With Louis Theroux’s recent documentary bringing renewed attention to the manosphere, many people are asking a familiar question: how are so many young men being drawn into these online worlds?
The conversation often stops at condemnation. These communities are frequently described simply as misogynistic spaces populated by angry men. And while misogyny is undeniably present – and harmful – this explanation alone doesn’t fully capture “how do people end up there in the first place”
If we want to meaningfully respond to the spread of these ideologies, we need to understand the psychological pathways that lead people into them. I don’t have a diagnostic framework to offer, I’m not sure it’d be useful. But here is a synthesis of my understanding of the issue drawn from my personal experience & research on loneliness, masculinity, online radicalisation, and the growing literature on misogynistic online communities.
At its core is a simple idea:
“Many people are recruited through injury before they are recruited through ideology.”
We are drawn to give pain meaning. The manosphere offers a compelling story.
Stage 1: The Wound
For many people, the pathway begins with some form of relational or emotional injury.
This might be:
- loneliness
- rejection in dating or relationships
- bullying or humiliation
- feelings of inadequacy
- confusion about masculinity
- social isolation
- a sense of invisibility
Research on incel and manosphere communities consistently highlights high levels of loneliness, depression, rejection, and relational distress among participants. More broadly, we know that traditional masculine norms – particularly those emphasising stoicism, self-reliance, and emotional silence, can make it harder for men to seek support when they are struggling.
When someone is in pain but lacks the language, support, or community to process it, they naturally begin looking for explanations.
The person is looking for relief, recognition, explanation, and somewhere to place their pain. This is often less about ideology at first, and more about making sense of suffering. That inference is consistent with evidence showing that these spaces attract people with unmet mental, social and relational needs.
Stage 2: Recognition
At some point, the person encounters manosphere content. This might be through YouTube videos, podcasts, TikTok clips, gaming spaces, forums, or influencers who present themselves as offering “truths” about relationships and masculinity. Significant to all of this is the role of algorithmic feeds.Research on recommender systems also suggests that misogynistic content can be amplified quickly and offered to vulnerable young users through algorithmic exposure (ofcom, 2025).
Often, the initial content doesn’t begin with explicit hatred.
It might focus on:
- confidence
- financial success
- dating advice
- “alpha male” self-improvement
- critiques of modern masculinity
Research into online misogyny suggests that this initial stage of engagement is often driven not purely by ideological agreement but by emotional resonance. The content creates the feeling: someone finally understands what I’m angry about. Even before explicit misogyny takes hold, the person may feel seen in their frustration, confusion or hurt.
in fact, Internet Matters found that some teenage boys and dads were drawn to the lifestyle, money and confidence messaging attached to figures like Andrew Tate, not only to overtly anti-women rhetoric
For someone who feels lost or rejected, this content can create a powerful moment of recognition. “Finally, someone is saying what I’ve been feeling.” “I want that”, “finally… I feel seen”.
Stage 3: Narrative Capture
Over time, personal pain begins to be reframed through a broader ideological narrative. The manosphere offers a relatively simple story:
Men are being humiliated or oppressed.
Women are manipulative or status seeking.
Feminism has broken the natural order.
Dominance and control are the solution.
What may have started as confusion or sadness begins to harden into grievance. Psychologically, this shift can be powerful. Shame is a deeply uncomfortable emotion. Ideology offers a way to transform shame into anger – and better yet, it feels righteous!
Instead of asking: “What’s wrong with me?” [the familiar script]
The story becomes: “What’s wrong with women? Or: What’s wrong with society?“
This narrative compression; turning complex human experiences into a clear explanation with identifiable villains, is part of what gives ideological movements their psychological appeal. These communities can now frame romantic failure and social pain through misogynistic collective narratives that externalise it outside of “me”.
Stage 4: Identity and Belonging
Once the narrative is adopted, something else often happens. The person finds community.
Online spaces centred around manosphere content often function as social environments as much as ideological ones. Shared language, memes, humour, and collective grievance create a strong sense of belonging. Reinforced by repeated “truth-telling” rituals that promote a sense of belonging. For someone who has felt isolated, mocked, rejected, or invisible, these spaces can offer the first experience of feeling understood.
The person moves from I am hurting to I am part of something.
But the belonging is conditional. It is built around shared hostility, shared enemies, and shared narratives about gender. Once identity and community become attached to belief, challenging the belief becomes psychologically difficult. To question the ideology risks losing the community that now provides belonging. Once community is attached to belief, it becomes harder to challenge the belief without triggering shame and social loss.
Stage 5: Moral Hardening
Over time, repeated exposure to these ideas can normalise increasingly rigid beliefs about gender and relationships.
Women may begin to be described not as individuals but as categories: “high value”, “low value”, manipulative, opportunistic, or adversarial. And you’ll hear them described in the community as “categories”, “threats”, “prizes” or “enemies”.
Relationships are framed less as mutual connection and more as strategy, competition, or status negotiation.What may once have felt like extreme statements begin to feel normal when repeated often enough. Empathy begins to narrow – women and girls, stop being considered people, like men are. What earlier felt like “just content” can become a worldview that legitimises contempt, coercion or dehumanisation
Research on online misogynistic ecosystems suggests that these environments can function as echo chambers, reinforcing hostile attitudes and normalising sexist language. Internet Matters reports concern that this content seeps into behaviour in classrooms, at home and online; and recent UK research argues misogynistic rhetoric is moving off screens and into schools and youth culture.
Stage 6: Behavioural Enactment
At the most serious end of the spectrum, ideology can begin to influence behaviour.
This might include:
- harassment or abuse
- controlling attitudes within relationships
- Intimidation & contempt toward women
- admiration for coercive or dominating behaviour
At the extreme edge, it includes violence and there is more and more evidence of high profile attacks inspired by incel ideology. The link between parts of the manosphere & extremist violence is clear.
But the more common impact is quieter and more diffuse.It shows up in everyday misogyny. In hostile attitudes toward women. In relationships shaped by distrust and control rather than mutual respect.
The ideology moves from explanation to prescription. It tells the person how to feel, who to blame, what to fear, and how to act. It instructs people not just how to interpret the world, but how to behave within it.
Compassion With Accountability
Understanding these pathways does not mean excusing harm. Misogyny harms women and girls. It damages relationships. It erodes trust between people. It hurts all of us.
But if we only respond with condemnation, we risk missing the conditions that allow these ideologies to take root in the first place. Many young men are navigating a confusing landscape of masculinity, intimacy, and identity. At the same time, loneliness among men has been rising across many countries.
When people are in pain and cannot find places where that pain can be spoken about safely, they will often find communities that provide explanations – even harmful ones.The manosphere fills a gap. If we want its influence to shrink, we have to address the gap it fills.The evidence supports taking the emotional drivers seriously, but not softening the reality of the harms done to women, girls and relationships.
Interrupting the Pipeline
If the pathway into the manosphere often begins with loneliness and injury, the most powerful interventions are rarely purely ideological.They are relational.
They involve:
- emotionally literate models of masculinity
- communities where men can speak honestly about vulnerability
- male friendships built on more than competition
- education about relationships and emotional intelligence
- spaces where belonging does not require hostility toward others
In other words, the answer cannot simply be “don’t believe this.” The answer has to include building better places for people to belong.
Final Thought
The manosphere is often framed as a battle of ideas.
But beneath the ideas are human experiences: rejection, shame, confusion, longing for recognition.
Pain searches for meaning. The stories we offer people in moments of pain matter.
If the only stories available are ones built on grievance and domination, those are the stories some people will adopt. But if we create communities where men can feel seen, respected, and emotionally connected, the appeal of those narratives begins to weaken. And that is where real change starts.
