Louis Theroux’s latest Netflix documentary plunges viewers into the murky depths of the “manosphere”: the sprawling online world of male-centred content and the creators who profit from it. The film lays bare how this ecosystem routinely includes misogyny and anti-feminist sentiment, packaging hostility toward women as wisdom for lost and directionless men. According to The Irish Times, no prominent homegrown Irish manosphere figures have yet emerged, but that distinction offers little comfort as content produced by English and American creators flows freely across borders, finding its audience predominantly among young boys, Irish ones included. Most troubling is the effect on impressionable boys, and how their understanding of women and relationships is being reshaped in real time.
At first glance, the manosphere can appear almost benign. It presents itself on the surface as an ecosystem of online forums, blogs, social media channels, and podcasts ostensibly devoted to men’s struggles covering: dating advice, fitness, financial ambition, lifestyle coaching, and “looksmaxxing”, the practice of systematically maximising one’s physical attractiveness. Framing this content as self-improvement is very deliberate, and for many young viewers, it is the entry point. But, beneath the gym routines and productivity hacks, lies a worldview that is thinly veiled in its contempt for women: one that casts men as the sole protagonists of life and success, and women as objects to be pursued, won, or most often humiliated. Theroux’s documentary makes this viscerally clear, featuring influencers who film themselves approaching women on the street or inviting them onto podcasts designed for public embarrassment.
The absence of prominent Irish manosphere creators might, on the surface, suggest a degree of cultural immunity. It does not. Internet algorithms do not distinguish between a teenage boy in Birmingham and one in Ballymun. Content produced in London or Los Angeles arrives on Irish screens with the same ease and with the same algorithmic weight. It does not necessarily matter the nationality or origin of these “manosphere’’ creators, when they are able through the internet to influence young men across the globe. The Irish Times cites the reason that there haven’t been any prominent Irish creators is not the fact that young men do not hold these views, but instead that it is hard for new content creators to break into the scene.
While the manosphere does not align itself formally with any political party, its ideals and most prominent figures are highly associated with right-wing politics. Andrew Tate, the controversial social media personality facing serious allegations of sex trafficking, has cultivated visible ties to US President Donald Trump and a constellation of right-wing officials, lending the movement to political adjacency. While prominent streamer and “manosphere” influencer Nicolas Kenn De Balinthazy, known as “Sneako”, featured within Theroux’s documentary, worked alongside right-wing commentator Nick Fuentes and worked on Kanye West’s 2024 presidential campaign. This political alignment is not an overt part of the manosphere, but a concerning one. No one in the “manosphere” claims to be a political influencer, yet their views are still imparted on a mostly unaware audience.
The conversation in the United Kingdom is already considerably more advanced. British politicians, educators, and journalists have been grappling publicly with the influence of manosphere content on young men for several years. With figures like Andrew Tate being reinvestigated by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), and another prominent manosphere influencer, Harrison Sullivan, known as HSTikkyTokky, sentenced to 12 months in prison for reckless driving.
The psychological literature on media consumption and adolescent development is unambiguous on one point: the content boys consume during formative years shapes their attitudes, expectations, and behaviours in long-lasting ways. When that content consistently portrays women as adversaries and objects, the effects do not remain confined to screens. They surface in classrooms, in relationships, in the language boys use about women and girls around them.
This is not merely a cultural or parenting problem. It is inherently a political one, and it demands a political response. The question of whether the Irish government has adequately registered the threat is one worth asking plainly, and the answer, at present, appears to be: not yet.
Ireland’s Online Safety and Media Regulation Act, signed into law in 2022, represents a meaningful step toward platform accountability. Furthermore, Ireland’s regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, has developed an Online Safety Code that obliges major video-sharing platforms headquartered in Ireland, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, to protect children from harmful content, with fines of up to €20 million or 10 per cent of annual turnover for breaches. That is not nothing. But there are significant gaps. Critically, the recommender systems and algorithms that determine what content users actually see are not covered by the Online Safety Code, the very mechanisms through which manosphere content finds and radicalises its audience.
Other governments have moved considerably further. In Australia, the response has been the most decisive of any democratic country to date. In November 2024, the Australian parliament passed the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act, which came fully into force on 10 December 2025, prohibiting children under the age of 16 from holding accounts on designated social media platforms. The legislation is not advisory: platforms that fail to take reasonable steps to prevent underage users face court-imposed fines of up to $49.5 million AUD. The United Kingdom, meanwhile, has pursued its own robust framework. As of July 2025, platforms operating in the UK have a legal duty to protect children online, with Ofcom empowered to impose fines of up to £18 million or 10 per cent of qualifying worldwide revenue against non-compliant services. Crucially, Ofcom has also issued guidance specifically requiring in-scope providers to improve the online safety of women and girls, and to take greater responsibility for tackling gender-based harm online.
It is fair to point out that there is a structural constraint complicating Ireland’s position further. As an EU member state, Ireland is bound by the EU Digital Services Act, which creates pressure for consistent rules across Europe, meaning Ireland cannot simply impose a unilateral social media ban in the way Australia has done. Minister for Media Patrick O’Donovan has acknowledged the tension, stating that while EU-level action would be preferable, there is also still action to be taken on the national level. His proposed linking of age verification to a government-issued MyGovID digital wallet has drawn criticism from civil liberties groups, who argue the underlying system raises serious privacy concerns.
And yet Ireland’s structural position remains arguably stronger than that of most countries. It hosts the European headquarters of Meta, TikTok, Google, and X, giving its regulator a jurisdiction over platforms that no other EU member state can match. Ireland is set to assume the EU Council presidency in July 2026 and has made child online safety a central theme of its proposed agenda. The ambition is there. What has been lacking, so far, is the urgency to match it.
Louis Theroux’s documentary will be watched, discussed, and ultimately scroll off the cultural agenda within weeks. The problem it documents, however, will not. The manosphere does not appear to be a passing trend, but instead a cultural resurgence that is an entrenched and expanding feature of today’s online landscape, and its influence on the boys growing up in Ireland today is both real and measurable.
Ireland cannot afford to wait for a homegrown Andrew Tate to emerge before taking this issue seriously, nor should it. By the time the problem has a recognisably Irish face, a generation of boys will already have been shaped by the ideas that face represents. The moment to act is not when the crisis becomes undeniable. It is now, while there is still time to get ahead of it.
