Manosphere

Based on Wikipedia: Manosphere

The Red Pill and the Rise of Online Male Grievance

In the 1999 film The Matrix, the protagonist Neo faces a choice: take the blue pill and remain in comfortable ignorance, or take the red pill and see reality as it truly is. It's a powerful metaphor about awakening to hidden truths. Over the past two decades, a sprawling network of websites, podcasts, and online forums has appropriated this imagery to describe something quite different: the belief that men are the true oppressed class in modern society, and that feminism is a conspiracy to keep them down.

They call it "taking the red pill."

This network has a name: the manosphere. And its influence has grown far beyond obscure internet forums into mainstream political discourse, mass media, and—most troublingly—real-world violence.

What Exactly Is the Manosphere?

The manosphere isn't a single organization or ideology. Think of it more like an ecosystem—a loose confederation of communities that share overlapping grievances but often disagree on solutions. The major factions include:

• Men's Rights Activists (MRAs) who focus on issues like divorce courts, custody battles, and what they see as systemic discrimination against men in family law
• Incels—short for "involuntary celibates"—men who believe they are unjustly denied romantic and sexual relationships, often expressing profound bitterness toward women
• Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) who advocate withdrawing from romantic relationships with women entirely
• Pick-up artists (PUAs) who teach manipulation techniques to seduce women
• Fathers' rights groups focused specifically on custody and child support reform

These groups sometimes clash with each other. Pick-up artists, for instance, are trying to attract women, while MGTOW adherents have sworn them off entirely. Incels often resent both for different reasons. Yet despite these tensions, they share a foundational belief: feminism has corrupted society, men are its victims, and something must be done about it.

From Men's Liberation to Anti-Feminism

The manosphere didn't emerge from nothing. Its roots stretch back to the 1970s men's liberation movement, which started as something quite different—a critique of how traditional masculinity limited men's emotional lives and options. Early men's liberationists often worked alongside feminists, arguing that rigid gender roles harmed everyone.

But a fracture emerged. Some activists began to see feminism not as an ally in challenging gender norms, but as the enemy responsible for men's problems. By the 1980s and 1990s, organizations formed around the idea that family courts discriminated against fathers, that domestic violence laws were biased against men, and that women's advancement came at men's expense.

The internet transformed these scattered concerns into a movement.

Early online men's rights forums and pick-up artist communities emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They provided spaces where men could share grievances, develop shared language, and reinforce each other's worldviews. The term "manosphere" itself—a play on "blogosphere"—appears to have first emerged on a Blogspot page in 2009. A pornography marketer named Ian Ironwood later compiled various blogs and forums into a book called "The Manosphere: A New Hope For Masculinity," helping cement the terminology.

The Language of the Red Pill

Every subculture develops its own vocabulary, and the manosphere is no exception. Understanding its terminology reveals how these communities think.

The central concept is "the red pill"—accepting the manosphere's worldview that society systematically oppresses men while feminism obscures this truth. Someone who has "taken the red pill" (sometimes abbreviated TRP) has awakened to this supposed reality. Those who haven't are "blue pilled," still living in comfortable ignorance.

Men are frequently categorized as "alpha" or "beta" males. In this framework borrowed loosely from evolutionary psychology, "alphas" are sexually dominant and naturally attractive to women, while "betas" are the providers women settle for when they can't get alphas. This leads to the crude formulation "alpha fux beta bux"—the belief that women pursue alphas for sex but exploit betas for financial support.

These categories create a hierarchy. They suggest that male worth is measurable and that women operate according to predictable, manipulable biological programming. On forums like Reddit's now-quarantined r/TheRedPill, "swallowing the red pill" meant accepting that women are inherently "manipulative, attention-seeking, inconsistent, emotional, and hypergamous"—that last term meaning they constantly seek higher-status partners. The goal was to use this supposed knowledge to gain power over women.

As author Donna Zuckerberg observed, "The Red Pill represents a new phase in online misogyny. Its members not only mock and belittle women; they also believe that in our society, men are oppressed by women."

The Misandry Claim

A central grievance uniting manosphere communities is the belief in widespread misandry—hatred of or prejudice against men. They argue that misandry is equivalent to misogyny and use this framing to deny that institutional sexism against women exists.

But does the evidence support claims of systematic anti-male prejudice? Consider one grim statistic: both male and female homicide victims are more likely to have been killed by a man than by a woman. While feminism is portrayed within the manosphere as a misandrist movement dedicated to harming men, researchers note that no significant feminist organizations actually espouse hatred of men or encourage violence against them.

This doesn't mean men face no challenges—issues like mental health stigma, workplace deaths in dangerous industries, and family court outcomes deserve serious attention. But the manosphere's framing of these issues as evidence of feminist conspiracy rather than complex social problems often prevents productive engagement with potential solutions.

When Online Hatred Becomes Real-World Violence

The manosphere entered mainstream awareness through tragedy.

In 2014, a young man named Elliot Rodger killed six people near the University of California, Santa Barbara, in what became known as the Isla Vista killings. Investigators found he had been active on PUAHate, a manosphere forum for men who felt pick-up artist techniques had failed them. He left behind manifestos filled with rage against women who had rejected him.

More attacks followed. The 2015 Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon. The 2018 Toronto van attack, where a man drove into pedestrians, killing ten, after posting praise for Rodger online. Each incident drew media scrutiny to these online communities and their potential role in radicalizing men toward violence.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups in the United States, took notice. In a 2012 report, researcher Arthur Goldwag described the manosphere as an "underworld of misogynists, woman-haters whose fury goes well beyond criticism of the family court system, domestic violence laws, and false rape accusations." By 2018, the SPLC had added "male supremacy" as a category they formally track alongside white supremacist and other extremist movements.

The British anti-extremism organization Hope not Hate included the manosphere in its 2019 State of Hate report. Researchers began studying what they called the "alt-right pipeline"—how relatively mild grievances could escalate through exposure to increasingly extreme content until vulnerable individuals embraced violent ideologies.

The Overlap with White Nationalism

The manosphere doesn't exist in isolation. It shares significant territory with white supremacist and far-right movements, including the alt-right—a rebranded form of white nationalism that gained prominence in the mid-2010s.

The connections run deep. Many alt-right members identify as pick-up artists or MGTOW. As Donna Zuckerberg documented, "the policing of white female sexuality is a major concern" of the alt-right. Both movements share anxieties about Western civilization supposedly under threat, both traffic in racism and xenophobia alongside their other grievances.

But it would be a mistake to assume the manosphere is exclusively white. Researchers at Open University found that alongside the "angry white men" associated with the alt-right, these communities also contain "men of colour, struggling with systemic racism that extends to beauty ideals and status." The grievances may vary, but the framework—blaming feminism and women for male suffering—remains consistent.

The Rise of the Manosphere Influencer

If the early manosphere was primarily text-based—forums, blogs, and websites—its current form is increasingly personality-driven. A new generation of influencers has learned to monetize male grievance at scale.

Names like Andrew Tate, Myron Gaines, Jordan Peterson, and Adin Ross have built massive followings by packaging manosphere ideas for mainstream consumption. They blend confident talk-radio style with internet informality, discussing politics, relationships, and masculinity in brash, confrontational tones designed to go viral.

This "podcast bro" archetype has proven remarkably effective at spreading manosphere ideas beyond niche forums. A January 2020 study found that these influencers' tactics have spread misogynistic speech from fringe websites into mainstream discourse, fueling online hate campaigns and, researchers argue, contributing to real-world violence against women.

The business model is straightforward: generate controversy to build an audience, then monetize through merchandise, premium content, and subscriber-only events. Supporters argue these hosts create authentic community. Critics counter that the format oversimplifies complex issues while spreading misinformation and increasing polarization.

Platform Responses and Migrations

Major platforms have struggled to respond to manosphere content. Reddit, which hosted some of the most prominent manosphere communities, began taking action in the late 2010s. The subreddit r/incels was banned in 2017, followed by its successor r/braincels in 2018, and r/MGTOW in August 2021. Other communities like r/TheRedPill were "quarantined"—users see warnings about the content and must sign in before accessing it.

But deplatforming creates a whack-a-mole dynamic. Banned communities migrate to platforms more tolerant of extreme content, like Gab. Meanwhile, individual influencers often maintain presences across multiple platforms, making comprehensive moderation nearly impossible.

From Online to Offline: November 2024

For years, observers warned that manosphere influence was growing. Following Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election, the Associated Press reported that the phenomenon had evolved beyond its online origins.

The wire service documented an "emboldened" manosphere using Trump's win "to justify and amplify misogynistic derision and threats online." Phrases like "Your body, my choice"—coined by white nationalist Nick Fuentes as a mockery of reproductive rights slogans—along with "Get back in the kitchen" and "Repeal the 19th" (referring to the constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage) received millions of views on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

More disturbingly, these sentiments had moved into physical spaces. The AP reported boys chanting "Your body, my choice" in middle schools and men directing it at women on college campuses. A man held a sign reading "Women Are Property" at Texas State University.

What had begun as angry forum posts had become something people said out loud.

The Cultural Response

As manosphere influence has grown, so has scrutiny of its effects. The 2025 British television drama "Adolescence" prompted the Women and Equalities Committee in Parliament to launch an inquiry into "Misogyny: the Manosphere and online content," examining what can be done to address its impact on young people. A BBC documentary, "Men of the Manosphere," followed journalist James Blake into these virtual communities to understand their appeal.

These responses reflect growing recognition that the manosphere is not merely an internet curiosity but a cultural force shaping how significant numbers of men—particularly young men—understand gender, relationships, and their place in society.

Understanding the Appeal

To address the manosphere's influence, it helps to understand why these communities attract adherents in the first place. They offer explanations—however flawed—for genuine frustrations. A young man struggling with dating, employment, or purpose can find communities that validate his struggles and provide seemingly logical frameworks for understanding them.

The red pill narrative is seductive in its simplicity: your problems aren't random misfortune or the result of complex economic and social forces; they're the result of a conspiracy against you. And unlike vast systemic problems, a conspiracy can theoretically be fought.

This doesn't make the manosphere's conclusions correct or its influence benign. But dismissing its adherents as simply hateful misses why these ideas spread. Many men arrive at manosphere communities genuinely confused and hurting. What they find there shapes what they do with that pain.

The Challenge Ahead

The manosphere presents a genuine challenge for anyone concerned with gender equity, online radicalization, or simply healthy masculinity. Its ideology has moved from fringe forums to mainstream discourse. Its language has entered everyday speech. Its most prominent figures command audiences in the millions.

Addressing it will require more than deplatforming or dismissal. It will require understanding what needs these communities claim to meet and offering better alternatives. It will require taking seriously both the legitimate concerns some men raise—about mental health, about finding purpose, about navigating changing gender expectations—while firmly rejecting the misogynist frameworks the manosphere wraps around those concerns.

The original men's liberation movement of the 1970s understood that rigid gender roles harm everyone. That insight got lost somewhere along the way, replaced by a zero-sum battle of the sexes. Perhaps finding it again is part of the path forward.