The Fake Confidence of the Manosphere - Louis Theroux

Louis, you've got three sons, 20, 18, and 11. Why were you interested in doing this documentary? Uh well, for for reasons 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 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 that you know, the 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 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 I I it would be too far to say this is it was concerning, but it was kind of weird. It was just weird to see someone blow up like that that quickly and to sort of commandeer swaths of the internet so purposefully. Like, he kind of hacked 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 contexts were putting out similarly viral clickbait content and the whole culture felt like it was being inundated. I said the whole lot like swaths of male skewing internet spaces were being inundated with it. And then meanwhile, I'm you know, as a program maker of 30 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 Theroux subject. You know, like I I someone who specialized over the years I've done stuff about racist, cults, sex workers of different stripes, um people involved in pro wrestling and gangster rap. The man is this aspect of the manosphere like this subset 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 kayfabe. Well, I don't know it 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 not being serious with that. But at some points the seriousness actually comes into touch reality. Big time. You know, the wrestling metaphor is um as you say is very apropos. We're in a 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 40 channels." Like, "What? Mind blown." Now, there's a 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, kayfabe. Alongside that, you know, someone who I mean, I'm a fan of in a sense self-impersonation. Like I find all of that 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 Theroux 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 um uh Nicholas Balanthazi and he he uses the handle Sneako. 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 I 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 certain 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. Mhm. 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 ca a being a part of a moral panic, you know? There's a sense in which we 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 N.W.A. and and and and Ice Cube and then 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, with it's in the manosphere, there's a similar there's a similar issue, which is how what parts of this um you know, you don't want to You got to 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 bullying, um and factually wildly incorrect. Because the the the the flip side of having a world where everyone has a media channel is 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 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 I have a 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 Nights, 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 joke 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 Mhm. 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's a lot of it is is that and the difference is nobody looked at Will Ferrell and thought, "Well, that's how you should That's how 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's live streaming but it's also entertainment. So, well, is it live? Is this life or is it more kayfabe? I I'd agree. I think come, you know, with for me it was it was both alternative comedy of the '80s who who I I looked up to and then maybe when I was a little younger you were inspired 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 maverick cop. Um, and and then, you know, pop music for me later on rappers, people who impersonated or or affected a kind of an outlaw swagger of being unapologetically into fast cars, having big muscles, flexing how much money you had. I you know, the to me the YouTube you you talk to kids nowadays age 8, 9, 10. Ask them what they want to do, they'll say, "I want to either be a footballer or a YouTuber. I want to be either, 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, every generation says, "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, but that's part of cultural regeneration and actually in almost Darwinian terms, there's a sort of sense of like you join the bachelor herd, you leave the the family unit and you you you you you you you you you begin to birth an identity 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 they're their version of of punk, alternative comedy, and and rap all kind of rolled into one. But the the danger is that the the stage is no longer just a literal stage like 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 BBC what TV show or whatever or alternative comedy show, you had old men in suits saying like actually you can't make that joke and you know this bit's going to be cut off and you know that's a this is going up before 9:00, 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. You could and so kids are on their phones watching endless scroll of 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's women who are half naked and guys with muscles and inappropriate jokes, that's pushed to the top of the algorithm. Uh and it's I don't want to 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 and parts of that are exciting. You know, I don't I really there's parts of the kind of the new media landscape that genuinely like as a fan of pranks, like there's some of the pranks are funny. As a fan of like documentary like fact-based interactions, I enjoy that. Like stuff that goes viral cuz 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 are are people like Andrew Tate, Sneako, 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 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 you end up, you know, some portion of those viewers end up buying these crappy products. What do you think's driving this trend? Why around men's issues? Why not around something else? Well, I think it exists among 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 that, you know, natural for want of a better term, um, but I get that I don't I don'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 Yeah, like I joked that I was an incel before it was fashionable. Like I can relate. >> [laughter] >> You know, I can relate to the feeling of like, "Wow, why am I not Why am I the 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 like the incel anthem. Um so, I understand why men especially young men cuz I think that's important like we It's not guy It's for the most part this isn't guys in their 30s and 40s. This is teenagers um 14 through 18 and 20. And I say that based on hanging out with spending time filming with HS Ticki Tacki, Sneako, uh and others and and seeing like the This is like sometimes even 9 years old, 10 years old coming up and saying like, "Oh mate, I love you. Uh you're the best." So, they're they're ki- kids uh some of them uh and 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 it 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? Yeah, I 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 18 and a big big big chunk of them are sort of 20 to 40. So, I don't really think about those young kids, but I guess what's interesting is yeah, maybe if you're to talk about the removal of previous role models, the paths toward legitimacy that men would have been able to hold on to 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 11 years old are thinking about that, factoring that in. So, I don't know that that explanatory mechanism does work if you're 22, but I'm not convinced 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's more entertainment, but there's less ability to discern whether this is something that's a turned up to 11 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 it's a little bit all of the above. I do think that um in in one sense, if the if if Tik Tok had existed in the 18th century or let's say 19th century at a time when there were there were jobs in factories and kind of traditional gender norms and archetypes and I I still think actually people would be kids young men would be enormously beguiled by it. Like, there's a sense in which none of the messaging, you know, you could Andrew Tate's messaging, a lot of it seems to be derived from books like Iceberg Slim's books where it's about the pimp culture of the 50s and 60s. The the you know, it's this sort of sense in which uh I can 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 they've got a whole different vocabulary. It's It's sort of like erroneous notions of like, oh, breaking people's spirit and you know, 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 12 or 13, 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. You know, 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 I'm partnered with Momentous. They make the highest quality supplements on the planet and their whey protein is literally the cleanest on the market. 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Like I think they're trying to remedy their pocketbooks to a great extent. You know what I mean? >> [laughter] >> 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 have they clearly have found a way of connecting by by in a sense of appealing to the parts of I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I the less evolved, the less meritorious, the more primitive parts of our identities, right? There There's a sort of um what we're seeing living through is a is a is a time which our our most primal urges, you know, our our kind of evolutionary strategies, our drives towards um whether it's sexual or tribal, 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 want to sound super kind of neo-Darwinian, but you know, the senses which we are still living with our own kind of software uh which was evolved on the savannas of Africa, right? And um and and is 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 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, 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 is very extreme and Myron Gaines wrote a book called Why Women Deserve Less. And his idea his whole message is that women have been pampered and they are over entitled. And as men, we need to recognize that and give them less and everything will go more smoothly. And so, his message would be um actually, yeah, men can hack the game of life, you know, we I can teach you the cheat codes of life. A lot of it based on old PUA, pick up artistry, supposed hacks, you know, negging women, um recognizing that women are in that in that words or in that view, status obsessed. Uh and then you can build the life that you would like and would deserve by um employing his techniques. I I I mean, there's a lot more that could be said about that. I mean, I find it so inimical to the way I think about the I mean, I was raised by a feminist mom, you know, and and and and in South London in a world where Yeah, the the that the idea that I you know, my mom was a working mom. I grew up in the '70s in South London. So, the idea See, these ideas are so alien to me that I had to try to get my head round them. I think a lot of it seems to be based on his interactions with um cam girls and OnlyFans models. Like in his world, he's like all he When he talks 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 pieces is like women can't shouldn't go on social media and if you have a girlfriend you got to keep her off social media. Um anyway, I'm going on a bit of a tangent but that that 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 a maybe a cafe bar 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're taking about the Genghis Khan would be probably that that would be their ultimate alpha. I look 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 called for the first time ever I got called a looks maxer and um I realized when that happened I realized that looks maxer 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 right maybe some sort of right-wing maybe it would have been like like you 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 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 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 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 Is that a fair representation? >> Definitely that. I mean, even to go further uh >> [gasps] >> I think there's parts of it where it isn't even so much that it's camouflaged as mission-driven, although it may be, but also that it's um it's 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 awake them up. Like they do sort of walk back. Some of the things they say are so horrific. I don't even want to really repeat them, but but you know, 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 the 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 and what I mean is they start pausing it and sort of um making it sound more acceptable. Uh but then you're right. There is a part of it where they are uh advocating a return to a certain 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 who might take a similar position. Um so that's not really their identifying characteristic. Like the the the really 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 at the the behind it is a um is is a is it's it's an angle. It's a it's an attempt to reach a market. And someone like HS Titchy Titchy, he's he's Essex-born uh is Like a lot of these guys um single parent home a home in which certainly for Tate like 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, you you grow 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 compensation by him, right? Like some attempt to You've you've got this line. >> You've got this line in the doc 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 if you 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 cuz the other part of it is it's not clear how much of it is even real. Um I mean I this there's so much false content. There's so much misleading uh advertising in my opinion. You know, the idea that oh, if you want to be a multi-millionaire, uh just do what I did and and and go on this FX trading platform. And you're thinking, "Actually, I'm pretty sure HS Tiki-Taka made his money by streaming for 10 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 as an offshoot of the PUA community, the pickup artistry community. And then using this sort of Neil Strauss The Game adjacent techniques in order to say that I can teach you the psychology of women and then you can run cam girls and you can be a pimp. You know, is one of his first products was the so-called um pimp uh pimping ho PhD pimping ho's degree. He's tried to walk that back now, but obviously the whole paper trail is there online and and you know, describing how you have to get a girlfriend and have sex with her 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 cuz 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 products um is obviously extreme as well. A quick aside, if you've noticed your energy isn't quite what it used to be even though you eat well and stay active, there might be a reason for that. As we age, our mitochondria, which is the parts of our cells that produce energy, become weaker and make less energy, which is why I'm such a huge fan of Timeline. They developed this pill right here that helps clear out damaged mitochondria, so your cells can actually renew themselves. And this isn't just theory. In clinical trials, people saw mitochondrial renewal increase by more than 40% in just 16 weeks along with improvements in their overall energy. 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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 Tates, Justin Waller. Um and also HS Ticki Tocki 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 um I I you know there's a part of me that'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 might even be that you know, the 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 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 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 going to kind of create an almost apocalyptic mindset. Like 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 got to be a warrior, a warrior and go out there and and and then and women risk of being attacked and that's why you can't let your wife out on a road because you got to be a warrior and she could be like It actually if you were living in the time of Genghis Khan maybe or maybe like there'd been a complete collapse of society and marauding bands of warlords were taking over the streets, you know, the tumbleweed strewn streets, 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 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, where your dad is marauding into the house every now and then, then you can see how that would be an appealing mindset and and here 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 want to be a warrior. It sounds kind of cool. Like it sounds badass." And it becomes an all kind of all encompassing model for how society should be. If that's the case, if it's so common [clears throat] that a lot of [snorts] 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, fatherless homes, maybe some neglect or dysfunction or abuse. I don't know. I It 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 you you you you should have seen ways in which these 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 him aged 4 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 HS Tiki Toki. He's another streamer um who gives vent to some conspiracy theories. And But, you also see him when he's I think 9 or 10 years old going online going on his Yeah, eating marshmallows doing like talking in a slight YouTube Mid-Atlantic accent guy, "Can you say fuzzy bunny?" 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 What does that do to you? Uh well, it turns out so it 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 Well, who's behind this? Cuz 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 curlies. I go on to Instagram to send a DM to someone, and then 20 minutes later I'm looking at videos of a woman playing the piano with her breasts. That was a real [laughter] 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." It These platforms are really good at hacking the bottom of our brain stems. And uh yeah, I guess it's it's an interesting challenge to think I I had this guy on the show, uh Stuart Russell, and he wrote the book on artificial intelligence up until probably about 6, 7, 8 years ago. And he explained to me about how these algorithms work, these black box 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. So, 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'm 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. Cuz 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. Cuz we, me and you, you've got podcasts and stuff, you've got metrics. You can see what you're doing that is effective. There's a retention curve. Oh, I said this thing. Oh, that was an We should We should do more segments like that on the show next time. I I don't know what reporting Netflix gives or has or whatever, but yeah, I could imagine In a documentary, screen 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 en masse with metrics all the time, 24 hours a day with an algorithm. And 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 Mr. Beast's Beast Games 2 premiere in Hollywood 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." To to hear that in real life, to me kind of felt a little bit like seeing your school teacher at the supermarket. Like, 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, this algorithm thing, it's 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. 100% and imagine if as well that you're you're putting out content that is maybe feels authentic to you, uh that, you know, maybe some of it is stunts and pranks and some of it's 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, you know, if your main relationship in life is is with the chat, like a virtual community, uh the ways in which you would start to second-guess who you are. And especially in this realm where we talked about kayfabe and this sort of sense in which there's this unacknowledged fictional dimension that's never really spoken about. Mhm. You know, how confusing that would be. You would start to think, "I don't even know who I am anymore." You know, that that that there's this sort of existential burnout that takes place. Um I'm really curious though when you said the thing about how would they be able to 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 algorithms. So, I I Stewart didn't explain the dynamic to me, so I'm just going to bro-science 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 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 I don't think is necessarily true. But, I do think that if you were to come up with a way to imagine that the algorithm was able to see, cuz 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 new 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 can't think of a better word for it, it does create a kind of funnel. 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 that the best, right? Or that the most effective at whatever keeping us on site, but also that that 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 pre-conditioned them, like Derren Brown or something, it's going to be a big Derren Brown game where you're trying to sort of lay the lay the scenario so that this these beliefs over time become and and also are bucketed, people are bucketed into um 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, it that there's this pull towards obviously engagement, and that uh that involves antisocial behavior. So, one thing that we filmed was HSTikkyTokky 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 uh, underage, and then the person would arrive, the alleged predator, and then you would 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 watched, 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 FSU 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 they're they're not quite your friend. Like, you know, 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 price of entry, but also kind of an opportunity to tell the story in a slightly different way where we they'd be filmed I'd film them, they'd be filming me, we could 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' game is. I think he might be trying to [ __ ] me, but I'm not sure. Anyway." And then all these comments come in saying like, "Uh, bro, he's going to finish you. You're cooked, bro. Uh, HSL, major L for Tikky Tokky. Feruze going to, uh, dunk on you, bro." And then, um, and then he he starts talking back to the chat, and it becomes this sort of spiral where he starts questioning his decision to take part. And 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 it 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 like a 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 mean, ends up being, I think, rather exhausting, and it it's obviously a very limited way of of observing life. We'll get back to talking in just 1 second, but first, if you have been feeling a bit sluggish, your testosterone levels might be the problem. 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Get the exact same blood panels that I get and save 100 bucks by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com {slash} modern wisdom. That's at functionhealth.com {slash} modern wisdom. Well, 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, Cuz if there's a payoff that is a lull and that means that your numbers are going to go down. The the live the live stream numbers are going to go down. So, there was always it always felt like a cliffhanger at the end of a TV show. Cuz we were studying this we were studying the line for the red carpet 5 10 yd away. So, I was and I was fascinated. So, I'm just like locked in watching this guy. And it was 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 going to happen and this thing's going to happen and this thing's going to 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, now we're going to go and go down the strip in Marbella. Now, we're going to go on the back line. Now, we're going to 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. The number's going down is bad and the chat says that it's you fall off. >> literally it's not like in the old days oh, how how are the ratings last night? They haven't come in yet. We'll get them in a couple of hours. This is constant. You can literally see how many people >> know the ratings this second and next second. So, I think >> And also 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, 5 to 20 seconds long with a little headline like Thooru finishes HS or HS wasn't expecting Thooru to say this or HS's mom is is having a pop at Thooru like almost like you know, tabloid headlines and then they just put them out like so there'll be 50 or 100 or 200 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 uh one of them did well, or maybe none of them did well, but what we should be doing is putting like these guys put out like 100, and then one of them gets picked up, and then that that go gets turbocharged, and it's 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 why were you like I saw that what 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 live stream. 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 filming process. >> You were surveilled, but it wasn't it wasn't by some secret police or a private investigator. It was by the camera team. 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 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's an author called Paul Theroux, and you know, it's something I don't know if you had a 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 Theroux quirky documentary maker uh and definitely not Louis Theroux like stooge or a patsy or or kind of uh sort of butt of HS Ticky-Tackies of humiliating jokes, you know? But that being the case, they see what they see on social media. They've been quite They've been surprised not surprised, but they've been a a a kind of reassuringly relaxed uh about me appearing on their streams. I've been joking it's a Dad, you got cooked by HS. I don't think they actually ever said that. >> [snorts] >> Yeah. Well, look, not to me anyway. The fact that you're in this sort of weird panopticon of of what was it that Stewart Lee referred to it as? Um uh uh Starzy for the Angry Birds generation. It's state surveillance run by gullible volunteers. Um That's a great that Now that's that's panopticon You had me at panopticon, actually. I'll keep Well, I shamelessly ripped that off from Stewart Lee. >> like but yeah, but but you panopticon I the a term I think coined by Jeremy Bentham, the utilitarian philosopher and social reformer, which was the idea that a prison of like 10,000 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 Stewart Lee quote. We're in this a self-created kind of all-facing panopticon. Yeah. Well, look A digital 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 haven't published any episodes with any 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's 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, feminism is a very big broad bucket term that includes everything. And I think that manosphere is basically, meninism was just too weird of a term. So, manosphere is sort of the online equivalent of what feminism is. And 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 I try to create a a balanced 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 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 [ __ ] 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 >> [snorts] >> 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 all that stuff. It's been 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 really 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 was very interesting watching the documentary. I I hear that and I'm really curious to know Chris cuz you mentioned earlier that you felt you'd had a bit of uh flak for for something or other. Uh are you are you able to share anything about that? Yeah, I mean I mean it's more general flak. It's kind of uh rain rather than a atomic warheads, but um yeah, there's disagreements around 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 harsh in my Really cuz I thought you meant that you'd had flak from the the legacy media Oh, I've also got that. I've also got that. for being too manosphere adjacent 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 tons and tons. Manosphere influencer Chris Williamson talks about this blah blah blah blah blah blah. And uh hm 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 Sneako 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 a sort of laid at their feet. Agreed. I mean it's the term is highly inexact and and and actually you're right. And I've been on Theo Von and I've been on Joe Rogan and uh I I like those guys and and and I know those have been characterized as manosphere. >> Manosphere. Jordan Peterson would be the same. Andrew Huberman would be the same. And in fact, as you say, there's a huge gulf there's a huge spectrum within the the so-called manosphere community. It 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 want to make a lot of money, you know, hustle bro culture and what not. That's not I don't find that interesting. I don't find it particularly It might not be my lane, but I 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 that I And it's healthy to have a kind of mixed diet of kind of media intake and so my thing was like oh 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. They they very much see themselves, you know, Sneako, Justin Waller, Myron from Fresh and Fit. They all They all They all They are all quite tight, those three. Somewhat adjacent to Nick Fuentes in fact and certainly Andrew Tate is tight with them. It's a certain So there's 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 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 It's very 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 rather paranoid, I would say narrow a kind of narrow understanding of how the world works, a narrow understanding of what men and women are, narrow sets of what achievement and success look like. 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, 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. If you are That's a probably the best example I can think of, and I'm sure that he's been accused of it, Andrew Huberman, Dr. Andrew Huberman of Stanford, is part of the manosphere because 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 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, are addicted to drugs, 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 so, one thing is happening, which is I think that there's been some upending 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' generations, 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 30. 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 there's things 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 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 term I mean, again, the fact that I was accused of being a looks maxer, a term that's been around, as far as I can see, for about 3 seconds. >> Who Who Who accused you of being a looks maxer? Some news some news article. Uh looks maxer, Chris Williamson. I I I mean, that feels a little bit like 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 sort of that I just woke up like this looks maxer thing. Um I It's It's just interesting these two worlds exist at the same time. 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, if you've been following the whole clavicular phenomenon >> I you I was I was going to ask whether or not you have a an intention of of maybe looking at the world of looks maxing in future. Clavicula, as they said like after cuz we finished filming our documentary, which by the way is on Netflix. I'm going to do a brazen plug as of I don't know if it's It'll be out yes. It's out now. It's out now. It's out now. And and which is exciting cuz I've made stuff mainly for the BBC and and and and this is my first foray as as a Netflix as maker of a Netflix original. It's It's crazy to think how many like Well, I don't know how many people are going to stream it, but it's available worldwide. But the we filmed it until about late last year like maybe August, September having started early in the year like January, February and then and then in the following few months. I remember one of my kids came down and like "Dude, check this out." and I it was some piece of con Clavicula content. And I did not think he was going to blow up the way he did. I just thought oh well, he's he's he's kind of very good looking guy who he seemed I don't know like he was just doing what he was doing. But and then Ed Matthews comment was like oh, he would have been in the documentary, but he spawned into the game too late. I just like to It's true. It's true. But it's kind of true. It's kind of true. They're all avatars of some sort of social media game. >> the the the Clavicula thing is is I think different. 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 and it was basically completely whitewashed when Me Too came along because there was no way that this sort of brazen 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 betas and cucks 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 intersexual competition. That's what mogging 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 it's not in any way concerned with women, the approval of women. You know, you 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, 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 >> That's interesting. Yeah, it's reminding me a bit of MGTOW, men going their own way. And and you know, which is all as you say, like the ultimate black pill where you sort of think, "You you what? 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 means of delivery and so much of this as I said earlier with like Iceberg Slim versus Andrew Tate the message might be similar but the means of delivery makes it something else like I think Andrew Tate in many respects with this with the side effect of kind of Tik Tok algorithm. You mentioned PUA the pick up 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 in podcasts and YouTube but whereas this new iteration is a live streaming phenomenon and and specifically clavicular he's not the first looks maxer at all but he's the first looks maxer that live streams that I'm aware of and in that live streaming environment you're not really conveying it's not 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 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 you know he seems politically ambiguous. He seems to say almost anything I mean I would say say it with almost anything but you know his whole thing like he supports Gavin Newsom over JD Vance because Newsom's better looking and Vance looks like a hobbit right? Subhuman. And everyone and every all the red pill community was kind of a you know weird way of genius move as a way of distinguishing himself from the red pill right? He's like I don't really care but I'm so empty I'm so utterly amoral that I'm going to endorse the person who embodies a sort of a kind of California progressive mentality, right? And everyone was like, "What the actual?" Like, that was the most outrageous thing he could do at that point. You know what I mean? >> better looking. Yeah. In other news, you've probably heard me talk about Element before, and that's because I am frankly dependent on it. Uh and it's how I started my day every single morning. This is the best tasting hydration drink on the market. You might think, "Why do I need to be more hydrated?" Because proper hydration is not just about drinking enough water, it's having sufficient electrolytes to allow your body to use those fluids. 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Right now, you can get a free sample pack of Element's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below, heading to drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom. That's drinklmnt.com/ modernwisdom. So, I think one element What What do you agree with them on? What do you >> 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 facts. Like they they 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? Um so I I think the conversation has become characterized by bad 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. The part that I I agree with um I think in general Like well, I think I've answered the question. Like I think in general it's helpful to recognize there are differences between men most men and most women. Like without privileging them or reifying them, you know, it would be Again, I don't it's it's kind of 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 the content like 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 obtain some kind of mastery over your life, right? 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 of 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 thing the thing I disagree with is well, the fact that it comes packaged with a bunch of toxic or or you know, just degrading and demeaning content. If you separate like I follow Joe Wicks. Like I'm a subscriber to 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 5 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, it's I'm making excuses, but so but I've got 20 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, the 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 multi-millionaire oligarchs and it's it's so paper thin, you know, the it And it's idea of chasing money and I'm just not a fan of what they call flossing. Is that Is it flo- Like the idea of like showing off your like Oh, look how Fl- 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. >> [sighs and gasps] >> I don't know. Anyway, okay, so you agree >> four granddads, 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 you know, I just think that um actually we we should be better than that. And I also think that, you know, the other like how can I make a ton of money? Like dude, 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, suddenly 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 >> Yeah. it just reinforces 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, the other thing is that there's this world in which you think, oh well, you're looking for this like I'm looking for you know, what's your body count? Oh, my body count's 150. What's your body count? My body count's like 780. I mean First of all, that's that whole I find that whole thing really cringey and embarrassing. But then it's like, but you're you you should really marry a woman with like a low really low body count, ideally a virgin. I mean, that's already really annoying and objectionable. But then they surround themselves with only fans girls. And then and then they're like oh, you know, they're like women are just in they characterize women as overly either mercenary or overly sexually active. And then you're like, but what So but you're in this world you're in this world of adult content creators. Like you you you None of this is matching up. If you want to be traditional values, head up to Utah or Idaho or something cuz Miami is not for you. 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 and 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' line from the American Institute of Boys and Men. Uh if it wasn't for the fact that there was 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 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 that you would say to your boys you should th- this would be the sort of man that you should emulate. Uh well, I mean, the answer that gets banded 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 so that's a 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 many girls, too. Mhm. Um uh I mean, how long I mean, should I come up with a couple more? Like, you know, there's clearly a in the pantheon of program makers, my field, David Attenborough, you know, an an 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 you know, it's it's it's a me me men despairing, like 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 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 raised 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 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 I that this 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 the casual disparagement of men and I think very occasionally, maybe more than occasionally, that happens. Like typical man or um 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 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 5 years old, like 7 years old. Like, don't >> [laughter] >> I don't know what I am, but 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 what are little girls made of? And it's all like, sugar and spice and all things nice. And what are little boys made of? Like, pigs and puppy dogs' tails. I'm like, I remember I was like 7 years old. I'm like, why am I made of puppy dogs' tails? Yeah. You know what I mean? And then that's kind of trivial, but I don't like that sort of um like frivolous denigrating of of the of the of maleness. And then maybe I'm being oversensitive, but I think it kind of it it it's a little unfair. Um so, maybe I'm agreeing with that. But and I think you I think the other thing I'd say is if I want to say I'm really apocalyptic, uh we are all, both men and women, but 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, you know, and the fact that a lot of like you know, traditional manufacturing jobs moving to places like China and then what actually most of the jobs like now you can be done equally well or better by women, but in a world where AI is going to eliminate most of the jobs uh that involve sitting in front of a screen as is sometimes promised, there's going to be this whole other ruction. Like, it's going to play out really interestingly, I think, to say the least, in terms of how how men and women interrelate. Like, whether you know, the how sustainable I know I'm taking us a bit off tangent, but um I sometimes think like that you know, male mental health versus you know, and how it figures in wider society will be subsumed by some vastly bigger 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 it's all well and good talking about the issues that both men and boys and women and girls are facing, but when 50% of the workforce is displaced by AI, I don't know whether that's going to happen. When some percentage of the workforce is displaced by AI and people don't have meaning 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. Like, it needs You need to be sympathetic. Wow, the world changed really [ __ ] far, really [ __ ] fast. That's hard to navigate. That's hard to navigate, but because at least at this 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 etc. But, you know, opportunities that weren't afforded to the women. It 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 they 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 pedestalization 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 sell 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 Matty and Chris who come up to Justin Waller, Justin Waller the business guru, and we travel we just walking around the streets of Miami and they you can see they're in awe of Justin Waller and 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 '90s, I think, called Stiffed, that talks about the kind 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 were born without value?" And then Justin Waller says like, "You know, if you're a beautiful woman, you get invited onto a yacht. Who's going to 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 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 kind of Instagram paradigm Miami currency for value, right? It's like you you he's sort of saying like, "Uh if I put my picture on Instagram, no one's going to click on that, but if you're a beautiful woman, they'll click on that." Like, dude, like you have the 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 that 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 is 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 kind of it's it's kind of like you first you're like, "Oh, I guess." And then you're like, "Well, what Marie Curie?" Like, did what was did she uh do her Nobel Prize-winning scientific work based on having a big Instagram following? Like, did she like, "Oh, she's hot. Marie Curie is really hot. Like, you know, that that that's such a weird kind of 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 night time, some of my friends are horrendous in the way that they present themselves. They are not fashionable, that but they're like smart or thoughtful or 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, what's been going on in their life. They're really patient. They're 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. You're like 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've 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 Clavicula, 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 realize actually if you've been around those guys who are using sort of life hacks like that it's quite a weird experience. You don't feel good afterwards. You know that that feeling of whether it's being nagged or someone who's sort of deploying certain forms of whether it's neuro-linguistic programming, you know, and then you think like 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 have you'd slept with someone like that. That's that's got to that's got to feel afterwards quite dark I would have thought like it feels like a very 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 actions. And you know, this is the problem. It don't forget I'm sure that you did this as part of your research, but the red pill was born out of the PUA 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 picker artistry 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 cuz I I grew up kind of tangential to the era of the game. Guys realized that they could be successful with women by following neuro-linguistic programming and you know, 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 yeah, you're right. If If you And I think we're going to see this increasingly, and you saw this with Neil Strauss. I had Neil on the show two years ago here in Austin. And Neil has now gone through almost a full horseshoe 180 to be completely family-pilled. He's got 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 it you >> Wow, that's interesting. Isn't that fascinating? But think of 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, [ __ ] That now I'm really [ __ ] 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 is 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. And 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. >> [gasps] >> Chris, I need to I I can have to make a move in a second. Um it'd be I've got a child to pick up, but I 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 your people go to keep up to date with everything? Oh, Netflix. People can go and watch the documentary on Netflix. We've got we've got our film dropping on well, it's already out on Netflix worldwide. I've got a podcast I do for Spotify and I make documentaries with through my company Mindhouse and other stuff's swirling around wherever you happen to be watching this. If you'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 some stuff pirated content on YouTube, which is fine. Go and check that out. Beautiful. Louis, I appreciate you, man. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do next. >> All right, thank you, Chris. I'm really glad we could hook this up. It was I would it would have been even better in person, but we made it work. That's the important thing. It's a privilege to be on. Thank you for spending the time and for for a great conversation. Appreciate you. Thank you, man. Congratulations, you made it to the end of an episode. Your brain has not been completely destroyed by the internet just yet. Here's another one that you should watch. Go on.