Simon X. Plotkin

HOW LOUIS THEROUX OUTMANNED THE MANOSPHERE, by Kathleen Stock (@DocStockk) For people who talk endlessly about escaping ‘the matrix’ — meaning the 9-5 grind, labouring away fruitlessly for the benefit of shadowy elites — manosphere influencers, ironically, are almost entirely made up of other people’s projections. They pine desperately for public attention, and are constantly conjuring up ways of getting more. In Louis Theroux’s latest documentary, everyone is trapped in degrading roles, passive in the face of their own limbic systems — the streamers themselves; the half-naked OnlyFans girls straddling them for the camera; the liberal feminists and fat-positive influencers wheeled on to be horribly insulted; the viewers doing the slack-jawed scroll in their bedrooms, dreaming of having big channels one day too. This urge to be famous starts young. For every massive streamer account, there are thousands of unknown ones made by children, where pre-pubescent wannabes film themselves gaming or reacting to videos. In a parallel universe, boys like this grow up to have happily ordinary lives, unnoticed by the all-devouring algorithm. In this one, though, they get caught up in a freak show, dutifully becoming pitiful monsters. Read more below ⬇️ buff.ly/M4mpqgJ