it's interesting watching your perspective from me as someone who the Manosphere has got a huge problem with and I've never claimed to be a part of it and we disagree on a a lot of things and the only real alignment that we have is that men watch our content. Uh

But I think what I'm taking from your perspective is that it's not necessarily uh you don't see this content as being mission driven, even if it's framed as being mission driven. You see it as being Self serving Mm primarily for

accumulating more fame and wealth for for creators. Uh, but it's done under the guise of this is part of a bigger mission, that this is this is a a grander plan and that that appears to be an effective exploit, kind of like in a computer game that there's been a a a a hack that's been found and if you couch your pursuit for fame and money under a bigger

desire for systemic change, uh that seems to be that seems to be an effective way to sort of camouflage it. Is that representation? Definitely that. I mean even to go further, uh I think there's parts of it where it isn't even so much that it's camouflage as mission-driven, although it may be, but also that it's um

It's ex it's exploiting vulnerabilities or maybe deliberate parts of the algorithm in order to uh draw more eyeballs. Like in other words, I don't even it's Even Myron Gaines would say a lot of what he says. To be is to be outrageous, you know, to get people's attention, to wake them up. Like they do sort of walk back. Some of the things they say are so horrific I don't even wanna really repeat them, but but you know, s so sort of horrific in terms of seeming to endorse um

sexual assault or certainly minimize it. Um and saying things like as I said, like that women shouldn't vote. Um I think he said at one point he thought gay people should be rounded up and put in special camps. Um So you're I don't think I I don't know like I don't know that he necessarily believes that. In fact if you talk to him sometimes he'll start walking those back. So so he'll be like Oh well I'm not literally saying I'm what I mean is they start pausing it and sort of

um making it sound more uh acceptable. Uh but then you're right, there is a part of it where they are uh advocating a return to a certain pe more more male-centered version of society. But actually it would be wrong to say that that's their signature because there's plenty of people, conservatives, let's say, who w who might take a similar position.

Um so that's not really their identifying characteristic. Like the th really w what singles them out and defines them as extreme manosphere is the willingness to embrace a kind of paranoid conspiratorial mindset to employ outrageous, I would say utterly cynical,

clickbait based um content creation and then all of it with a view to grift like uh the that behind it is a um is is a s is it's it's an angle. It's a it's an attempt to reach a market. And someone like HS Tiki Chalky, he's he's Essex born, uh is k like a lot of these guys, um single parent home a home in which

Certainly for Tate, like th th the chaos in Tate's household growing up, he talked a lot about how his dad would come by and beat him up. You know, he gr you grew up real quick, one good ass whipping is one of his quotes. Like the idea that there's massive educational value in being beaten up by your dad uh is is kind of extraordinary. And probably some kind of a compensation by him, right? Like some attempt to extend it.

You've got this line in the dock you say, The romance, the confidence, the wealth were all either illusory or out of reach, and the anger seemed a compensation for the fear of being exposed. Yeah. Well uh because actually the They're telling they're say they're saying if you follow my part if you f if you t take my advice, I'll teach I'll give you the cheat codes to life, I uh and you will be rich like me. But the way they teach you to be rich.

is generally not the way they got rich, if they are rich. Because the other part of it is it's not clear how much of it is even real. Um I mean I I there's there's so much false content there's so much misleading uh advertising i in my opinion, you know, the idea that, oh, if you wanna be a multimillionaire, uh, just do what I did and and and go on this FX trading platform. And you're thinking, actually I'm pretty sure H S Tiki Tocky made his money by streaming for

ten hours a day, you know, and um taking a cut of the products that he's selling, not by trading on FX. You know what I mean? And and so um there's a sort of uh a bait and switch going on. Uh and then with Tate specifically, he came up kind of a as an offshoot of the PUA community, the pick up artistry community, and then using This sort of Neil Strauss the game adjacent technique

in order to say that I can teach you the psychology of women and then you can run camgirls and you can be a pimp. You know, his one of his first products was the so called um Pi Pimp uh pimpin' ho PhD, pimpin Hose degree. He's tried to walk that back now, but obviously the whole paper trail is there online and you know, describing how you have to get a girlfriend and have sex with her g and then she'll fall in love with you and then you introduce her to Camming and then you take her money.

Meanwhile, I just add can I add one thing to that and then he'll say in other interviews, Oh yeah, I did this thing where I taught people how to make money by being quote a pimp but it doesn't really work'cause you uh you have to be like me to do it. Like you can't teach that. So the level of cynicism about their own product

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Yeah, I mean, uh I hesitate to play armchair psychologist, but let's do it anyway. It's definitely the case that of the people I interviewed

the ones whose backgrounds I looked into, that was the business guy, business guru and friend of the Tate's, Justin Waller, um, and also HS Tiki Toki. Um and Tate is obviously exhibit A. there was this sense in which there was no father figure present in the home, you know Uh as a sort of like I self identified progressive like I I you know, I there's a part of me it's like uh actually I think all kinds of flavor of family can work, but it's noticeable how much trauma there was

um in the homes of these people and and also uh yeah, just unpredictability. You know, it it might even be that, you know, th the the first go to would be like, Oh, well I guess a dad in a home Would be good. Like I think I tend to think if it's an option, you know, I uh dads bring a lot to the table, you know, the risk of stating the obvious. But just stability, just some sense of like knowing that there's some r regularity and some kind of

Sense of security in the home, both financial and emotional. And um yeah, it goes without saying if your dad's coming around beating you up. that's gonna kind of create a an almost apocalyptic mindset. Like I've s I've I've said in the past that There's parts of the Tate message, this message where you can't trust anyone. Only you, uh only you can depend on yourself.

You gotta be a warrior a warrior and go out there and and and then and women are at risk of being attacked and that's why you can't let your wife out on her own because you gotta be a warrior and she could but you know E actually if you were living in uh the time of Genghis Khan maybe, or maybe like there'd been the complete collapse of society and marauding bands of warlords were taking over the streets, you know, the tumbleweed strewn street

you know, and we were sort of foraging in cracks in the gutters. Like, okay, yeah, I guess you would have to be like a warrior, but that actually isn't Uh, not yet, anyway, the society that we live in. But I do think that if you see if you come from a somewhat apocalyptic home life. And you have to evolve this sort of warrior strategy in order to make sense of it.

you know, um, where your dad is marauding uh into the house every now and then, then uh you can see how that would be an appealing mindset. And and he and his brother, you get the sense of them being trauma bonded.

And in a world where nothing outside their tiny unit is solid or quite trust trustworthy. And then you roll that out and kids are like, Yeah, I wanna be a warrior. That sounds kinda cool. Like it sounds badass.

Uh and it becomes an all a kind of all encompassing um model for how society should be. If that's the case, if it's uh so common that a lot of guys who are Growing up to talk in a vociferous manner about how to survive the world, about self sufficiency and sovereignty and not being able to trust and standing on your own two feet. And that's come out of difficult childhood experiences, uh fatherless homes, maybe some neglect or dysfunction or abuse.

I don't know, it i you know, in many situations you'd say, well that deserves sympathy. Oh, I'd agree. Yeah. And in fact I do think that um I've attempted to extend empathy to um you know, I I I I tend to think like those categories of victim and perpetrator uh can be too binary, like uh you y y you you sort of see ways in which

Guys, these influences are I mean, I feel bad for what Andrew and Tristan Tate went through. Like it's quite painful. We have a little picture of a mage four years old. You think, What did that kid go through? And then similarly Uh there's a we've we've we meet someone called Ed Matthews who's a um a friend of H S Tiki Talk, he's another streamer. Um, who gives vent to some conspiracy theories and but you also see him when he's I think nine or ten years old going online, going on.

Yeah, eating marshmallows doing like talking in a slight YouTube mid Atlantic accent guy. Can you say fuzzy Barney or something? And he's you just see like he's a guy who grew up more or less online, raised by YouTube, you know, like like like they used to say like kids raised by wolves in the woods. He's been raised by an algorithm.

And what does that d what does that do to you? Uh well it turns out it sort of turns you into Ed Matthews. So yeah, I think it's appropriate to have empathy and I think the part that we don't really dig that deep into Is the tech side, like the ways in which like who's behind this?'Cause it's kind of gray engineers and and business people who've programmed

uh social media platforms in order to keep us online for as long as possible. But we're all defenseless. I have no superiority when it comes to my algorithm Uh has me by the short and curly. So I go on to Instagram to send a DM to someone and then twenty minutes later I'm looking at videos of a woman playing the piano with her breasts. That was a real one that came up. Not naked. She wasn't naked. Someone sent that to me. I'm like, what the hell? Don't send that to me.

I I had this guy in the show, uh Stuart Russell, and he wrote the book on artificial intelligence up until probably about six, seven, eight years ago. And he Explain to me about how these algorithms work, these black box alg algorithms. If you ask a YouTube the YouTube engineer, let's say there was just one. So what does what is the algorithm? What does it do? Can tell you what the output is, but it can't no one can tell you how it works because it's self training.

Right. It's trying to maximize largely click-through rate and time on site. It's like get people to press a thing and once they've pressed a thing, get them to stay on the thing. That's kind of it. Maximize time on site.

And what he taught me that was really interesting and I think adds a really cool flavor when you whenever you're watching anything on the internet, especially if you see this kind of runaway escalation effect of any type of content, is The algorithm can do uh two things to make you more likely to click on a piece of content. First one, which most people understand, is it can become better at predicting your preferences. I know what you like and I am able to deliver that to you in a good way.

The second one, which is way more pernicious, is it can nudge your preferences to be easier to predict. So if it's able to engineer you and typically if you're out on one end, either right or left or up or down based on whatever, you know, ideological map you want to use.

It is far easier to predict how you're going to behave because if you're in the middle you might fall one way one time and then another way the next And I realized as he was talking, oh well, there's also an implication here for the people making the content because if the algorithm is training the feedback mechanism of the preferences of the people who are watching

It's also doing it to the people who are incentivized to maximize the people that are watching. Cause we, me and you, you've got uh podcasts and stuff, you've got uh uh metrics. You can see What you're doing that is effective. There's a retention curve. Ooh, I said this thing. Oh, that was an in- We should, we should do more segments like that on the show next time. Or I I don't know what

reporting Netflix gives or has or whatever, but yeah, I could ima in a documentary you screen is people screen test movies and stuff, right? Like that's kind of the same thing. Why are you screen testing a movie? Because you're trying to be shaped by the audience. But this is now being done on mass with metrics.

all the time, twenty four hours a day, with an algorithm. And y you know, you bring up the sort of dynamics of live streaming and how that sort of contributes. I saw for the first time ever, I was at um Mr Beast Beast Games Two premiere in Hollywood, uh, at the start of the year. And for the first time ever I saw a a live streamer in the wild and I'd only ever seen it This side of a screen before. And to hear someone unironically say W cameraman in the chat.

Uh uh to but to hear that in real life to me kind of felt a little bit like seeing a school teacher at the supermarket. What are you doing here? You shouldn't be here. Like you should Mrs. Henderson, you're supposed to be in you're supposed to be in history class. Um but yeah, th this algorithm thing, it Becoming better at predicting users' preferences, but it's also shaping the preferences of those users to make them easier to predict. And it has to be shaping the

incentives of the creators. And this is what audience capture is, right? That you just begin to throw more and more red meat toward the audience to do the thing, to say the thing that they Are going to agree with that they're going to respond to. So yeah, the algorithms are warping, but they're not just they're warping in kind of all directions, including kind of vertically integrated back up the production stack.

A hundred percent. And imagine if as well like you're you're putting out content that is maybe feels authentic to you. Uh uh you know, y maybe some of it is stunts and pranks and some of it uh skits or interactions with people in the public. But some of it's just monologues or you just talking about stuff.

And you're in this continuous feedback loop of being rewarded for some things and not for others. What that does to your identity, like and and y you know, if your main relationship in life is is with the chat, like a virtual community ha the ways in which You would start to second guess who you are. And especially in this realm where we talked about Kfabe, this sort of sense in which there's this unacknowledged

fictional dimension that's never really spoken about. You know how confusing that would be. You would start to think, uh I don't even know who I am anymore. You know, th th that there's this sort of s existential burnout that takes place. Um I'm really curious though when you said the thing about how would they be able to n if in that idea of nudging your preferences

Instead of just pandering to them, how do they do that? Do we know? Just by giving you more extreme content? The algorithm directly. Stuart didn't explain the dynamic to me, so I'm just gonna broscience it and pull it out my ass. But I think it would be probably to do with a reliable escalation of a a a pipeline. I hate using that word because

w it's always thin end of the wedge. You know, you start off watching Jordan Peterson and before you know it you're at a KKK march, which I d I don't think is necessarily true. But I do think that if you were to come up with a way to uh imagine that the algorithm was able to see because what it's doing is it's using the preferences of other users that are like you and it's using their path.

to help predict your path, right? Because you're a new user. You sign up, Lou, you sign up with a brand new YouTube account. How does it know what humans like generally? Well, he clicked on this and other users like him also clicked on this and then they clicked on that and then they clicked on that and then they clicked on that. And if you can become more and more reliable over time, I I d can't think of a better word for it. It does create a kind of funnel. Uh it creates a sort of path.

that reliably takes somebody toward a more predictable version of themselves. And this is why the biggest videos get the most plays, beyond the fact that typically they're the best, right? Or they're the most effective or whatever, keeping us on site.

But also that they're the ones that are most reliable from the algorithm's perspective, uh being able to get people to click on it and especially if you've um preconditioned them, like Darren Brown or something. It's got a big Darren Brown game where you're trying to sort of lay lay the scenario so that this these beliefs over time become a and and also are bucketed. People are bucketed into um uh more easy to understand groups and I think typically that that pushes people out toward the edges.

What what I observed was that in the streamer community, uh I mean this is self evident, i uh that there's this pull towards obviously engagement and that uh that involves antisocial behaviour. So one thing that we filmed HS Tiki Tocky setting up what he called a pred sting. This was a big trend, I think, last year, where people would set up dates with someone pretending to be s uh underage, and then the person would arrive

the alleged predator and then you would ch the the streamer would humiliate the person, say, like, You're a filthy pred, you're a filthy pred and in the case of the one we watch They beat him up. Um and it was it was really dark. It was really dark. It was a bit uh it felt like You know, we used to say you know, back in the day there was this vision for what dystopian society would look like where this sort of top-down justice, public executions or hunger games.

And my episode was like, We've kind of created a million hunger games that are self inflicted. You know, there's these um sort of uh yeah, individually curated reality shows where anything goes. Um The other part of it was that in the chat, because you've got these people kind of it's not like that they're not quite your friend, like in often they're like trolls, right? And with HS because he started questioning I mean, I should wind up and say

I should wind back and say that um in in filming the documentary I was aware that they would be filming me. And that was both a a price of entry, but also kind of an opportunity to tell the story in a slightly different way where We'd they'd be f I'd film them, they'd be filming me, we'd incorporate some of their content into the filming, then after I leave they go back on stream saying like I don't know what Louis's game is.

I think he might be trying to fuck me, but I'm not sure. Anyway, and then all these comments come in saying like Uh bro, he's gonna finish you. You're cooked, bruv. Uh H S L Major L for Tiki Toki. Farouz gonna uh dunk on you, bruv. And then um And then he w he starts talking back to the chat and it becomes this sort of spiral where He starts questioning his decision to take part. And it we were kind of whipped up, almost like a kind of gladiatorial scenario by the crowd, like, come on!

Finish him. Like the crowd is like these comments that come in the chat and they're egging us on to to sort of ramp up the aggressiveness and the tension. So there's this there's this natural tendency towards everything becoming combat, you know, like a a c s whether it's is this a zero sum approach.

which is entertaining, you know, and goes back to the what you said at the beginning about this sort of metaphor of of wrestling, but I I mean it ends up being I think en like rather exhausting and in it's obviously a very limited way of of observing life.

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uh what I saw with my live streamer in the wild was it's kind of like permanently edging your audience with no orgasm at the end.'Cause if there's a payoff

That is a lull, and that means that your numbers are gonna go down. The the the the live the live stream numbers are gonna go down. So there was always it it always felt like a cliffhanger at the end of a T V show.'Cause we were stood in this we were stood in the line for the red carpet a uh t five, ten yards away, so I was and I was fascinated, so I'm just like locked in watching this guy.

And uh it was um we don't know what's going to happen next. I don't know if we're supposed to be here. This is the thing that's coming up. There was always anticipation. There was always this thing's gonna happen and this thing's gonna happen and this thing's gonna happen. And um yeah it It is a I think it it's maybe a little different when it's not IRL stuff. If it's not if you're sat in front of a computer, typically you're

the pace is a little slower, you're reacting to things as it comes up. You're able to you know, converse a little bit more with the chat. But yeah, if you're in the in the real world, you're yeah, w now we're gonna go and go down the strip in Mar Baya, now we're gonna go on the back line. Now we're gonna go and So yeah, there is this um

ever escalating sort of dopamine spiral that needs to be played and if not then the numbers go down and numbers going down is bad and the chat says that it's you've you feel like you're literally y it's not like in the old days, oh how how were the ratings last night? Oh they haven't come in yet. We'll get'em in a couple of hours.

This is constant you can literally see how many people every second this second and next second. So I think also me meanwhile meanwhile as they're going some guy some clip there's a team of clippers who are taking short clips, each one about, you know, five to twenty seconds long, with a little headline like Thorew finishes HS or HS wasn't expecting Thoreau to say this or HS's mum is t is having a pop at Thoreau like

Almost like, you know, tabloid headlines and then they just put them out. Like so there'd be fifty or a hundred or two hundred of those clips based on a conversation of a few hours. And then whichever ones perform well. Like we're so you know I have a you know podcast, we put out social media content, we'll put out like two or three clips. I mean we're probably still in the dark ages and then oh one of them did well or maybe none of them did well but

What we should be doing is put like these guys put out like a hundred and then one of them gets picked up and then that that go g gets turbocharged and is seen. I had the the dubious privilege of coming back from location, this is the first time this has happened. uh and arriving back and my kids would be like, dad, what were you doing with HS?

Like I why were you like I saw that wh what were you thinking when you said that thing? Or or why did you like not answer his question about such and such or They had seen it all already, not like on a livestream, it had just been fed into their social media feeds. I've never had this weird

sense of being eavesdropped upon all the way through the event. Yeah, you were surveilled. You were surveilled, but it wasn't it wasn't by some secret police or a private investigator. It was by the camera tier. Yeah, it wasn't you with

escorts in Middle America, it wasn't you with some fundamentalist religious cult, it wasn't you with whatever and then you coming home. I mean I I I have to imagine that probably your kids brought up more questions to you about what was going on there than they do if they've watched your documentaries because it feels live and emergent and it's going on in this way.

Yeah, I think it's I'm curious to see what they make of it. Like I I th well, I I say that I'm already second guessing that. I am curious, but I I also one of the things I grew up with a dad who had a public profile. He he he's an author called Paul Thoreau and You know, it's something I don't know if you had a s this or not, but it's something when your parent is famous uh they have a dual persona and you're very conscious that

The what the public one feels false. Like I just remember thinking like the dad the version of my dad that existed in pro newspaper profiles or in as a as a kind of character in his books wasn't someone I particularly recognized. And I I I imagine it might be the case With my kids. And I'm obviously very keen that they should see me as dad and not Louis Thru quirky documentary maker, uh, and definitely not Louis Thru like stooge. Or a pat's Uh sort of butt of H S Tiki Tokies

humiliating jokes, you know. But that being the case, they see what they see on social media. They've been qua they've been surprised not surprised, but they've been a r r a kind of reassuringly relaxed uh about me appearing on their streams. I've been joking, they said, Dad, you got cooked by HS. I don't think they actually ever said that. Yeah. Well look. Not to me anyway. The fact that you're in this sort of weird panopticon of of uh w what was it that uh Stuart Lee referred to it as um uh uh

Stasi for the Angry Birds generation. It's state surveillance run by gullible volunteers. Um That's a great now now that's that's Panoptico. You had me at Panoptico, mate. I'll keep g I why I was shamelessly reading. Should we tell the people like yeah, pan but j Panopticon m uh the a term I think coined by Jeremy Bentham, the u utilitarian philosopher and social reformer, which was the idea that a prison of like ten thousand people could theoretically be staffed by

one or two people who were in a central kind of lighthouse that surveilled the entire structure. But you're right, we're in this sort of uh mutually Well I can't really do better than what you just did with the Stuart Lee quote. We're in a sort of self created p kinda all facing panopticon Yeah. Well look a typical panopticon

I tell you what's interesting for me. The the strange thing, at least a little bit, is I know pretty much everybody that was in the documentary in one form or another. I've either spoken to them, uh texted them, uh I d haven't published any episodes with any of anybody. Um but you know, I've been for for dinner and I'm I've been tangential, I guess. I think the thing that Weird for me, or that's a little bit of a challenge for me, is that it's difficult to speak to issues that men face.

without being lumped into this very broad term that sort of concept creeped out to include manosphere. I mean, you know, feminism includes maternal feminists, someone like a Louise Perry who campaigned against rough sex. killings and is very pro-family and sort of the most anti-natalist, super liberal, super progressive woman. Like you know, the feminism is a v a very big broad bucket term that includes everything. And I think that Manosphere is

Basically, menism was just too weird of a term. So Manosphere is sort of the online equivalent of what feminism is. shared audiences. don't really indicate shared motives, but I can say as somebody that I think I do good work. I think I do I I try to create a a balanced uh approach for helping men and women to understand each other and improve their lives. But it's a it's a difficult needle to thread to just talk to men.

at all. And um You know, I you use a a small clip I think of Scott Galloway. uh at one point in in the documentary, um uh Richard Reeves as well from the American Institute of Boys and Men is sort of tangential to him or Arthur Brooks. Like is Arthur Brooks and Scott Galloway, are they really the the fucking cutting edge? of of misogynistic content online. And then I see someone like a Scott Galloway talk about

guys should be strong or or they should go to the gym or young people should go out and have experiences and and make mistakes and you know, he's concerned about the decline of alcohol. He thinks that people should be going out and getting drunk when they're young and whatever. Um I think it's difficult or I found it increasingly difficult to be able to speak to the issues of men and boys and

what's happening with gender relations and and sex and declining coupling and uh all that stuff. It's be becoming increasingly difficult for me to do that without being yeah, lumped in with audiences that may cross over, but ideologies that don't really have all that much in common. And um it's made it it's it's it's been a really interesting challenge because obviously people are pointing at lots of the same issues.

Uh, but their uh diagnosis and then treatment plan uh diverge an awful lot. So yeah, it's it it was very interesting watching the documentary. I I hear that. And I'm really curious to know, Chris,'cause you mentioned earlier that you felt you'd had a bit of uh flack for for something or other. Uh are y are you able to share anything about that? Yeah, I mean I mean it it's more general flack. It's kind of uh rain rather than uh atomic warheads, but um yeah, d there's disagreement.

around um typically it's that I'm too blue pilled, that I don't see I know the truth about how men and women are supposed to relate, but I'm not prepared to be sufficiently militant or Really good. I thought you meant that you'd had flack from the the legacy media. Oh, I've also got that. I've also got that. Oh that's correct. So yeah, the Manosphere think I'm a blue pilled cuck and the Guardian think that I'm a misogynist. Right winger.

So I get I get kind of ideologically spit-roasted from either side. I've got sort of one in the front and one in the back. Um but yeah, the start of this year was uh d tons and tons. Manosphere influencer Chris Williamson talks about this sklah blah blah blah blah blah. And Uh hmm. That's interesting because the term manosphere has now been inflated to encompass So much that it basically

it it doesn't really mean anything. If if I am the same as If me, Richard Reeves, Scott Galloway are the same as Nick Fuentes and Myron and Justin and Andrew and Sneeko, uh well I mean it It doesn't seem to be a particularly granular or accurate presentation and I don't think that they would agree that they agree with much of the stuff that I say, if you were to put it to uh uh sort of lay it at their feet.

Agreed. I mean it's a the term is highly inexact and uh and and actually you're right. And I've been on Theo Vaughn and I've been on Joe Rogan and Uh I I like those guys and and and I know those have been characterized as manifest. Jordan Peterson would be the same. Andrew Huberman would be the same. And in fact, as you say, there's a huge gulf uh w there's a huge spectrum within the the so called manosphere community. I i we debated it a lot in the process of making the film.

I was I said many times like I'm not about to make a film where it's like Look at these guys, they like to have big muscles and they wanna make a lot of money, you know, hustle bro culture and whatnot. That's not I don't find that interesting. I don't find it particularly it might not be my lane, but I actually I like working out. You know what I mean? And I and I and I feel like self reliance can be is can be super important.

And the a and it's healthy to have a kind of mixed diet of of kind of media intake and um So my thing was like, oh, we're and we do try and clarify in the documentary, like this is the extreme end of a certain world and they are a self identified community, the ones we look at. Um they they very much see themselves, you know, sneeko Justin Waller, Myron from Fresh and Fit.

They all they all they're all they are all quite tight, those three. Uh somewhat adjacent to uh Fu Nick Fuentes in fact, and certainly Andrew Tate is tight with them. It's a certain so there is I I think The more we can avoid a conflation of

you know, everyone who happens to have a male audience or everyone who advocates for some sort of sense of like there's certain things that are helpful for men f tend to find helpful and it's good for their mental health, you know, as opposed to oh the world's

run by a shadowy room of you know like these kind of conspi it's very c there's a there's a conspiracy mindset in the world that I was looking at. There's a it's a it is quite a specific uh rather paranoid, I would say um narrow a kinda narrow uh understanding of how the world works, a narrow understanding of what men and women are, narrow sense of what achievement and success look like. Uh and and that was that was very much the precinct.

that I wanted the film to take place in. Yeah, I mean you're right to say that men's self improvement often gets lumped in with this stuff. But you know, m male forms of self repair are often treated with suspicion. It's as though sort of any attempt by men to rebuild themselves outside of approved therapeutic and ideological channels is is is contaminated in some way.

part of the manosphere because he what he talks about like evidence based ways to sleep better or gain muscle or how much caffeine you should have per day or something. Um it It seems to be that there's sort of two things happening at the same time.

One is a big push of which I'm uh like unapologetically a part of, that I think that the issues of boys and men need to be spoken about more. That I don't think that we need to do this ideological land acknowledgement throat clearing before where we identify the problems that all other groups are facing before we can turn our attention to men, because we don't have to do the same in reverse.

We don't have to acknowledge how many men take their own lives, or addicted to drugs, or are involved in violent crime, or go to jail, or end up home, etc. etc. Before we can then talk about the problems of girls and women. Uh but uh so one thing is happening, which is I think that there's been some A pending of previous routes toward a sense of belonging and fulfillment and status. that men would have previously relied on. And I think that that puts them in a kind of A very uncertain world.

uh a lot of the rules that they would have learned from their parents' generation, certainly their grandparents' generation. It's been such a huge generational shift. We've now grown up this generation's grown up on the internet, relying with online content creators, a changing socioeconomic landscape where women out earn and out educate men up to the age of thirty. Uh

All of this, okay, so how am I supposed to navigate this as a man? I don't know. We've got the most fatherless homes that we've ever seen, so the previous patriarchs that would have probably stepped into those shoes and would have filled those sorts of roles they've now vacated. Okay, so who do we turn to? Well, I've got the internet and this thing's on there. Now again, all of that is I think important to be addressed and that young boys and men need to be given some really great

role models, archetypes, game plans, blueprints for how to do this. I'm sure that you would even as a present father, it would be like I'd the more good information that my boys can access on the internet, the better. That seems like a good a very pro thing to do.

And also at the same time, there is a massive moral panic around extremist, vociferous content online that is pipelining boys and men to believe in these sorts of crazy things. And it seems like The uh legitimate concerns about the second one are used to sort of smear everything from the first one. that as soon as you start to talk about male self improvement

that the the the the term I mean again i th the fact that I was uh accused of being a lux maxer, a term that's been around as far as I can see for about three seconds. Who taught who taught who accused you of being a lux maxer? Some news Some news article. uh Lux Maxa, Chris Williamson. I I I mean it that feels a little bit like s telling somebody uh

It's it's a little bit of a a strange sort of insult, I suppose, uh, given that I haven't tried. So, you know, I just it's sort of that I just woke up like this Lux Maxa thing. Um I it's it's just interesting. These two worlds exist at the same time.

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's really well put. I think you broke it down beautifully. And and um but in just parenthetically as well, have you been following the whole clavicular phenomenon? I you n I was I was gonna ask whether or not you have a an intention of of maybe looking at the world of Lux Maxing in future. Curricula, as they said, like after cause we fit finished filming

Our documentary which by the way is on Netflix. I'm gonna do a brazen plug as of I don't know if it's uh It'll be out yes it's out now. It's out now. It's out now. And and um which is exciting because I've made stuff mainly for the BBC and and and and this is my first for a as as a Netflix as maker of a Netflix original, it's it's crazy to think how m how many like

Well, I don't know how many people are gonna stream it, but it's available worldwide. But the the the um we filmed it until about late last year, like maybe August. September, having started early in the year, like January, February, and then uh and then in the following few months I remember one of my kids came down and was like, Dad, check this out and I c it was some piece of con clavicular content.

And I did not think he was gonna blow up the way he did. I just thought, Oh well, he's he's uh he's kinda very good looking guy who he seemed I I don't know, like he was just doing what he was doing. But uh and then s Ed Matthews comment was like, Oh, he would have been in the documentary but he spawned into the game too late. I just like the But it's kinda true. It's kinda true. They're all avatars uh of some sort of social media.

Um, and the reason that I think that and I I I actually think that we're seeing the what could be if it takes hold the beginning of sort of the new phase of the manosphere. So I I had this I had this conception, I'll see if you agree with it, that the manosphere kind of had three waves, kind of like feminism. So the first one was pick up artistry.

And that was Neil Strauss in the game, it was Negging, uh and it was basically completely whitewashed when Me Too came along because there was no way that this sort of brazen uh we just want to have casual sex with women, use them and discard them thing could have survived. Harvey Weinstein. It just it straight up couldn't couldn't have existed anymore. It was too it was seen as too unsanitary.

So then what comes out next is more red pill and that's Alphas and Beta's and Cooks and Soy Boys and you know, that's kind of the world that you inhabited. And then it seems to me That the next one that might be coming online is actually a disregarding of women. Like if you listen to what Clavicula talks about, he's not bothered about women. It's actually much closer closer to the black pill than it is to the red pill. It's not about

Maybe to some degree it's about gaining money, but I don't even hear that as a stated goal. It's literally about male-male intrasexual competition. That's what mocking is. Right. It's about I am the most formidable looking. Even if I'm not the most formidable, I'm not seeing people talking about actually becoming fighters actually becoming sort of hard men, but just looking like hard men. It's actually a really feminized way of becoming super masculine, right? It's using

Cosmetic surgery, it's using beautification and enhancement, it's using different clothing, it's think spending a lot of time thinking about sort of the way that you look, not necessarily what you can do. So it's a focus on appearance rather than competence.

And um it's not in any way concerned with women. The approval of women, you know, you c there is a A world in which you could have said that the red pill was the romantic pill, because regardless of whether or not it was particularly typically romantic, it was still very much concerned with the approval of women, even if it was in their disregard uh the the the relationship between women and I don't think that we're seeing that.

I don't think we're seeing that with the That's interesting. Yeah, it's reminding me a bit of Mugtow, men going their own way. And and you know, which is sort of as you say, like the ultimate black pill where you sort of think, you know what, uh women I can't deal with them. You know what you was I was also thinking about because I think in addition to the message you have to think about the m means of delivery and so much of this i as I said earlier with like iceberg slim versus Andrew Tate.

The message might be s similar, but the means of delivery makes it something else. Like I think Andrew Tate in many respects was this was a side effect of kind of the TikTok algorithm. You mentioned PUA the pickup artistry community were communicating largely through books and seminars, like come to Las Vegas for a three-day immersive in how to pick up women. You think about the red pill, that was communicated ro in podcasts and YouTube.

But whereas this new iteration is a live streaming phenomenon and and specifically clavicular, he's not the first Luxmaxer at all, but he's the first. looks maxa that live streams uh uh that I'm aware of and in that live streaming environment you're not really conveying it's not a like a how to as such. It's a much more fluid experience of

kind of forming an attachment to someone and seeing them exploring the world and getting into scrapes. So he sort of has the luxury of not really needing a message. His message seems to be Um o other than the fact that if you're really good looking, you can kind of hack the system, right? That's there's not a uh you know, he seems politically ambiguous. I uh he seems to say almost anything

I mean always hesitate with almost anything, but you know, his whole thing like he supports Gavin Newsome over J D Vance because Newsom's better looking and Vance looks like a hobbit, right? Subhuman which and everyone and ever all the red pill community it was kind of a you know, weird way, a genius move. as a way of distinguishing himself from the red pill, right?

He's like, I don't really care about I'm so empty, I'm so utterly um amoral that I'm gonna endorse th th the person who embodies a sort of A a kind of c California progressive mentality, right? And everyone's like, what the actual like that was the most outrageous thing he could do at that point. You know, but he's better looking. Yeah. In other news, you've probably heard me talk about element before, and that's because I am

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What what do you agree with them on? What do you think? Okay, good question. And by the way, and I also want to say, like, I think your point about people talking past each other, like one of the things I Have observed, like in all the years of making documentaries, is very often people who are disagreeing aren't really disagreeing. They're just sort of

selecting a different data set and then um and then arguing past each other. You know what I mean? And none of them's particularly disconnected from the facts. Like they just You know, there's some truth in that concept of alternative fact. Like they there can be different groups of facts and then you select the data set that supports your argument. So you I could identify toxic manosphere figures and then call you manosphere and then suddenly you look toxic, right?

So I I think the conversation has become um characterized by bad f a little bit of bad faith. in terms of uh attempting to stigmatize anyone who expresses relatively uncontroversial opinions about um Well, maybe there are some differences between many men and many women that are worth considering while never allowing that to kind of be overly prescriptive or lock people into preordained identities. part that I I agree with, um I think in general

Like well, I think I've answered the question. I think in general it's helpful to recognise there are differences between m most men and most women. Like without Privileging them or reifying them. You know, it would be but again, I d it's it's kinda crazy that I have to be careful how I say this, but This is the throat clearing thing. This is the the sensitivity around this discussion. And that actually I'm a fan of um I tend to think uh you know, so so in terms of their content like

Yeah, I like self-reliance. Like I like exercise. I think the idea of aspiring to be the best version of yourself is valid. I think attempting to fix yourself first. Think about um ways in which you can kind of attain some kind of mastery over your life, right? D don't spend your hours endlessly looking at um the internet, playing video games, looking at adult content, you know.

Uh, you know, it's a paradox of the world that many much of the you know, much of the Andrew Tate messaging is around like, stop you know, stop playing stupid video games and stop looking at internet porn. But I sort of agree I agree with both of those points. Do you know what I mean? But actually The the thing the thing I disagree with is well, the fact that it comes packaged with a bunch of toxic uh or or you know, just degrading and demeaning content.

If you separate like I follow Joe Wicks, like I'm a subscriber to J you know Joe Wicks? He's like a fitness he's a fitness guru in the UK. Like And I subscribe to his app. He doesn't pay me anything to say that. And um and and and so five days a week, uh I'm not a gym bunny, you know, maybe one day but I've got three kids and a business and whatnot. You know, j uh making excuses but so but I've got twenty minutes or half an hour in the day and I switch the phone on

And and I watch Joe and he leads me through a workout. Not live, they're obviously they're recorded. And um and that makes me feel great. So uh yeah, th all all of that I'm fully on board with. But what I'm not on board with is um Is the horrific content that's being amplified and the ways in which it's become so small and they're role playing they're sort of role playing as multimillionaire oligarchs. And it's it's so paper thin, you know, th it

And this idea of chasing money and I'm just not a fan of what they call flossing. Is that f is it floss like the idea of like showing off your like oh Fle flexing is I yeah, flexing's the more conventional term. I think flossing is something, I'm not sure what it is. Okay. You familiar with flossing? The dance, I thought. I don't know. Okay.

Anyway, okay, so you agree you fall granddad. But you know that whole thing about oh, I'm better than you because I'm on a yacht. I find that so cringe and it just rubs I mean, I get that like if you're n you know, I just think that um Actually we we should be better than that. You know, the idea like I how can I make a ton of money? Like, do just follow your passion. Like, don't don't sign up for a seminar on how to be a millionaire. Just find something that you're good at.

Well, it certainly becomes self selecting that if you're trying to find quote unquote a good woman who isn't concerned with your material wealth, but what you spend most of your time doing is flexing your material wealth.

you're going to attract the sort of woman that is picking up what you're putting down and y it just reinforces y I don't know, it's like Every interaction just further confirms what your priors were and every time that you step further into that world it just continues to reinforce it. Big time. You you I couldn't have said it better myself.

But they're in this village and you know, and the other thing is like there's this world in which you think, Oh well you're looking for there's like I'm looking for uh you know, what's your body count? Oh, my body count's uh a hundred and fifty. Um Th what's your body count? My body count's like seven hundred and eighty. I mean first of all that

That whole th I find that whole thing really uh cringe and embarrassing. But then it's like but you're you you should really marry a woman with like a a low a really low body count, ideally a virgin. I mean that's already really annoying. And objectionable, but then they surround themselves with um OnlyFans girls.

And then and then they're like w oh w you know, they're like w women are just invol you know, that w you know they'll c characterize women as uh o overly um either mercenary or s overly sexually active And then you're like, but why so I d but you're in this world you're in this world of adult content creators like w you you you none of this is matching up. If you wanna be tr traditional values, head up to Utah or Idaho or something,'cause i Miami is not for you.

m Miami is a hotbed of the opposite of whatever you're looking for. Yeah, that's a good that's a good point. Look, I think again, it's it's really strange for me to be thinking about sort of talking about this from the outside, given that so much of my content crosses over. But I think that uh much of the hunger for what I I'm talking about and these guys too.

Is a sort of reaction to a felt lack of sympathy, sort of denial of male pain. And I think if there were, if there was more of an acceptance of guys are having a tough time of it at the moment through pretty much any objective metric. I don't think that any group has fallen further faster than men. That's Richard Reeves's line from the American Institute of Boys and Men. Uh

If it wasn't for the fact that there was no there were no places to go, I think fewer guys would go to the internet. Um and that creates both kind of the cause Uh i i it creates an opening in the market. What's that line about um

if there is if there are no role models, if you can't propose any, and I think that this is a really great question. Uh in fact For you, who do you think are some good examples of of sort of genuine positive role models wh wh that you would say to your boys, you should th th this would be the sort of man that you should emulate?

Uh well I mean the answer that gets bandied around a lot over here in the UK is Gareth Southgate, like the the former England manager. Um I think he embodies a certain uh sort of dignity and and and and so sense of fair play with and and obviously in a in a in a in a in a pursuit that many boys aspire to excel in, many p many girls too. Um I

How I mean how long I shall I come up with a couple more? Like you know, there's clearly a uh in the pantheon of program makers, my field, David Attenborough, you know, an adventurer, uh a world bestriding colossus of of naturalism, a sensitive human being. I mean I think it is worth saying in that in that scenario that you've depicted of um kind of male failure, if you like, like f you know, it's so m m m men despairing, like death th that thing of deaths of despair, like

suicides and drug overdoses. We should also like as a father of boys I I often remind myself that, you know, the two things that matter most to my kids at various times have been f football. English football, obviously, Premier League football and rap, grime and drill. And those are both worlds in which most of the preeminent, world famous, highest paid, highest achieving

exponents are men. And worlds in which, in fact, homosexuality is considered still rather questionable and taboo. Like not many openly gay footballers, not that many openly gay rap artists. So there are I I I guess I'm pushing back ever so slightly in the sense that there are still realms in which um you know, most of the most successful comedians are probably still men. Like there are still realms in which

Uh not just men, but a kind of traditionally masculine presenting man is still ascendant. No, I I would agree. I think the difference is between where do the guys who raise to the top And where does the mean, the average man end up sitting because the average man is not going to become a Premier League footballer or a Ricky Gervais.

uh the average man is increasingly slipping away from going to university, increasingly slipping away from getting a high paying job, increasingly more likely to be addicted to drugs or video games or porn or weed or whatever. And um you're right. You're right to say that Men dominate the uh the extremes, but they dominate the extremes at both ends. And uh it's a denial of the slipping back.

I think that this i this is my read that if it wasn't for the case that I am struggling as a man, well look at your privilege, look at all of these CEOs, look at all of the football players, look at how well and he goes, Yeah but But I'm I'm struggling and and maybe many of my friends are too, and there doesn't seem to be a sympathetic place to land for that.

Yeah, I totally agree. And I think I'm not a fan of like ca the casual disparagement of men. And I think very occasionally, maybe more than occasionally, that happens. Like typical man or uh you know, step back as a man, um, check your privilege. Especially as a father to boys. Like boys uh I I never want to be in a world in which boys have kind of inherited an original sin by dint of being boys. You know, it's like, oh well You have to

Uh you you know, as a boy you've you've somehow your bequest is the fact that men have tended to run society for hundreds of years. Like, no, he's like five years old, like seven years old. Like don't you know what I mean? I know, I was joking the other day, like I remember growing up and they were like, You remember that nursery rhyme

Uh what are little girls made of? Uh it's all like sugar and spice and all things nice and what are little boys made of? Like p p pigs and puppy dogs' tails? I'm not remembering it's like seven years old. Why am I made of puppy dogs' tails? Yeah. You know what I mean? And then that's kind of trivial, but th I don't like that sort of um Like frivolous deg denigrating of of the m of the of of maleness. And no maybe I'm being oversensitive, but I think it kind of

it it's a little unfair. Um so maybe I'm agreeing with that. But and I think yeah I think the other thing I'd say is uh if I want to sound really apocalyptic, uh we are all both men and women Uh now inhabiting a world in which technology's upended so much and promises to upend even more, because God knows when

You know, in a world where I know a lot of it's traced back to the decline of traditional manufacturing, also birth control, women entering the workplace, uh globalization of the economy, inc you know, and the fact that a lot of like w you know, tradition manufacturing jobs moving to places like China and then w w actually most of the jobs like now c uh e can be done equally well or better by women.

But in a world where AI is gonna eliminate most of the jobs uh that involve sitting in front of a screen, as is sometimes promised, there's gonna be this whole other ruction. Like it's gonna play out ir really interestingly, I think. to say the least, in terms of how how men and women interrelate, like whether you know, th how sustainable I don't know. I'm c I know I'm uh taking it's a bit off tangent, but um

I I sometimes think like the th the the you know m male mental health versus you know and and how it figures in wider society will be subsumed by some vastly bigger uh social crisis. Wow. Yeah. I do you know what it is? I hadn't I hadn't drawn that part of the path down the circles of hell, but you're probably right that y i i it's all well and good talking about the issues that both men and boys and women and girls are facing.

But when fifty percent of the workforce is displaced by AI I don't know whether that's gonna happen. When some percentage of the workforce is displaced by AI and people don't have meaning and certain jobs have jobs and other people don't feel like they've got a path forward. But it does loop back to what I said before, which is that if anything if it requires anything, it requires sympathy. Okay, you need you need to be sympathetic. Wow. The world changed really fucking far, really fucking fast.

That's hard to navigate. That's hard to navigate. But because at least at this iteration of it, the men were part of a previously beneficial group. They were part of one that seemed to be afforded privileges. in certain domains, not the privileges to go to war and die and et cetera. But, you know opportunities that weren't afforded to the women, it felt and I think it feels to a lot of young men now like they are being made to pay

for the sins of the advantages that their fathers and grandfathers had. Like they're they're they're accused of being part of a patriarchy that they no longer feel a member of. Um, you know, when they're looking around and saying, Well, where where is my privilege? And I think that it ties in with you talk to these two guys

And there's a line that they say, In life as a man, you're born without value. And I think what they mean with that is it feels to me like there is a kind of Love and belonging and acceptance and pedestrialization that's given to women and girls. that I haven't felt has been afforded to me. I haven't felt as special. I haven't felt as cared for unless I do something, unless I self make myself big and impressive. And again, with that,

sympathy to go, fuck, yeah. You know, previously it probably there would have been a pretty linear progression for you to have found a place in society and done these things and cost of living and and and uncertain turbulent times and all of these different stimulus that can cause you to be addicted. And if you believe in life as a man you're born without value, that that probably requires some sympathy too.

Yeah, you're talking about M Matty and Chris who come up to Justin Waller, uh Justin Waller, the business guru, and we're trav we're just walking around the streets of Miami and they you can see they're in awe of Justin Waller and i they're like, You're our you're our biggest uh role model and we you know we aspire to be like you And they talk about yeah, they they feel they've been born without value, which I think is a red pill talking point.

Um Just to say in passing, like there's a there's a book I haven't read all of it, but I've read in it by Susan Faludi, a feminist writer, published in the late nineties, I think, called Stiff. that talks about the decline of manufacturing and the struggle for male identity in a kind of post-manufacturing era.

But um I would also say though that, you know, in what sense he says like, Well I say, What do you mean you'd be b born without value? And then Justin Wallace says like, you know, if you're a beautiful woman you get invited Onto a yacht. Who's gonna invite these guys onto a yacht? It's kind of a funny moment. It wasn't intended as such

Uh but actually though I'm then then later on I was like, Yeah, but what if you're not a beautiful woman? What if you're just a normal looking woman? Like then you don't get invited onto a yacht and also It's a kind of Instagram um it's a kind of Instagram

paradigm for Miami currency. For value. Right? It's like y you sort of say like I if I put my picture on Instagram, no one's gonna click on that, but if you're a beautiful woman, they'll click on that. Like, dude, like you have the v whatever value you have from studying hard or becoming a professional or apprenticing in a in some kind of occupation. You like he's just talking about the value a s uh that a a a certain kind of Instagram beautiful woman will accrue.

But that's very that's a very narrow uh lens through which to view life. Well it's it's no coincidence that much of this has sort of been born out of Miami and Vegas. Because it's the caricature of that culture. It it isn't it is kind of Skin deep, at least in terms of what's supposed to be traded around. Yeah, it's kinda it's it's kinda like y you first you're like, Oh I guess and then you're like, Well what Mary Curie? Like d what was did she

uh do her Nobel Prize winning scientific work based on having a big Instagram following? Like does she like oh, she's hot. Mary Curie's really hot. Like, you know, d that that's such a weird kind of a way of understanding uh how women achieve success in general. Even think about who you want to spend time with. You know, when I think about When I think about the sort of people that I want to hang out with at dinner on a nighttime, some of my friends are

horrendous in the way that they present themselves. They are not fashionable the but the like smart or thoughtful or uh really interesting or really interested and every time that I walk into a room I just feel like I'm lit up to find out what they've been working on or what they've been thinking about or what's been going on in their life. They're really patient.

Are super patient and they're able to sort of sit with with silence and awkward or they hold space for someone who's going through a good time or a tough time or whatever.

All of those things are impossible to flex online. All of those things are. And yet when I look at when I look at the people that I spend my most time with I'm surrounded by people who are like some of them most many of them are successful in the real world too, but that's as a byproduct of being an awesome person as opposed to doing this It's almost like a

if you took it to the extreme, it's almost like a self bimbofication of the most extreme versions of masculinity. Louise Perry calls it a male to male transsexual uh Uh procedure. where you sort of parody the most masculine traits that you can. I mean, you could say that for clavicular, that it really is almost like a male to male transsexual treatment where You start off being a man and make yourself as much of a man as you can be through cosmetic surgery and beautification and enhancement.

Big time I mean I I like that. I mean the other part of it is and it's reminded me of the game as well, this idea that oh you can win at life by using these hacks. And then you realise actually if you've been around those guys who are using sort of life hacks like that, um It's quite a weird experience. You don't feel good afterwards. You know, that that feeling of whether it's being negged or uh someone who's m s sort of deploying certain

forms of um whether it's neurolinguistic programming, you know, and then you think like it's something a little off like there's something a little off about this encounter. Like or if you're in a situation where you'd ha you'd slept with someone like that, there's there's That that's gonna that's gonna feel afterwards quite dark, I would have thought. Like it feels like a very li li uh uh uh like a a quite a limited strategy for succeeding at life.

You're performing masculinity, you're not embodying it. It's you're reverse engineering, what would a man who is this sort of a man do and rather than make myself into that man, I'll just pantomime his action? And you know, this was the problem. Don't forget, I'm sure that you did this as part of your research, but the red pill was born out of the P UA hate.

Right. Right. Like that was the beginning of both red pill and black pill was PUA hate. And the reason that these guys had PUA hate was that they had gone through the pipeline of pick a partistry and either found themselves unsuccessful in that I am such a genetic dead end that it doesn't work at all or and I think that this is way more common'cause I I grew up kind of tangential to the era of the game.

guys realised that they could be successful with women by following neurolinguistic programming and, you know, uh manipulating social mores to be able to get a woman into bed. But what they found was Look at how much of a different person I have to contort myself into in order to achieve this. This further reinforces my own perspective that I am unlovable as I am, that I need to perform in order to be able to be cared for, that I am not enough. and I have to do this strange, you know, like

Cinderella and the pumpkin thing in a desperate attempt to make me sufficiently likable to bed. And then I wake up the next day and realize. I did it successfully, but look at the contrast between who I am and who I need to be in order to get love from a woman and therefore love from the world and love from society and be able to belong. And uh yeah, you're right. If if you

And I think we're gonna see this increasingly. And you saw this with Neil Strauss. I had Neil on the show two-ish years ago here in Austin. And Neil has now gone through almost a full horseshoe 180 to be Uh completely family pills or he's got he no desire to be sort of in that world anymore. He's writing books with Rick Rubin about creativity. He's co parenting with his ex wife.

Which I'd never I'd never heard of someone doing this, that he he says that they're a bad couple but great parents, so they decided to after their divorce have another child that they would co parent together. And I mean that is i uh you wow, that's interesting. Isn't that fascinating? But think uh that's the guy that wrote the game.

And I think that when when guys that are socially awkward or feel like they've got a chip on their shoulder or they weren't recognized in the past or they've got some daddy issues or some trauma that is either conscious or subconscious or unconscious. Then they achieve everything that they thought the world was going to give them that would fix the void inside. They've done it. They realize the void's still there and they go, Oh shit.

that now I'm really fucked because when I was poor and miserable I had hope, but when I was rich and miserable I was despondent. The thing that I thought was going to fill that void I've now got and the void's still there. And I guess there's two two paths after that. One is I need to look deeper.

It's evident that my gold medalist syndrome indicates that the gold medal wasn't the answer. The other path is, ah, it was two gold medals, or three, or four, or five. That's the solution. I just need more. The dose wasn't high enough, not that the medicine was the wrong type. Chris I need to have I gonna have to make a move in a second um

It'd be I've got a child to pick up. But uh I've really enjoyed talking to you, man. It's been I hope you I hope you're happy with the chat. I am very much indeed. Where should people go to keep up to date with everything? Oh, Netflix. People can go and watch the documentary on Netflix. We've got uh we've got our film dropping on uh well, it's already out on Netflix worldwide. I've got a podcast I do for Spotify and um

I make documentaries with through at my company, Mindhouse, and um other stuff's swirling around. Wherever you happen to be watching this. If we're in the UK it's a lot of stuff on iPlayer. In the US there's something called BBC Player, I think, which no one subscribes to. And then l some stuff pirated content on YouTube, which is fine, go and check that out. Louis, I appreciate you man. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do now.

I w it would have been even better in person, but um we made it work. That's the important thing. It's a privilege to be on. Um thank you for spending the time and for for a great conversation. Appreciate you. Thank you, man. When I first started doing personal growth, I really wanted to read the best books, the most impactful ones, the most entertaining ones, the ones that were the easiest to read and the most dense and interesting.

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